ABSTRACT
If the early history of European integration had to be written according to Carlyle’s dictum as ‘the biography of great men’, then the common denominator between the biographies of Robert Schuman, Joseph Bech, Alcide de Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer would be their adherence to Christian democracy. Christian democratic parties were at the vanguard of support for European unification during the early years of the integration process. All signatory states of the Rome Treaties featured powerful Christian democratic parties in the 1950s. Any attempt to analyse the responses of Christian democratic parties to European integration must thus begin by explaining the propensity of Christian democratic parties to espouse supranational ideas.
