ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the initial motivations for European integration. Treaty negotiations for the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community were motivated by three main objectives: peace, prosperity and the idea of Europe. The Community project was largely shaped by the meeting of national interests in a specific political and economic context but the fact remains that the European ideal envisaged reconciliation of the states at the end of the war and initiated an ambitious process of unification. The Community's history has been shaped by the meeting of national interests, by external political and economic pressures, by the strategies specific to supranational institutions and by the ideas and ideals relative to Europe and European construction. Political will to implement effective and responsive regulation mechanisms is coupled with a paradoxical refusal to do so on a federal basis and a willingness to act by way of intergovernmentalism.
