[Gladstone]

continued...

But the stakes were even higher than that: for this was the first step towards a federal state on the American model, a state with a supranational High Authority, a common parliament, on the model of the parliaments of the Member States, and a Court of Justice. The Gaullists and the communists saw where it was going and campaigned violently against the project. And Great Britain was not remotely tempted to take part: Europe was, at that time, something which was good for other people. Scarcely had the ECSC been born when the Korean War posed the question of German re-armament in a concrete form. For it raised the spectre of an invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany by its little communist sister. Washington was insistent that Germany should be re-armed. But five years after the capitulation of the Reich, the prospect was not well received on the old continent.

Monnet the visionary

Monnet, with his extraordinary dynamism, was convinced that it was possible to turn that negative into a positive. He proposed a project for a "European Defence Community", inspired by the ECSC, which would re-arm the Germans, rather than Germany. That was asking too much of most Frenchmen. The idea of a European Defence Community was rejected by the Assembleé Nationale in the summer of 1954. At the time, it looked as if this rejection would halt the growth of the European project. But Monnet‘s obstinacy swept all before it: in 1955 he launched an "Action Committee for the United States of Europe". He brought together the leaders of the political parties and trade unions of the six countries of the Coal and Steel Community. They were also joined, soon afterwards, by those of Great Britain. The Gaullists and communists remained opposed, of course. And so, for some unexplained reason, did Pierre Mendes-France and François Mitterrand. In 1957 the Treaty of Rome set up a "European Economic Community", which was destined to create a true common market between the Six. It also led to a "European Atomic Community" (Euratom), aimed at pooling the nuclear resources of the Six, at a time when the Suez crisis had highlighted the fragility of the West‘s supplies of hydrocarbons. France's determination to equip itself with nuclear weapons would rapidly limit the activity of Euratom, to which Monnet attached the highest importance. But the policy of European co-operation was re-launched when De Gaulle,who returned to power in 1958, embraced the common market. He was quick to recognise its capacity to stimulate the economy, and he was determined to join forces with Adenauer in order to keep Franco-German reconciliation on course. That is not to say that everything ran smoothly between the Six. France, which had been cleverly managing to control the common agricultural policy (CAP) to its own ends, strongly rejected any modification of it, to the point of leaving its seat empty for a long time. And above all, the General opposed Great Britain‘s candidature, which was sought by the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. This was all the more significant since everybody knew that the latter had been put up to it by John Kennedy, who had been persuaded by Monnet that the Atlantic alliance should hence forth be based on two pillars "one American and one European."

Strength in numbers

The other members of the common market, furious at De Gaulle‘s veto of Britain which was, of course, spelled out in the most brutal way, torpedoed the French Fouchet Plan for the political unification of Europe on federal lines. This left De Gaulle and Adenauer no alternative but to conclude a bilateral "Elyseé Treaty", which they did in 1963. (Although the commitments involved were modest, this agreement led to a Franco-German leadership of Europe which lasted, to the great annoyance of the British and others, until the defeat of Christian Democrat Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, in the 1998 elections.) The General's disappearance from the scene rapidly calmed the debate. His successor Georges Pompidou was concerned to create a counter weight to Germany, whose reunification he regarded as inevitable. After a "meeting of minds" with Prime Minister Edward Heath, heraised the French veto on UK entry into the common market. This took place in 1973, along with that of Ireland and Denmark. Norway, which was also granted entry, failed to ratify the treaty of admission. A further enlargement in 1978-79 took in Greece, Spain and Portugal.After the collapse of the Soviet empire, they were joined by three neutral countries:
Austria, Finland, and Sweden. Finally, the prelude to a Europe of Thirty Nations began at the start of 2001, when the Nice summit began negotiating the entry of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

France and several other member nations took the view that if an enlarged Europe were not to be condemned to ineffectiveness, its government would have to be strengthened. The mostimportant reform required would be qualified majority voting, rather than unanimity, on certain subjects. This deepening had in fact already begun in 1997 with the introduction of universal suffrage in the election of the European Parliament, although using the method of proportional representation and choosing a national scale for them meant the elections were too often seen primarily as a test of national politics.

Beyond romance, necessity

The most significant stage of this development occurred in 1990 with the reunification of Germany, when François Mitterrand managed to persuade Chancellor Kohl that the Federal Republic's increased political and economic weight needed to be counter balanced by a more closely integrated Community. The terms of the Maastricht treaty of 1992 picked up and amplified the Single Act of 1985. The European Economic Community was renamed the European Political and Monetary Union or more simply the European Union. It agreed, among other things, to introduce a single monetary system between the member states which would make all speculation impossible. This was a first step towards the introduction of a single currency, the euro, between those memberstates which wished to adopt it, and measuredup to certain criteria. Only Great Britain,Sweden and Denmark remain outside it for the present, although Tony Blair, who seems in favour of joining, has mooted the possibility of a referendum on the subject in 2003.

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