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Simon Petermann,
Professor,
President, Centre for Political Analysis
of International Relations, Liege, Belgium
The initialling of the Treaty of Paris on April 15, 1951, marked the first great step toward the economic and political integration of Europe. Once ratified, the treaty brought into existence the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which commenced operations in Luxembourg in June 1952. Europe's first so-called supranational institution, the ECSC, grew out of negotiations launched dramatically on May 9, 1950, with the announcement of the Schuman Plan proposal by the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman. Its real author, however, was Jean Monnet, head of the French Modernization Plan. Monnet chaired and directed the Paris proceedings as well as served as the first president of the High Authority, the executive arm of the ECSC, until November 1954. In addition to France, the countries represented at the negotiations were Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany. Participation was open to other nations, but Britain refused to enter the talks. The six nations that took part in them made up the eventual membership of the Community.
The founding of the Coal and Steel Community, whose institutions in 1967 formally merged with those of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Economic Energy Community (Euratom), was more significant as an episode in the diplomatic history than the political economy of Europe. Monnet and his followers claimed to have discovered in supranationalism a new principle and in the ECSC a new mechanism for overcoming the nationalism at the root of the two tragic European wars on the first half of the 20th century. Yet the High Authority never effectively regulated the heavy industry of Western Europe, which, though being market responsive, continued to operate within the framework of national producer associations and legislative environments; consequently the High Authority had no broader economic impacts. For this reason, the supranational ECSC did not provide a model for the institutions that launched Europe on the second stage of integration, the EEC. The coal-steel pool nonetheless set in motion a process, led by West Germany, involving the delegation of sovereign powers to a transnational authority at the European level that began what, for the lack of a better term, can be called integration.
Though Jean Monnet's personal contribution was essential for the creation of the ECSC, he was not alone in imagining that a coal-steel pool, if set up in Western Europe, could provide a framework for peace and prosperity. Robert Schuman shared this hope, as did many policymakers in wartime Germany, the United States, and elsewhere, France, not least at all. But Jean Monnet was the only one who could do the job. Only he had the necessary connections, know-how, and energy to manage the task. Don't forget that Jean Monnet was an international businessman and civil servant with powerful friends on Wall Street and Washington, where he had represented Britain in lend-lease matters during the war.
By 1950 the idea for a coal-steel pool in Western Europe was also in the air. The harsh reality in post-war Western Europe was that only the Ruhr disposed of the coal that everyone needed. Without the interposition of an effective control mechanism over the Ruhr, economic recovery was thus ultimately hostage to the smokestack barons of the ex-Reich. Monnet's attempt to secure a settlement on this basis, backed by the United States, depended on German chancellor Konrad Adenauer gaining compliance from Ruhr industry to regulatory regime that was an anathema to it.
The Treaty of Paris consisted of exactly one hundred articles, plus annexes, setting aims and objectives, defining powers, and specifying rules of business conduct. The new Community was to serve a number of noble ends. In addition to preventing war, it was to ensure fair competition, raise and equalize wages and benefits, and stimulate economic growth. The powerful High Authority held management responsibility, its power hedged in special circumstances by a Council of Ministers representing the contracting states. The Council could direct the High Authority to take action in certain specified emergencies and had power to ratify certain fundamental decisions, which in the last analysis required assent from the contracting states. The treaty also provided for a high court with broad powers of review and a general assembly composed of appointees from the national parliaments to debate policy, statutory bodies with long-run significance for Community operations. The general assembly gave the ECSC the appearance of direct democratic accountability.
The ECSC worked to the satisfaction of no one, yet its accomplishments were substantial. Monnet, first of all, tried to run the High Authority as he had the French Plan, through hand-picked commandos, thereby demoralizing the able industrialists and senior officials recruited to staff it. Monnet's disinterest in coal-steel problems, along with such extraneous issues as the European Defence Community, added to the problem. An advisory committee (AC), which provided for producer representation within the High Authority, became a focal point of the opposition to Monnet. It is a matter of fact that the openings of the common markets for coal and steel, in February and May 1953, had mainly symbolic significance. Regulation by producer associations and national governments continued much as before.
However, the ECSC made progress in a number of important areas. Most of them were generally unspectacular. But each of these developments was part of a learning process that would continue to be both cause and effect of the progress of integration itself.
The broader success of the ECSC owed at least as much to Adenauer and the West Germans as it did to Monnet, the French, and the Americans. Chancellor Adenauer championed the Schuman Plan as an expedient means of bringing the occupation to an end, confident that if the principle of equality were granted - the one point about he was adamant - the Federal Republic's economic strength would assure West European respect for the national interest. The political exercise of sovereign powers was, as such, a secondary matter; here concessions could be made and indeed were. Political dwarfism and economic gigantism are more than mere clichés; they are the basis for the semi sovereign status that has made Germany a model for the other great nations of Europe and without which reunification would have been impossible.
The pursuit of Westintegration worked because of the economic miracle; by the mid-1950s West Germany had become the engine of Europe's economic development. The growth of these years provided persuasive evidence, regardless of the specific workings of the ECSC, of the wisdom of treating the Ruhr and the producers of the Federal Republic generally as a European asset. The decision to advance integration by means of a new customs union confirmed the course taken with the founding of the ECSC.
During the same period, the controversy over German remilitarization had first imperilled the coal and steel negotiations but ultimately saved them to a great extent. Faced with US demands for German rearmament following the outbreak of the Korean War, French Prime minister Pleven announced in October 1950 a plan for German remilitarization under the aegis of a European Defence Community, just as Schuman had earlier proposed German reindustrialization under the aegis of a coal and steel community. We know that Monnet was the architect of both ideas. His advocacy of the European Defence Community (EDC) grew directly out of is championing of the Schuman Plan. Fierce French hostility to German remilitarization, even in the face of Anglo-American pressure and the seriousness of the Cold War, caused Adenauer to doubt France's commitment to Franco-German reconciliation and European integration. If shared sovereignty was good enough for German industry, Adenauer asked, why was it not also acceptable for German rearmament? Faced with possible German recalcitrance in the coal and steel talks, Monnet pressed Pleven to pursue the parallel idea of a supranational organization for European defence, which is nowadays more or less on the agenda of the EU.
Negotiations to form the EDC, in which German units would be integrated into a European army, began in February 1951. The basic military units would be composed of troops of the same national origin, who would depend on supranational echelons to fulfil logistical functions. The general staff would be integrated. Eventually the board was to take over recruiting, the formulation of a common doctrine, plans for mobilization, and the territorial distribution of forces, but all within a NATO framework. The board was to prepare common equipment and infrastructure programs as well as authorizing the import and export of war materials, although Germany had to accept continuing restrictions on the production of certain weapons. The treaty was to last fifty years and to cover the European territory of the member states only, although its forces might be used to defend the European territory of non-EDC but NATO members.
Five of the six nations negotiating the treaty to establish the European Coal and Steel Community simultaneously participated in these discussions (the Netherlands, the odd country out, delayed taking part until October 1951). Although Monnet was not directly involved in the EDC talks, he again used his influence behind the scenes to win a powerful US support for the Pleven Plan. Driven by a deep distrust of supranationalism, Britain resisted US entreaties to enter the EDC talks. Despite British aloofness the Six persevered in their negotiations. After complex and hard bargaining, they signed the EDC treaty on May 27, 1952, in Paris.
The institutional system consisted of a council, composed of a representative from each participating state's government, which was to oversee the actions of a board of commissioners and the member states. Voting in the council was to be weighted to reflect the military contributions made by the states. The board of commissioners, consisting of nine members, was to be the EDC's executive organ. Initially, the EDC Assembly was to be shared with that of the ECSC, although France, Germany and Italy would have three additional members each. The Assembly could force the board's resignation by a two-thirds majority. According to article 38 of the treaty, the Assembly was also to "examine problems arising from the co-existence of different agencies for European cooperation… with a view to ensuring coordination within the framework of the federal or confederal structure".
The EDC negotiations spawned another initiative that raised federalists' hopes for the future of European integration. Article 38 of the Paris Treaty called for the establishment of a supranational political authority to direct the EDC. Deferring to domestic parliamentary opinion, in September 1952 the foreign ministers of the Six acted on a resolution passed by the Council of Europe's Assembly, calling on them to entrust a parliamentary body with the task of implementing article 38 by drafting the statute for the supranational European Political Community. Reflecting, perhaps, the six governments' indifference toward the proposed political community and doubts that it would ever come to anything, the foreign ministers asked a special committee of the newly established ECSC Common Assembly to draft a treaty.
The so-called constitutional committee lost little time in drawing up plans for a political community that would not only encompass the EDC and ECSC but also embrace foreign, economic, and monetary policy coordination. The result would have been an organization more advanced along the road of European integration than the most optimistic EC member states hoped would come out of the 1991 intergovernmental conferences that resulted in the Treaty on European Union. Even in the extraordinary climate of the early 1950s, with the Korean War and the attendant acceptance of German rearmament acting as a spur to greater European integration, the Six balked at the constitutional committee's extravagant recommendations.
At a series of intergovernmental meetings in 1953 and early in 1954, the Six successfully diluted the more far-reaching institutional and supranational aspects of the draft treaty establishing the political community. Much to the member states' relief, the proposed community soon withered away, a casualty of its stillborn sibling, the EDC.
Having survived to all the negotiating stages, the EDC foundered on the rock of ratification. In fact, French unease continued to grow after the treaty was signed. There were fears about German preponderance and German rearmament, about the apparent abandonment of France's own national forces, and the ability of the new European defence force to deter or stop a Soviet attack. There was also concern that, despite a gradual firming up of British and U.S. commitments, these assurances did not go beyond existing obligations and did not answer the fears about German revanchism. In addition, the French were increasingly preoccupied with events in Indochina (later Vietnam), suffering a decisive defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. It was feared that the EDC would dilute French ability to fight elsewhere for their overseas territories. All those issues, coupled with implacable Communist opposition to German rearmament, resulted in August 1954 in defeat of the EDC treaty in the French National Assembly. The EDC mustered 264 supporters, but 319 opposed, 12 abstained, and a further 31 deputies (including 23 members of the government) took no part in the vote. All the Communists voted against the EDC, as did all but 2 of the Gaullists (1 also abstained). Only the Mouvement Republicain Populaire voted solidly for. Other parties were about equally divided.
It was paradoxical that the EDC failed in France, where the original initiative had been taken in 1950 and the treaty had been signed in 1952. In the interim, Stalin's death and the end of the hostilities in Korea has lessened Cold War tensions and made the issue of German remilitarization far less urgent.
Ratification of the treaty proved controversial in most member states. Whereas the Dutch would have preferred a NATO solution, they accepted that France would only allow German rearmament on the basis of an integrated European army. In Germany, the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) argued that Germany was not being treated as a genuinely equal partner. The SPD also feared the EDC's impact on German unification, and its members were anxious about the political implications of rearmament in Germany itself. There were also additional questions as to whether the EDC was compatible with the German Basic Law (constitution). Finally, there were a number of difficulties in Italy, where a ratification bill passed the relevant parliamentary committees but had not been sent to the full chamber before events in France rendered the issue moot.
The genie of German rearmament could not be stuffed back in the bottle. With the collapse of the EDC, Anthony Eden, Britain's prime minister, proposed instead that Germany join with Britain, France, Italy, and the Benelux countries in the Western European Union (WEU), a new defense organization intended as a vehicle to facilitate German entry into NATO. As had been expected, Germany joined NATO via the WEU in May 1955. Thus in a fitting finale to the EDC debacle, France acquiesced in German membership in NATO, a prospect that five years previously had filled Paris with fright.
The EDC left an interesting legacy. Having marked the high point of European federalist aspirations, the failed proposal quickly acquired the aura of a great opportunity lost. As the EC struggled through the political setbacks of the 1960s, the economic difficulties of the 1970s, and a belated revival in the 1980s, supporters of supranationalism harked back to the early 1950s as the European movement's golden age. If only the EDC and related political community had been ratified, the argument goes, European integration would have reached a level considered unattainable in later years.
The ECSC disappointed European federalists both in its conceptual framework and in its operation. It was an unglamorous organization that inadequately symbolized the high hopes of supranationalism in Europe.
In November 1954, disappointed with the Coal and Steel Community's progress, concerned about the consequences for integration of the EDC's failure, and impatient to play a more active and aggressive role in advocating European unity, Jean Monnet announced his intention to resign from the High Authority. Monnet's decision to resign took national governments by surprise. At a meeting in Messina (Italy) in June 1955, ECSC foreign ministers discussed not only Monnet's replacement but also the future of European integration. Paul Henri Spaak, Belgium's foreign minister, had prepared a memorandum on behalf of the Benelux countries suggesting further integration along the lines of Monnet's idea for an atomic energy community and the rival proposal for a common market. The foreign ministers asked Spaak to form a committee and write a report on future options.
Paul Henri Spaak was well suited by temperament and conviction to draft the necessary report. His enthusiasm for integration had already won him the nickname "Mr Europe". As chairman of the conference that opened in Brussels later in 1955, Spaak steered the work of the various committees and subcommittees that drafted specific sections. The final report, presented to his fellow foreign ministers at a meeting in Venice in May 1956, proposed that the two objectives of sectoral (atomic energy) integration and wider economic integration (a common market) should be realized in separate organizations with separate treaties. The Venice foreign ministers' meeting marked the opening of an intergovernmental conference (IGC) that culminated in the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM).
In later years, the Messina meeting came to be seen as a pivotal point for European integration.