Introducing 

Prezi AI.

Your new presentation assistant.

Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.

Loading…
Transcript

History of European Union

The Schuman Plan for Coal and Steel

When:

The Six signed the Treaty of Paris in April 1952, and the ECSC came into operation in July 1952

Main idea:

A surrender of sovereignty over the coal and steel industries

Countries involved:

1. Germany 4. Luxemburg

2. France 5. Netherlands

3. Belgium 6. Italy

The problems that Schumann’s plan solved:

1. How to prevent the threat of a future conflict between France and Germany

2. How to ensure continued supply of coal for the French steel industry after the Ruhr region returns to the sovereign control of Germany.

National Positions and the Origins of the ECSC

In the following analysis the positions of the six founder states are examined, and then that of Britain. The analysis starts with France, the country that proposed the scheme, then looks at Germany, without whose participation the scheme would never have got off the ground and Britain's reasons for not joining.

National Positions and the Origins of the ECSC

France

Factors that prompted France to create the Schumann Plan

• the emergence in April 1949 of a sovereign West German state

• excess capacity in steel and coal shortages. The French steel industry was heavily dependent on coking coal supplies from the Ruhr.

• the threat of a new war between France and Germany

Germany

Factors that prompted Germany to adopt the Schumann Plan

• Commitment on the part of Adenauer (German Chancellor) to the ideal of European integration

• Adenauer believed that the Democratic Republic was dominated by the Soviet Union, and he feared the cultural influence of Russia would be damaging to the vitality of German culture and to the process of moral renewal in the aftermath of Nazism

Main Goals:

Main goals

• To gain international acceptance. The legacy of the Nazi era and of the war had left Germany a pariah nation

• To establish the Federal Republic as the legitimate successor to the pre-war German state, but also as a peace-loving state that would be accepted as a full participant in European and international affairs

The Benelux States

Factors that prompted Benelux states to adopt the Schumann Plan

• Coal and steel were essential to the economies of the three states

• High degree of interdependence between the industries in the border regions of France and Germany

• Reduce the risk of war between their two larger neighbours

Italy

Factors that prompted Italy to adopt the Schumann Plan

• Italy had to rebuild its international reputation after the war

• Italy was on the front line in the emerging Cold War

• Serious risk that the Italian Communist Party would take over the country in democratic elections

Main Goals

Main goals

• To enmesh country in a complex of institutional interdependencies with the capitalist west

• To establish its western and capitalist identity politically, economically, and in the minds of its own people.

Great Britain

Reasons for non-participation of Britain

• The attitude of the British governing elite was that Britain was not just another European state. It was a world power with global responsibilities

• Britain was economically far stronger than the other western European states, and that tying the future of the British economy to that of the German and French economies was dangerous

• Labour government had just completed the nationalization of the coal and steel industries. Having campaigned over many years for nationalization, the Labour Party was unlikely to surrender control once it had been achieved

• Principle of supranationalism would be an impossible condition for the British government to accept, given the strong attachment of the Labour Party to national sovereignty

The European Defence Community, the European Political Community, and the Road to the Rome Treaties

The European Defence Community,

the European Political Community,

and the Road to the Rome Treaties

EEC and the Euratom

When: the relaunch of the integration project in 1955, leading in 1957 to the Treaties of Rome that established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom)

Main idea: the EDC was a proposal to create a European Political Community (EPC) to provide democratic European structures for coordinating foreign policies, This provided federalists with another opportunity to pursue their strategy of 'the constitutional break, moving directly from a Europe of nation-states to a federal constitution for Europe.

The Pleven plan

The Pleven plan

• While the ECSC is often seen as the first step on the road to the EU, negotiations over the Pleven Plan for a European Defence Community were considered more important at the time.

• The EDC would place German troops under European command, thus heading off US demands for German rearmament following the outbreak of the Korean War. Adenauer reacted positively because it offered a means of ending the Allied occupation of West Germany.

• The Pleven Plan became linked with a proposal for a European Political Community.

• Both projects collapsed when the French National Assembly refused to ratify the EDC Treaty

EDC , ECSC , EPC

EDC , ECSC , EPC

At Monnet's prompting, Pleven made it a condition of progress on the EDC that the ECSC Treaty be signed first.

The draft Treaty was adopted by Assembly on 10 March 1953.

It proposed: a two-chamber European Parliament consisting of a People's Chamber that would be directly elected every five years, and a Senate of indirectly elected members from national parliaments; a European Executive Council that would have to be approved by both chambers of the parliament, but once in office would have the power to dissolve the People's Chamber and call new elections; a Council of National Ministers;

A Court of Justice. The EPC would not be just a third community, 'but nothing less than the beginning of a comprehensive federation to which the ECSC and EDC would be subordinated.

The Fate of the EDC and EPC

The fate of the EPC was inevitably linked to the fate of the EDC. The EDC treaty had been signed in May 1952, but it had not been ratified by any of the signatories when the EPC proposals emerged.

Its prospects were crucially dependent on French support, but the French government only signed it on the 'tacit condition that no immediate attempt should be made to ratify it German rearmament, even as part of a European army, which it was unpopular in France.

Prime Ministers refused to bring the group to the Assembly,Their failure to bring down their government. This prevarication, which lasted for nearly two years, caused discontent in the United States, and led Secretary of State John Foster Dallas in December 1953 to the threat "Painful re-evaluation" of the policy.

Eventually the Treaty was submitted to the National Assembly by the government of Pierre Mendes-France at the end of August 1954, but the government gave it no support, and indicated that it would not resign if the Assembly voted against ratification. The EDC treaty was not ratified and the demise of the EDC was accompanied by the collapse of the EPC.

The Aftermath of EDC and EPC

The issue of European defence was eventually solved according to a formula proposed by the British government.

The Brussels Treaty of 1948 was extended to Germany and Italy; a loose organization called the Western European Union (WEU) was set up to coordinate the alliance; an organic link was made with NATO, to which Germany and Italy were admitted.

Adenauer achieved his aim of securing an Allied withdrawal from the whole of West Germany (although not Berlin), and a German army was formed, although it was hedged around with legal restrictions on operating beyond the borders of the Federal Republic.

Defence was not an obvious next step after coal and steel in the process of building mutual trust through practical co-operation. It was not an issue with a low political profile, but a sensitive issue that struck to the heart of national sovereignty. Had it not been for the international crisis of the Korean War, it would surely not have surfaced at this stage.

Messina

• Following the collapse of EDC/EPC, Monnet launched initiatives based on extending the ECSC model to other forms of energy, especially atomic energy, and to transport.

• The Benelux states supported a general common market for industrial goods.

• The two sets of proposals were discussed together in the Messina negotiations.

• The negotiations were given impetus by international events in 1956: the war in Algeria; the invasion of Hungary by the USSR; and the Suez crisis.

France and the Suez Crisis

Guy Mollet became the prime minister (the leader of the socialist party ) in 1956. Mollet had become convinced that French industry needed to be opened up to competition if it was ever to achieve the sort of productivity gains that lay behind the remarkable German economic recovery. Mollet was brought to office by the deteriorating situation in Algeria, where French settlers were under attack by the National Liberation Front of Algeria. In October the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to suppress an anti-communist national movement that had the sympathy of the Hungarian army. Hungary brought home to western Europeans once again ,the reality of the Cold War that divided their continent.

The nationalization of the Suez canal by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser not only caused outrage in France, as it did in Britain; it also offered the French a possible excuse to topple Nasser, whose pan-Arab rhetoric inflamed the situation in Algeria, and whose regime was suspected of sheltering and arming the Algerian rebels. Britian and france tried to occupy suez canal but they didn’t because in the face of opposition from the Soviet Union and, more significantly, from the United States.

The Road to the Rome Treaties

• The Treaties of Rome involved compromises between France and Germany.

• The French price for accepting the general common market in industrial goods was German agreement on Euratom, the common agricultural policy, and a preferential relationship with the EEC for the former French colonies.

• Italy was allowed to have a commitment in the EEC Treaty to create a regional policy.

The European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom

The European Coal and Steel Community

The ECSC survived the EDC debacle and began operation in July 1952 under the presidency of Jean Monnet. Although it had considerable powers at its disposal, it proceeded cautiously in using them, but still found itself in conflict with national governments.

In the original plan for the ECSC there was only one central institution, the High Authority. During the negotiations a Council of Ministers and a European Parliamentary Assembly (EPA) were added to the institutional structure.

The European Coal and Steel Community

• The High Authority was not as powerful as originally planned, but still had considerable formal independence.

• There was considerable suspicion of Monnefs dirigiste tendencies among national governments, who consequently nominated members to the High Authority who were mostly not sympathetic to Monnefs aims.

• Monnet tried to run the High Authority on informal lines, but it became internally divided and increasingly bureaucratized.

• The hostility of de Gaulle to supranationalism exacerbated matters after 1958; Adenauer preferred the Commission of the EEC, which was headed by his associate Hallstein.

• Excess supply of coal led to a crisis in 1959. The Council of Ministers refused the High Authority emergency powers to deal with the crisis. This precipitated a collapse of morale in the High Authority.

• Despite its shortcomings, Monnet believed that the ECSC pioneered the development of a community method of working.

Euratom

  • By the time that Euratom began operation the energy crisis that existed when it was negotiated had disappeared. Instead of a shortage of coal there was a glut.

  • Whereas France had the only developed programme of research on nuclear energy in the mid-1950s, by the end of the decade Germany and Italy also had independent programmes in competition with that of France.

  • The French government refused to co-operate with the Euratom Commission and the Commission never managed to build a supportive network of industry groups or technical experts to help it counter French obstructionism.

Conclusion

In the history of the ECSC and Euratom we can see the struggle between dirigisme and economics; the fragmentation of the supranational executives that was later to afflict the EC Commission; and the assertion of national control over supranational institutions, but also the first stirrings of independence among the supranational institutions.

Learn more about creating dynamic, engaging presentations with Prezi