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A Brief History Of European Integration

NATO and European Union

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

Until it crystallized into a political concept and became the long-term goal of the Member States of the European Community, the European idea was unknown to all but philosophers and visionaries. The notion of a United States of Europe was part of a humanistic-pacifistic dream which was shattered by the conflicts which brought so much destruction to the European continent in the first half of this century. The vision of a new Europe which would transcend national antagonism finally emerged from the resistance movements which had sprung up to resist totalitarianism during the Second World War. Altiero Spinelli, the Italian federalist and Jean Monnet, the man who provided the inspiration for the Schuman Plan which led to the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, where the main proponents of two approaches , the federalist and the functionalist, which were to provide the impetus for European integration. Central to the federalist approach is the idea that local, regional, national and European authorities should cooperate and complement each other. The functionalist approach, on the other hand, favours a gradual transfer of sovereignty from national to Community level. Today, the two approaches have merged in a conviction that national and regional authorities need to be matched by independent, democratic European institutions with responsibility for areas in which consolidated actions is more effective than action by individual States: the single market, monetary policy, economic and social cohesion, foreign and security policy.
In 1995 the European Union is a monument to the dedication of early pioneers. The Union is an advanced form of multisectoral integration, its competence extending to the economy, industry, politics, citizens’ rights and foreign policy. The Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) (1951), the Treaties of Rome establishing the...