history

"The dividing question of modern Europe is whether or not we desire a European government. It is the purpose of this book to answer, yes… real unity now means the European Government of Europe a Nation. We must now think, feel, act as Europeans."
Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, 1948

It is commonly supposed that the origins of the European Union lie in the post-war European Coal and Steel Community. In 1950, Germany wanted to recommence steel production in the Ruhr and Saar valleys. The French, while keen to have such a major consumer of French coal on their doorstep, were also mindful of what those steelworks had been used to produce last time they were in operation. The problem was solved by creating a cross-border authority, the European Coal and Steel Community, to regulate the production of both French coal and German steel, thus providing reassurance that the latter would not be used for weapons production.

Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands also joined the scheme, which they expanded to include all forms of commercial and economic activity, and in 1957 the Treaty of Rome formally created the European Economic Community. In the decades that followed, the group absorbed new member states, adopted a single currency (though only to facilitate trade, of course), transferred more and more powers from nation states to the central government in Brussels (though only to facilitate trade, of course) and exchanged the term "Community" for "Union" (though only in the sense of a group of independent sovereign nations, of course).

So runs the myth. In fact, the idea of a United States of Europe, like the League of Nations, was first mooted in the aftermath of World War One as a way of preventing similar bloodshed in future. However, the idea at this point was just for a framework of nation states in friendly cooperation, each maintaining its own sovereignty. The idea of completely subsuming nation states in a supranational union came much later from Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and the now largely forgotten (aside from the government building in Brussels named after him) Altiero Spinelli.

All three realised that the people of Europe would not be in favour of the complete political union they envisaged, so the true goal of the project should be disguised until as late in the process as possible. As Spinelli put it,

"[The plan for political union] derives its vision and certainty of what must be done from the knowledge that it represents the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet non-existent." (our italics)

However it was a fourth man, sometime Prime Minister of Belgium Paul-Henri Spaak, who had the idea that a community of economic cooperation could act as a suitable Trojan horse, allowing the structures of a single European government to be assembled by stealth whilst presenting the outward appearance that nothing more sinister than encouraging trade was going on.

French worries about German steel production in 1950 provided the ideal opportunity to put this scheme into practice. The "Schuman Declaration" which created the European Coal and Steel Community has often been compared to a declaration of independence, though in fact it was precisely the opposite – Schuman was spelling out the beginning of the end of independence for all the nations of Europe.

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