The European Coal and Steel Community was unprecedented. But from the very beginning it was meant to be only the first step to an integrated, united Europe. Thus it was bound to be supplemented by organizations, institutions and agreements that would bring Europe closer to the integrated continent that the founders and their successors envisioned.
From 1952 to 1957, the ECSC was the only established institution advancing the supranational integration of Europe. During this period, though, there was an attempt to create another integrative organization, the European Defense Community (EDC). This was a truly audacious initiative by the six member states of the ECSC to launch a common European army. It proved to be a step too far, breaking Monnet’s rule of taking incremental steps that would not arouse opposition. The project was dropped in August 1954 when the French National Assembly rejected the EDC treaty.
FROM COMMUNITY TO UNION
Soon, in June 1955, negotiations began toward the next phase of European integration, the European Common Market. The result was treaties in 1957 establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the latter intended to develop a common market for the peaceful use of atomic energy. The Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (TEEC), commonly known as the Treaty of Rome, is celebrated today as the most significant step toward the European Union until its formal establishment in 1992. Article 2 of the TEEC states:
It shall be the aim of the Community, by establishing a Common Market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increased stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between its Member States.1
At that time, the participants were still only the six founding members of the ECSC: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Another milestone in European integration came in July 1967, when the European Economic Community merged with the European Atomic Energy Community and the European Coal and Steel Community to form the European Communities, also referred to unofficially in the singular, as the European Community (EC).2 The change from “European Economic Community” to “European Community” is an example of how the integrationists use language in artful ways to advance their agenda under the radar. Steeped in their own technocratic universe, they have developed a body of jargon understandable only to insiders. Using this EU-speak, European elites have long been adept at disguising the ongoing process of integration in linguistic subtleties that escape the notice of the uninitiated. Like the Monnet method, EU jargon forestalls opposition by veiling the long-term objective while at the same time quietly asserting it.
In this vein, the disappearance of the word “economic” from “European Economic Community” was highly significant: the European Community was moving beyond the economic sphere and taking on a political dimension. Europe now formed a community, encompassing anything implied in that vague but evocative word, not just the pursuit of better economic performance. Thickening the fog even further, the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht (more on that soon) officially created a European Community within the European Communities. As a European Union website states tersely, “After the Treaty of Maastricht the EEC became the European Community, reflecting the determination of the Member States to expand the Community’s powers to non-economic domains.”3
But European integration moves forward in fits and starts, sometimes taking a step backward and sometimes stalling. The establishment of the EC in 1967 came after much resistance to further integration from the French president, Charles de Gaulle, in the first half of the decade. Concerned to prevent the erosion of French sovereignty, de Gaulle opposed the inclusion of new members in the EEC, especially his cultural rival the United Kingdom. In addition, he was determined to prevent the possibility of France’s being overruled on important policy decisions. De Gaulle’s resistance sparked what is known as the “empty chair crisis,” when France boycotted all EEC meetings for seven months in 1965–1966. The boycott ended only after an agreement was reached to roll back some provisions of the Treaty of Rome, and thus to require unanimity on important issues rather than the qualified majority votes stipulated in the treaty for certain policy areas.
De Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou, agreed in 1969 to consider letting new members into the EC. After long negotiations, Denmark, Ireland and the UK joined in 1973, becoming the first additions to the original six member states. This was the beginning of an enlargement process that has continued to the present day, with Greece joining in 1981; Spain and Portugal in 1986; Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995; ten new members – Cyprus, Malta, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – in 2004; Romania and Bulgaria in 2007; and Croatia in 2013. The EU currently counts twenty-eight member states, with the prospect of gaining additional members in the future.
Meanwhile, along with a widening of the EU, there has been a deepening via institutional changes that promote closer integration. After the European Communities were merged in 1967, the next significant institutional step was the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979, which established the European Currency Unit (ECU), a reference unit valued at the weighted average of all participating European currencies. The EMS required currencies to maintain a value within a narrow band around the ECU in order to reduce exchange-rate fluctuations and lay the basis for an eventual monetary union. That year also saw the first direct elections to the European Parliament, which until then had been an appointed body made up of representatives from national parliaments. Henceforward, all members of the European Parliament would be elected to five-year terms. In 1987, the Single European Act (SEA) came into force; it set a deadline of December 31, 1992 to achieve the single market with free movement of capital, people, goods and services across borders throughout the European Community.4
The European Union was officially birthed with the ratification of the Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, in 1993. Here I note again the change from “community” to “union.” Few people had the time to reflect on the deeper implications of now being a “union.” The Maastricht Treaty included arrangements for a European Monetary Union (EMU), with a single currency to be in effect by 1999 and with monetary policy to be transferred from member states’ national central banks to a European Central Bank (ECB). The treaty also included measures toward the development of a common EU foreign and security policy. These were huge steps toward supranational integration at the expense of the national sovereignty of the member states in core policy areas. The more sovereigntist UK and Denmark received an opt-out on the common currency, retaining their own currencies and keeping their national powers in the realm of monetary and fiscal policy. They were not subject to the treaty’s measures related to the ECB and the European System of Central Banks.5
The Treaty of Maastricht was followed, in 1999, by the Treaty of Amsterdam, which is mainly known for increasing EU powers in the areas of “external border control and visas, asylum and immigration policy, and judicial cooperation.”6 Again, these policy areas traditionally represent core aspects of national sovereignty, as the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe in 2015 makes painfully clear.
FROM THE COMMON CURRENCY TO THE CONSTITUTION
In the early years of the new century, the EU continued its inexorable evolution toward a higher level of integration. On January 1, 2002, monetary union became a day-to-day reality for everyday people. Euro coins and notes replaced national currencies in twelve EU member states. The eurozone now comprises nineteen out of twenty-eight EU member states. We will discuss this huge leap toward supranationality in greater detail in Chapters 9 and 17.
Then, on February 1, 2003, the Treaty of Nice came into effect. Its main purpose was to reform the EU institutions to prepare for the upcoming enlargement, in 2004, from fifteen to twenty-five member states. This involved measures such as adjusting the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers to give the more populous member states a greater voice, and redistributing the votes among the much larger number of member states; reapportioning seats in the European Parliament to accommodate the new member states; extending qualified-majority voting (as opposed to requiring unanimity of all member states) to about thirty new policy realms, affecting areas such as immigration, refugee and asylum policy, the introduction of the euro, and trade in services, so that the enlarged EU could function more easily even without unanimity in many areas; strengthening and streamlining the “enhanced cooperation” option, to allow member states the possibility of choosing more often to move forward together on common initiatives even if some member states opted out.7
These measures, especially those regarding enhanced cooperation and qualified-majority voting, all paved the way for a much larger and more deeply integrated EU, with more power centralized in Brussels. Several other steps the Nice Treaty made toward greater European integration were (1) the establishment of a way for the EU Council to step in if it believes that a member state’s actions pose a danger of a serious violation of citizens’ “fundamental rights” and to “recommend” measures the member state should take to avoid that violation; (2) the establishment of a legal basis for the EU to regulate EU-level political parties, especially regarding their recognition as parties and their funding; and (3) and (4) measures to increase cooperation at the EU level on defense and criminal justice. All of these measures represent an attempt to strike a balance between increasing the pooling of national sovereignty at the EU level and maintaining cherished prerogatives of the member states. Balance or not, by wading into areas such as fundamental rights, political parties, defense and criminal justice, the Treaty of Nice clearly anticipates a diminishment of national sovereignty in key policy arenas.
In 2002–2003, roughly at the same time as the ratification process for the Treaty of Nice, a Convention on the Future of Europe, or European Convention, was called into being. After about a year and a half of debate and negotiation, the convention produced a draft of what was formally called the “Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe,” though it was generally known as the European Constitution. Meant to be reminiscent of the United States Constitution, but without establishing a United States of Europe, the draft was in reality a treaty and was officially so called, but the term “treaty” in the title was played down by EU elites. The concept of a “European Constitution” better reflected their aspiration: to establish in Europeans’ hearts and minds a sense of European unity and patriotic attachment to the EU, expressed in a constitution crafted – like the U.S. Constitution – by a group of enlightened leaders, on behalf of their people, to found a new political “city on a hill” in Europe.
Again, language was manipulated in order to serve the cause of supranational European governance, with the treaty being sold to the public as a constitution. But the tactic backfired. Introducing a “constitution” for Europe was too big a step, violating Monnet’s rule of incrementalism. Europeans already had their own national constitutions. They didn’t want an EU constitution. In national referenda in 2005, the French and the Dutch rejected the European Constitution.
“A CONSTITUTION THROUGH THE BACK DOOR”
After getting hammered by French and Dutch voters, EU leaders beat a tactical retreat. They fell back on the legacy of Monnet and the strategy of deception. They made cosmetic amendments to the European Constitution and renamed it the Reform Treaty initially, before settling on Treaty of Lisbon. According to the European Commission website, the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on December 1, 2009, “reforms the EU institutions and improves the EU decision-making process; strengthens the democratic dimension of the EU; reforms the internal policies of the EU; [and] strengthens the external policies of the EU.”8 No mention is made of the fact that the Lisbon Treaty is, for all intents and purposes, the EU constitution with new clothing.
Jens-Peter Bonde, a leading Euroskeptic, effectively brought this reality to light. A longtime member of the European Parliament from Denmark and a member of the European Convention, Bonde undertook an exhaustive comparison of the Lisbon Treaty and the failed European Constitution.9 He found that there was virtually no difference between the two, except that the Lisbon Treaty was packaged as a set of amendments to the existing EU treaties in order to obscure that fact. The Lisbon Treaty, he concluded, was “a constitution through the back door.”10 Bonde further characterized the European Constitution / Lisbon Treaty as a “Constitution without democracy,” explaining, “A constitution usually protects citizens from politicians. It sets limits to what those elected may decide on between elections. The EU Constitution and the Lisbon treaty are different in this respect. They protect bureaucrats and politicians from the normal democratic influence of voters.”11 Furthermore, the Lisbon Treaty represents a massive transfer of power from member states to the EU. Bonde’s analysis showed a “power shift from voters to Brussels in 113 points. There was and is not a single instance of power going the other way.”12
The Lisbon Treaty brought a myriad of structural changes to the EU. For example, the EU now has two “presidents.” In addition to the president of the European Commission, a post that has existed since 1958, there is now a president of the European Council, who presides over the summit meetings of the EU member states’ heads of government and of state. Lisbon created the post of high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, basically a de facto EU foreign minister, and an EU-level diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), under the leadership of the high representative. Lisbon also increased EU power in justice and policing.
Another important innovation of the Lisbon Treaty is that it conferred upon the EU a legal personality. This made the EU into a real actor in international affairs, completely distinct from the member states, and thus enabled the EU, among other things, to negotiate and be a party to international treaties. Significantly, Lisbon also incorporated the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, thereby making it legally binding. In that way, Lisbon has established a stronger legal basis – or at least a legal pretext – for the pursuit of a supranational human rights policy at EU level, a topic we will examine in Part Four of this book.
The symbolism of Lisbon is just as important as its transfer of considerable powers from the member states to the EU. Lisbon made the EU look more like a sovereign entity, endowing it with many of the characteristics of state sovereignty. An EU-level president of the European Council now “presides” over the EU national heads of government, at least symbolically. The EU now has a proto–foreign minister, its own diplomatic service, and a sovereign state–like legal personality. In enshrining the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Lisbon Treaty, the EU has given itself its own “bill of rights.” Perhaps most fraught with implications is Lisbon’s elaboration – both explicit and implicit – on the rights and privileges conferred by the common EU citizenship of all member-state citizens, the “citizenship of the Union” that was first introduced in the Maastricht Treaty. EU citizenship exists over and above the national citizenships and, in case of conflict, trumps the privileges and duties of national citizenship.
These new attributes of sovereignty join two symbols adopted in 1985: the official anthem of the EU, Beethoven’s setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy, and the EU flag, a circle of twelve golden stars against a blue background, which is now the featured emblem on more automobile license plates throughout the EU than any national flag. The importance of this accumulation of symbols is difficult to exaggerate. In the EU universe, such symbols mean more than they do elsewhere. Taken all together, they vest the EU with the readily recognizable trappings of state sovereignty. In this context, it should not be forgotten either that the European Parliament has been a directly elected parliament since 1979.
How is all this best to be understood? The road from the ECSC to the EU of today has been long and winding, with many twists and turns and several switchbacks. But somewhere along the way, Europe truly was transformed. A continent of sovereign nation-states has become a continent of EU member states. And the governments of these member states have ceded, step by step over more than six decades, an incalculable magnitude of sovereignty to Brussels. This drawn-out, elite-driven process has largely escaped the notice of average Europeans. Certainly, in its bureaucratic obfuscation, its rarefied, legalistic complexity and its self-contained universe of insider jargon, the EU has developed in a way that most people have not had the time or energy to comprehend. The institutional growth of what is now the EU has come about through an unbending and dogged pursuit of “ever closer union,” imposed from the top down, by a process shrouded in obscurity and crowned with a series of significant triumphs. In the next chapter we will examine the role that this key three-word phrase, “ever closer union,” has played in the history of European integration.