Easy Reading Corner - Booklets - A New idea for Europe

The reason it took nearly a year to conclude the negotiations of the Treaty of Paris was that these negotiations gave rise to a series of fundamental questions to which Jean Monnet wished to provide the most appropriate answers. As we have seen, this was no traditional diplomatic negotiation. The persons designated by the six governments had come together to invent a totally new - and lasting - legal and political system.

The preamble to the ECSC Treaty, comprising five short paragraphs, contains the whole philosophy which was to be the leitmotif of the promoters of European construction:

'World peace', 'practical achievements', 'real solidarity', 'merging of essential interests', 'community', 'destiny henceforward shared': these are all key words which are the embryonic form of both the spirit and the Community method and still today retain their rallying potential.

While the prime objective of the ECSC Treaty, i.e. the management of the coal and steel market, today no longer has the same importance as before, for the European economy of the 1950s, the institutional principles which it laid down are still very much topical. They started a momentum of which we are still reaping the benefits and which fuels a political vision which we must be careful not to depart from if we are not to call into question our precious 'acquis communautaire'.

The first European iron ingot was cast on 30 April 1953 in Esch-sur-Alzette, Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. Jean Monnet, President, and the members of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community celebrate the event.

(Source: Fondation Jean Monnet pour l'Europe, Lausanne).

Four Community principles stem from the Schuman plan and they form the basis of the current Community edifice.

The application to international relations of the principles of equality, arbitration and conciliation which are in force within democracies is progress for civilisation. The founding fathers had experienced the chaos, violence and the arbitrary which are the companions of war. Their entire endeavour was geared at creating a community in which right prevailed over might. Jean Monnet often quoted the Swiss philosopher Amiel: 'Every man's experience is a new start. Only institutions become wiser: they amass the collective experience and thanks to this experience and this wisdom, the nature of men subordinated to the same rules will not change, but their behaviour gradually will.'

To place relations between countries on a pacific and democratic footing, casting out the spirit of domination and nationalism, these were the deep-seated motivations which gave the first Community its political content and placed it amongst the major historic achievements.

If institutions are to fulfil their functions they must have their own authority. Today's Community institutions still benefit from the three guarantees which were given to the ECSC High Authority:

- the appointment of members, today commissioners, by joint agreement between the governments (1). These are not national delegates, but personalities exercising their power collegially and who may not receive instructions from the Member States. The European civil service is subordinated to this same and unique Community allegiance;

- financial independence through the levying of own resources and not, as is the case of international organisations, by the payment of national contributions which means they can be called into question;

- the responsibility of the High Authority, and today that of the Commission, exclusively to the Assembly (today the European Parliament), which can cast, by a qualified majority vote, a vote of censure.

For Jean Monnet, the independence of the High Authority was the cornerstone of the new system. However, as the negotiations continued, he acknowledged the need to give the Member States the opportunity to assert their national interests. This was the safest way of preventing the emerging community from being limited to excessively technical objectives, for it needed to be also able to intervene in sectors in which macroeconomic decisions would be taken and these were a matter for the governments. Hence the creation, alongside the High Authority, of our Council of Ministers the role of which was strictly limited in that it was not called upon to decide unanimously but by majority. Its assent was required only in limited cases. The High Authority retained the monopoly of legislative initiative, a prerogative which, extended to the competences of the present Commission, is essential in that it is the guarantee that all Community interests will be defended in a proposal from the college. From 1951 on, dialogue was organised between the four institutions on a basis not of subordination but of cooperation, each institution exercising its own functions within a comprehensive decision-making system of a pre-federal type.

As the principle of representation of States within the Council had been selected, there remained the delicate matter of their respective weighting. The Benelux countries and Italy, fearing that they would be placed in a minority situation on account of the proportion of their production of coal and steel in relation to total production, argued in favour of the rule of unanimity. Germany, on the other hand, advocated a system of representation proportional to production, a proposal which of course could hardly allay partners' misgivings, quite the opposite.

Jean Monnet was convinced that only the principle of equality between countries could produce a new mentality. However, he was aware of how difficult it was to get six countries of unequal dimensions to forego the option of a veto. For the big countries in their relations with one another and for the smaller countries in their relations with the bigger countries '... Their innermost security lay in their power to say No, which is the privilege of national sovereignty' (2). The chairman of the conference accordingly met Chancellor Adenauer in Bonn on 4 April 1951 to convince him of the virtues of the principle of equality:

'I have been authorised to propose to you that relations between France and Germany in the European Community be based on the principle of equality in the Council, the Assembly and all future or existing institutions ... Let me add that this is how I have always envisaged the offer of union which was the starting point of the present Treaty; and I think I am right in saying this is how you envisaged it from the moment we first met. The spirit of discrimination has been the cause of the world's greatest ills, and the Community is an attempt to overcome it'.The Chancellor replied immediately:

'You know how much I am attached to equality of rights for my country in the future, and how much I deplore the attempts at domination in which it has been involved in the past. I am happy to pledge my full support for your proposal. I cannot conceive of a Community based on anything but complete equality'.

Thus was laid one of the legal and moral foundations which gives the notion of Community its full meaning.

In the absence of a peace treaty between the former warring sides, the first European Community was both an act of confidence in the resolve of France and Germany and their partners to sublimate the mistakes of the past and perform an act of faith in a common future of progress. Despite the ups and downs of history and of nationalist opposition, the process began in 1950 was never to stop. The failure of the project for a European Defence Community on 30 August 1954, after the rejection by the French National Assembly of the Treaty signed on 27 May 1952, did not halt the initial momentum. At the initiative of statesmen from the Benelux countries, Paul Henri Spaak, Jan Beyen and Joseph Bech, the process was relaunched at Messina in June 1955. The onward march towards the Treaty of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957, establishing the European Economic Community and Euratom, was boosted by external events: the Suez crisis and the repression in Hungary prompted Europe to close ranks. The European Communities set up in Brussels and Luxembourg grew in terms of content and number of participants.

The common market was consolidated by common policies in agriculture, trade, regional affairs, social affairs, research, the environment, education, and cooperation with the third world. In 1972, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark joined the Communities; later the entry of Greece, Spain and Portugal brought a bigger Mediterranean presence into the Community. In 1995, the 15-country Europe emerges with the membership of Austria, Finland and Sweden.

Weakened by the two successive oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, the Community nevertheless resisted centrifugal tendencies and consolidated its cohesion by introducing a European Monetary System in 1979. This system gradually paved the way for a slow but irreversible move towards economic and monetary union which came to fruition on 1 January 1999 with the adoption of the euro by 11 Member States of the European Union.

Like any undertaking constantly evolving, Europe could not evade teething troubles and growing pains: the institutional crisis of 1965 when one Member State attempted to call into question the majority system of voting; and the financial crisis caused by the mismatch between own resources and the sharp increases in expenditure arising from the proliferation of new policies and the increasing costs of the common agricultural policy.

Nevertheless, no matter how categorical its demands may have been, no Member State has contemplated leaving a Community which is seen as an irreplaceable framework for the development and international status of its member countries.

In 1984, the European Parliament adopted a draft treaty on European union, proposing that the institutions make a quantum leap in terms of integration. By adopting the White Paper on the large internal market in 1985, the Commission, headed by Jacques Delors, gave concrete expression to this resolve for recovery and set a target date of 1 January 1993.

By signing the Single Act in 1986, the Member States drew their inspiration and institutional method from the Schuman plan. They supplemented the Treaty of Rome with a series of specific objectives around the central objective of a large frontier-free market and established a timetable. They renewed the decision-making process by extending the scope for decision-making by a qualified majority vote. They restored hope to millions of European citizens by offering them a broader horizon and giving them the wherewithal to come to terms with a changing world.

While the European institutions were putting the finishing touches to the internal market and increasing the economic and social dimension of Community Europe, history made its presence felt again as an unforeseeable, mighty force, testing the capacities of Europeans to adapt and adjust to a changing world.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 3 October 1990, followed by the reunification of Germany and the democratisation of the countries of central and eastern Europe, freed from the yoke of the Soviet Union, itself prey to its own disintegration in December 1991, brought about a radical change in the political structure of our continent.

Once again, countries were faced with a dilemma, whether to take the soft option of focusing national policies on immediate interests or embrace a common vision and management of their joint future. Opting to give priority to respect their European commitment and acknowledging the need to incorporate such upheaval into a common perspective, the Member States committed themselves to a process of consolidation of the Union by negotiating a new treaty, of which the new guidelines were adopted at the Maastricht European Council meeting of 9 and 10 December 1991.

The Treaty on European Union, which entered into force on 1 November 1993 set an ambitious timetable for the Member States: monetary union by 1999, new common policies, European citizenship, common foreign and security policy, and internal security. A revision clause in the Maastricht Treaty prompted the Member States to negotiate a new treaty, signed in Amsterdam on 2 October 1997, adjusting and strengthening the Union's policies and resources, particularly in the areas of legal cooperation, freedom of movement of persons, foreign policy and public health. The European Parliament, direct demo-cratic expression of the Union, received new responsibilities confirming its role as co-legislator.

Fifty years of existence have not taken the edge off the driving inspiration from which the European Community emerged.

Will the heirs of the founding fathers, today responsible for the destiny of the peoples of the whole continent, from Lisbon to Tallinn, from Dublin to Warsaw, take on board the final message of Jean Monnet (3), the guiding light of this first Community, who urges them to adopt his vision of the future?

1 The European Commission is also subordinated to the vote of investiture by the European Parliament.

3 'We cannot stop, when the whole world around us is on the move. Have I said clearly enough that the Community we have created is not an end in itself? It is a process of change, continuing that process which in an earlier period of history produced our national forms of life. Like our provinces in the past, our nations today must learn today to live together under common rules and institutions freelyarrived at. The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present; they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of the future.'
Jean Monnet, Memoirs (trad. R.Mayne): London, etc., William Collins and Son Ltd, 1976, p.524