On 18 July 1961 the founding countries of the EEC issued the ‘Bonn Declaration,’ a commitment to expansion and unification. A contemporary cartoon by ‘HeKo’ https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/cartoon_by_heko_on_the_efforts_of_france_and_germany_in_favour_of_a_political_europe_the_meeting_of_the_six_in_bad_godesberg_19_july_1961-en-06e6a446-435a-4c2b-8f25-3bd267373c01.html shows Germany and France supporting one end of a hammock on which Europa reclines, while they wait for a sapling called ‘Political Cooperation’ to grow sufficiently to take the burden.
There are several different drivers for this movement, which
is why the results have been patchy. They include:
- · Preventing war in Europe
- · Developing selected African nations
- · Fighting Soviet Communism on behalf of the USA
- · Abolishing nationhood
- · Building an empire
- · Achieving full employment and prosperity
Jean Monnet, an internationalist in outlook from his business as a French brandy exporter, believed that the way to prevent European conflicts was to unite the countries, especially France and Germany. He was advising the French minister of commerce and industry at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference when the latter put forward a plan for international economic cooperation. Instead, France was set on ruinous reparations from Germany and the rest we know.
Again in 1940, as France was falling to German blitzkrieg,
Monnet was in London, urging the unification of France and Britain – joint
citizenship, and joint armed forces, which might have been enough to resist the
Nazis. His idea was tabled for British Cabinet discussion, but the French
government capitulated before the scheme could be considered.
In 1950 his plan of absorbing into a higher authority the
French and German production of coal and steel, key war-making materials, was
announced by Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Minister; the 1951 Treaty of
Paris established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and Monnet
became its President. Monnet’s ambitions went further, but the French
Parliament rejected a proposal for a unified European Defence Community.
Nevertheless the success of the ECSC, reviewed at the
Messina Conference in 1955, encouraged the Six to proceed with further
integration. 1957 saw the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which not only gave birth
to the EEC and Euratom (the transnational atomic energy commission) but set its
sights on the economic development of past and present European colonies in Africa.
A fund was set up, to which all the Six contributed. https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/opinion-analysis/ideas-debate/how-60-year-old-treaty-of-rome-still-influences-eu-africa-partnership-2145622
By 1961 the EEC was ready to ‘move towards the unity of
Europe’ as the preamble to the Bonn Declaration https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1961/nov/02/european-economic-community-bonn
says; but not just to prevent nationalistic wars:
‘Only a united Europe, allied to
the United States of America and to other free peoples, is capable of meeting
the dangers which threaten the existence of Europe and of the whole free world.’
The threat to world peace had shifted from nationalism to
ideology. Of the USA, more later.
Though France had previously rejected a common European
defence policy, by now even de Gaulle was contemplating it, as he wrote in his
notes (p. 101 here https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/dffbe9c6-c54f-46d0-aa0f-325081a9787d/1004874.pdf
):
‘There can be no European unity
if Europe does not constitute a political entity distinct from other entities.
A personality. But there can be no European personality if Europe does not have
control over the defence of its personality. Defence is always the basis of
politics.’
These developments aroused concern in the British Prime Minister
(ibid., p. 105):
‘Harold Macmillan, alarmed not
least of all by the danger of an autonomous foreign and defence policy
organization of the Six, announced in the House of Commons on 31 July that he
would seek to negotiate Britain’s entry into the EEC.’
Whatever British leaders said publicly in the years to
follow, post-Bonn they knew where the EEC was headed.
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