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European integration is the process of industrial, economic, political, legal, social, and cultural integration of states wholly or partially in Europe, or nearby. European integration has primarily but not exclusively come about through the European Union and its policies.
The history of European integration is marked by the Roman Empire's consolidation of European and Mediterranean territories, which set a precedent for the notion of a unified Europe. This idea was echoed through attempts at unity, such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Hanseatic League, and the Napoleonic Empire. The devastation of World War I reignited the concept of a unified Europe, leading to the establishment of international organizations aimed at political coordination across Europe. The interwar period saw politicians such as Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi and Aristide Briand advocating for European unity, albeit with differing visions.
Post-World War II Europe saw a significant push towards integration, with Winston Churchill's call for a "United States of Europe" in 1946 being a notable example. This period saw the formation of theories around European integration, categorizing into proto-integration, explaining integration, analyzing governance, and constructing the EU, reflecting a shift from viewing European integration as a unique process, to incorporating broader international relations and comparative politics theories.
Citizens' organizations have played a role in advocating further European integration, exemplified by the Union of European Federalists and the European Movement International. Various agreements and memberships demonstrate the web of relations and commitments between European countries, showing the multi-layered nature of integration.
History
In antiquity, the Roman Empire brought about integration of multiple European and Mediterranean territories. The numerous subsequent claims of succession of the Roman Empire, even the iterations of the Classical Empire and its ancient peoples, have occasionally been reinterpreted in the light of post-1950 European integration as providing inspiration and historical precedents. Important examples include the Holy Roman Empire, the Hanseatic League, the Peace of Westphalia, the Napoleonic Empire, and the unification of Germany, Italy, and the Balkans as well as the Latin Monetary Union.
Following the catastrophe of the First World War of 1914–1918, thinkers and visionaries from a range of political traditions again began to float the idea of a politically unified Europe. In the early 1920s a range of international organisations were founded (or re-founded) to help like-minded political parties to coordinate their activities. These ranged from the Comintern (1919), to the Labour and Socialist International (1921) to the Radical and Democratic Entente of centre-left progressive parties (1924), to the Green International of farmers' parties (1923), to the centre-right International Secretariat of Democratic Parties inspired by Christianity (1925).[1] While the remit of these international bodies was global, the predominance of political parties from Europe meant that they facilitated interaction between the adherents of a given ideology across European borders. Within each political tradition, voices emerged advocating not merely the cooperation of various national parties, but the pursuit of political institutions at the European level.
One of the first to articulate this view was Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, who outlined a conservative vision of European unity in his Pan-Europa manifesto (1923).[2] The First Paneuropean Congress took place in Vienna in 1926, and the association possessed 8000 members by the time of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. They envisaged a specifically Christian, and by implication Catholic, Europe. The British civil-servant and future Conservative minister Arthur Salter published a book advocating The United States of Europe in 1933.[3]
In contrast the Soviet commissar (minister) Leon Trotsky raised the slogan "For a Soviet United States of Europe" in 1923, advocating a Europe united along communist principles.[citation needed]
Among liberal-democratic parties, the French centre-left undertook several initiatives to group like-minded parties from the European states. In 1927, the French mathematician and politician Émile Borel, a leader of the centre-left Radical Party and the founder of the Radical International, set up a French Committee for European Cooperation, and a further twenty countries set up equivalent committees. However, it remained an élite venture: the largest committee, the French one, possessed fewer than six-hundred members, two-thirds of them parliamentarians.[4] Two centre-left French prime ministers went further. In 1929 Aristide Briand gave a speech in the presence of the League of Nations Assembly in which he proposed the idea of a federation of European nations based on solidarity and in the pursuit of economic prosperity and political and social co-operation. In 1930, at the League's request, Briand presented a Memorandum on the organisation of a system of European Federal Union.[5] The next year the future French prime minister Édouard Herriot published his book The United States of Europe. Indeed, a template for such a system already existed, in the form of the 1921 Belgian and Luxembourgish customs and monetary union.
Support for the proposals by the French centre-left came from a range of prestigious figures. Many eminent economists, aware that the economic race-to-the-bottom between states was creating ever-greater instability, supported the view: these included John Maynard Keynes. The French political scientist and economist Bertrand Jouvenel remembered a widespread mood after 1924 calling for a "harmonisation of national interests along the lines of European union, for the purpose of common prosperity".[6] The Spanish philosopher and politician, Ortega y Gasset, expressed a position shared by many within Republican Spain: "European unity is no fantasy, but reality itself; and the fantasy is precisely the opposite: the belief that France, Germany, Italy or Spain are substantive & independent realities."[7] Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece, outlined his government's support in a 1929 speech by saying that "the United States of Europe will represent, even without Russia, a power strong enough to advance, up to a satisfactory point, the prosperity of the other continents as well".[8]
Between the two world wars, the Polish statesman Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) envisaged the idea of a European federation that he called Międzymorze ("Intersea" or "Between-seas"), known in English as Intermarium, which was a Polish-oriented version of Mitteleuropa.
The Great Depression, the rise of fascism and communism and subsequently World War II prevented[citation needed] the inter-war movements from gaining further support: between 1933 and 1936 most of Europe's remaining democracies became dictatorships, and Ortega's Spain and Venizelos's Greece had both plunged into civil war. But although the social-democratic, liberal or Christian-democratic supporters of European unity were out of power during the 1930s and unable to put their ideas into practice, many would find themselves in power in the 1940s and 1950s, and better-placed to put into effect their earlier remedies against economic and political crisis.
During World War II (1939–1945) Nazi Germany came to dominate - directly or indirectly - much of Europe at various times. The plans for German-oriented political, social, and economic integration of Europe - such as the New Order, the Greater Germanic Reich and Generalplan Ost - did not survive the war.
At the end of World War II, the continental political climate favoured unity in democratic European countries, seen by many as an escape from the extreme forms of nationalism which had devastated the continent.[9] In a speech delivered on 19 September 1946 at the University of Zürich in Switzerland, Winston Churchill postulated a United States of Europe.[10] The same speech however contains remarks, less-often quoted, which make it clear that Churchill did not initially see Britain as being part of this United States of Europe:
We British have our own Commonwealth of Nations ... And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent and why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings in shaping the destinies of men? ... France and Germany must take the lead together. Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America and I trust Soviet Russia—for then indeed all would be well—must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live and shine.
We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only, will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living.
— Winston Churchill[11]
Theories of integration
European integration scholars Thomas Diez and Antje Wiener identify the general tendencies in the development of European integration theory and suggest to divide theories of integration into three broad phases, which are preceded by a normative proto-integration theory period.[12] There's a gradual shift from theories studying European integration as sui generis towards new approaches that incorporate theories of International Relations and Comparative politics.[13]
Proto-integration period
The question of how to avoid wars between the nation-states was essential for the first theories. Federalism and functionalism proposed the containment of the nation-state, while transactionalism sought to theorise the conditions for the stabilisation of the nation-state system. Early federalism was more like a political movement calling for European federation by various political actors, for example, Altiero Spinelli calling for a federal Europe in his Ventotene Manifesto, and Paul Valéry envisioning European civilization for unity.[14] State sovereignty was an issue for federalists who hoped political organizations at higher regional level would solve the issue.[12] Representative scholar of functionalism is David Mitrany, who also sees states and their sovereignty as core problem that one should restrain states to prevent future wars. However, Mitrany disagreed with regional integration as he viewed it as mere replication of state-model.[12] Transactionalism, on the other hand, sees increased cross-border exchanges as promoting regional integration so that the risk of war is reduced.[15]
First phase: explaining integration, 1960s onwards
European integration theory initially focused on explaining integration process of supranational institution-building.[12] One of the most influential theories of European integration is neofunctionalism, influenced by functionalist ideas, developed by Ernst B. Haas (1958) and further investigated by Leon Lindberg (1963). This theory focuses on spillovers of integration, where well-integrated and interdependent areas led to more integration.[16][17] Neofunctionalism well captures the spillover from the European Coal and Steel Community to the European Economic Community established in the 1957 Treaties of Rome. Transfers of loyalties from the national level to the supranational level is expected to occur as integration progresses.[18]
The other big influential theory in Integration Studies is Intergovernmentalism, advanced by Stanley Hoffmann after the Empty Chair Crisis by French President Charles De Gaulle in the 1960s. Intergovernmentalism and later, Liberal Intergovernmentalism, developed in the 1980s by Andrew Moravcsik focus on governmental actors' impacts that are enhanced by supranational institutions but not restrained from them.[12] The important debate between neofunctionalism and (liberal) intergovernmentalism still remains central in understanding the development and setbacks of the European integration.
Second phase: analyzing governance, 1980s onwards
As the empirical world has changed, so have the theories and thus the understanding of European Integration. The second generation of integration theorists focused on the importance of institutions and their impacts on both integration process and European governance development.[12] The second phase brought in perspectives from comparative politics in addition to traditional International Relations theoretical references. Studies attempted to understand what kind of polity the EU is and how it operates.[12] For example, new theory multi-level governance (MLG) was developed to understand the workings and development of the EU.
Third phase: constructing the EU, 1990s onwards
The third phase of integration theory marked a return of International Relations theory with the rise of critical and constructivist approaches in the 1990s.[12] Perspectives from social constructivists, post-structuralists, critical theories, feminist theories are incorporated in integration theories to conceptualize European integration process of widening and deepening.[12]
Citizens' organisations calling for further integration
Various federalist organisations have been created over time supporting the idea of a federal Europe. These include the Union of European Federalists, the Young European Federalists, the European Movement International, the European Federalist Party, and Volt Europa. The Union of European Federalists (UEF) is a European non-governmental organisation, campaigning for a Federal Europe. It consists of 20 constituent organisations and it has been active at the European, national and local levels for more than 50 years. The European Movement International is a lobbying association that coordinates the efforts of associations and national councils with the goal of promoting European integration, and disseminating information about it. The European Federalist Party is a pro-European, pan-European and federalist political party which advocates further integration of the EU and the establishment of a Federal Europe. Its aim is to gather all Europeans to promote European federalism and to participate in all elections all over Europe. It has national sections in 15 countries. Volt Europa is a pan-European and European federalist political movement that also serves as the pan-European structure for subsidiary parties in EU member states. It is present in 29 countries and participates in elections all over the EU on the local, national and European level.
Overlap of membership in various agreements
There are various agreements with overlapping membership. Several countries take part in a larger number of agreements than others.
Common membership of member states of the European Union
All member states of the European Union (EU) are members of the:
- Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Secretariat: Vienna, Austria
- European Political Community (EPC)
- Council of Europe (CoE), HQ: Strasbourg, France
- European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC), HQ: Neuilly-sur-Seine/Paris, France
- European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol), HQ: Brussels, Belgium
- European Committee for Standardization (CEN), HQ: Brussels, Belgium
- European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), HQ: Sophia Antipolis, France
- European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), HQ: Brussels, Belgium
- European Union Customs Union (EUCU)
- European Olympic Committees (EOC), HQ: Rome, Italy
- European Patent Convention (EPC)/European Patent Organisation (EPOrg)
- European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC, Euratom)
- Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)
- European Common Aviation Area (ECAA)
- European Higher Education Area (EHEA) – Belgium as Flemish Community and French Community, i.e. the German-speaking Community of Belgium is not included.
have organizations that are members of the:
- European Broadcasting Union (EBU), HQ: Geneva, Switzerland
- Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), HQ: Nyon, Switzerland
- European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, HQ: Brussels, Belgium
have organisations that are members, associated partners or observers of the
- European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas, HQ: Brussels, Belgium
are located in the European Broadcasting Area (EBA)
Most integrated countries
21 states are part of the Eurozone or in ERM II without Euro opt-out.
These are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
They are all members of or take part in:
- the European Union
- the European Defence Agency (EDA)
| Eurozone since: | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 1999 | 2001 | 2007 | 2008 | 2008 | 2009 | 2011 | 2014 | 2015 | 2023 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benelux/ WU/ WEU/ EC/ EU since: | 1948 | 1948 | 1948 | 1948 | 1951 | 1951 | 1973 | 1986 | 1986 | 1995 | 1995 | 1981 | 2004 | 2004 | 2004 | 2004 | 2004 | 2004 | 2004 | 2013 | 2007 | |||
| Rule not met | Comment | Qty | BE | LU | NL | FR | DE | IT | IE | ES | PT | AT | FI | GR | SL | CY | MT | SK | EE | LV | LT | HR | BG | |