The Law of Europe
10
Jaap Hage
10.1 Introduction
10.1.1 Early History and Overview
Initiatives for European Cooperation The European Union (EU) resulted from
transformations of earlier organizations, such as the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC), and Euratom.
Moreover, it is the outflow of a series of events that was initiated by the Second
World War. After this war had ended, politicians both inside and outside Europe
saw cooperation within Europe as a means to lessen the chance of another war
breaking out in Europe. Some saw the creation of a European federation as the way
to accomplish this, but a full-blown federation, the “United States of Europe,” was a
bridge too far.
Other less ambitious projects for European cooperation did get started though.
Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands had already created a customs union in
1944, the Benelux. The Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC)
was established in 1948 in order to administer the Marshall Plan. This Plan was a
means by which the United States offered financial help to the Western European
countries in order to get their economies up and running again. In the east, the
Soviet Union-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was
created.
To defend the West against the perceived threat from the Soviet Union, a number
of Western European countries joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO), a defense organization, alongside the United States and Canada, in
- As a reaction, Eastern European countries united under the guidance of the
Soviet Union with the Warsaw Pact (1955).
J. Hage (*)
Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI), Maastricht University, Maastricht,
The Netherlands
e-mail:[email protected]
J. Hage and B. Akkermans (eds.),Introduction to Law,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-06910-4_10,#Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
211