and Germany, and the other four countries, now
advocated extending the common market in coal
and steel to the rest of their economies.
Thus pressure was building up in a realistic way
for more ambitious integration. This is not to
underrate the continued enthusiasm for the idea
of ‘Europe’. The European Movement, founded
at The Hague in 1948, was still active and had
won important adherents in the political world of
the six nations. ‘Europe’ offered a road forward
and away from the guilt-ridden past, especially
for a new generation of young Germans; it also
offered the best means of reconciliation after
two destructive world wars. The foundation of
such reconciliation rested on the new rela-
tionship developing between France and West
Germany, carried forward by many political and
social groups in both countries. Meetings organ-
ised between politicians, journalists, educators,
Chambers of Commerce, town partnerships, cul-
tural exchanges, school exchanges and textbook
revisions to remove national bias are just some
examples of this multifaceted effort to bring
about a fundamental change of attitudes. It
worked because it reflected a massive desire for
change by millions of ordinary people.
The ideas – inculcated through propaganda
and schooling – that national patriotism auto-
matically involves hostility to a neighbour, that
national frontiers should be fought over so that
one country may expand its territory at the
expense of another, and that enmities between
nations were a law of nature, have all vanished in
Western Europe. A perceived common threat,
from the Soviet Union, also led to alliances and
military cooperation. But the collaboration of
Western Europe encompasses more than the kind
of alliances that have been formed for common
purposes throughout modern history. That such
a fundamental change in national relations can be
brought about in a region of the world that was
torn with strife is a momentous achievement in
the history of the twentieth century.
The three Benelux foreign ministers – the
Dutchman Johan Beyen, the Belgian Paul Henri
Spaak and Joseph Bech of Luxembourg – took
the initiative in the spring of 1955 at govern-
mental level to provide new momentum for
European integration: an example of statesmen of
small nations who have exerted a disproportion-
ate influence. Their proposal for a large extension
of economic collaboration received the backing of
the European Coal and Steel Community. The
failure of military integration after the French
rejection of the European Defence Community
the previous year had been seen as a setback but
not as an end to integration in other spheres. In
May and June 1955 the foreign ministers of the
Six met in Messina, Sicily. Their agreements
paved the way for further intergovernmental con-
ferences and negotiations which took place
during the following two years. Britain was not
excluded, but its cooperation was half-hearted
and it withdrew without making a serious effort
to overcome the problems of its association. The
Six had difficult problems to iron out and did not
wish to be impeded by Britain, though they were
able to resolve their differences far more speed-
ily than the British had expected. They signed
the treaty setting up the European Economic
Community (and Euratom) in Rome in March
1957; these treaties were ratified in the succeed-
ing months of that year. The majority of the
French Assembly in July voted for European
collaboration and thus dispelled the fears that
the spectre of defeat aroused by the EDC fail-
ure would be repeated. That same month, the
Bundesrat in West Germany completed the pro-
cess of German ratification. The treaties entered
into force on 1 January 1958.
All the members of the European Economic
Community had had to make concessions and
compromises. Obstacles to trade between the Six
were to be removed eventually. Those of most
immediate importance were the duties levied on
industrial goods in order to protect the importing
country’s home industry. The French and Italians
especially feared competition from the more effi-
cient West Germans. A transitional period of
twelve to fifteen years was therefore agreed,
though in the event the abolition of duties was
speeded up and completed by July 1968. Free
trade required many other aspects of economic
management to be harmonised as well, and com-
plex arrangements were agreed over the years:
for example, common rules of competition, free
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