processes of political change. Clearly a reaction to the impact of two
world wars on the heartland of Europe, it has developed from an
organisation to co-ordinate iron and steel production in six countries
to a potential continental superpower in less than fifty years. For the
most part this has been a story of building alliances around common
interests, of trading advantages against disadvantages and of seeking
accommodations where national interests have conflicted.
The initial creation of the European Economic Community (EEC)
upon the foundations of the original Iron and Steel Community
can be seen as a pragmatic bargain struck with an eye to a perhaps
nobler vision. The creation of the EEC can be seen as part of a process
whereby the French government accepted the rehabilitation of
(Western) Germany into the democratic community of nations in
return for such a measure of economic integration in basic indus-
tries and of co-operation on defence issues through NATO. Thus a
German attempt to independently dominate Europe militarily and
economically would not be feasible. In addition French rural voters
were softened in their attitude to the EEC by a large element of agri-
cultural subsidy and protection. Although the details of the Treaty of
Rome were fairly prosaic, behind it lay the vision of Jean Monet’s
Action Committee for a United States of Europe.
It is significant that most of the states that ‘joined Europe’ between
1957 and the early 1990s shared a commitment to a vision of a united
and democratic Europe – the idea of Europe as a political symbol. For
instance, Spain, Portugal and Greece all joined what was by then
known as the European Community (EC) after ending periods of
authoritarian dictatorship, seeing this as a significant move toward
joining the political mainstream of European development. Similarly,
former Eastern bloc countries, such as Poland, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia and Hungary, that became members in 2004 clearly wish to
assert a long-term future as part of a united and democratic Europe.
In contrast the British application to join was defended domes-
tically even by its proponents as a sensible economic move much
more than a political one. Even proponents of joining the EEC
asserted that Britain could still maintain its special political rela-
tionships with the United States and the Commonwealth and that
parliamentary sovereignty was undiminished by the move. Long
after Brussels dropped the middle ‘E’ in EEC, the British government
retained it. In the circumstances it is understandable that France’s160 STATES