Review of Some Existing Studies of EC/EU Treaty-Making and Reform

Review of some existing studies of EC/EU Treaty-Making and Reform by Finn Laursen Department of Political Science and EU Centre of Excellence Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada www.euce.dal.ca Dalhousie EUCE Occasional Paper No 6 (2008) Introduction The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of some of the existing literature on the founding treaties of the European Communities (EC), the Treaty of Paris creating the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the Treaties of Rome creating the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or EURATOM) in 1957 as well as later reforms of those treaties, including the creation of the European Union (EU) by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and later reforms via Amsterdam and Nice to the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. These treaties and treaty-reforms have been studied by historians, lawyers and political scientists. We are particularly interested in locating political science studies. What kind of political science studies exist? What kind of approaches and theories have political science developed in this regard? And where do we go from here? Needles to say, the many analyses by historians and legal scholars can be very useful for those trying to understand the politics of the process. Since the EC/EU treaties have been negotiated in Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) this paper will to a large extent focus on IGCs. What preferences have the founding and later also other Member States brought to these IGCs, how were the negotiations conducted, who had influence and why, what were the outcomes and why? This overview will not really try to answer these questions. The overview can be read together with the more theoretical discussion in the earlier paper in this series (Laursen, 2008b). The Founding Treaties A number of studies of the negotiation of the founding treaties exist, but systematic application of political science frameworks in these studies is rather uncommon. One of the more interesting accounts of the Paris Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), 1950-51, was actually written by Jean Monnet, who chaired the conference and who was the intellect behind the Schuman Plan in May 1950, which started the process of supranational institution-making in Europe (Monnet, 2 1978). A biography on Schuman by Raymond Poidevin includes informative chapters on the Schuman Plan and the birth of the ECSC, the latter chapter partly dealing with the IGC without being comprehensive (Poidevin, 1986). The Schuman Plan was studied early on by Diebold (1959). He had a section on what he called the Schuman Plan negotiations based on the information available at the time (Ibid, pp. 60-77). A more recent and well-researched historical account has been given by Gillingham (1991). The Dutch chief negotiator in the first IGC in 1950-51, later a member of the executive body of the ECSC, the High Authority, Dirk Spierenburg wrote a history of the ECSC together with French historian Raymond Poidevin (1994). In this book the first two chapters deal with the negotiations in Paris. There are further some informative shorter accounts, like one by Gerbet (1987a). The most interesting account from a political science perspective is probably the one by Berthold Rittberger (2001), trying to explain the particular institutional set-up of the ECSC treaty, arguing that instrumental calculations and considerations of ‘appropriateness’ were complementary. A broader, now somewhat outdated, account of the early years of European integration was produced by Arnold Zurcher (1958). But, apart from Gillingham (1991), Monnet’s personal account and the historical accounts by Spierenburg and Poidevin, none of these studies outlined or analyzed the actual negotiations in the Paris IGC in great detail. Parsons argued in a recent and interesting book that ideas and French coalitional politics were important at the beginning as well as later (Parsons, 2003). This book must be seen as one of the more important political science books trying to explain the EC/EU treaties. Griffiths has written a detailed historical account of the European Defence Community/European Political Community (EDC/EPC) negotiations (Griffiths, 2001). These negotiations took place more or less in parallel with the negotiations of the ECSC, but the treaty was denied ratification by the French National Assembly in 1954. There is also a short account by Cardozo (1987). Rittberger also wrote a very interesting article on the EDC and EPC. The idea that transfer of sovereignty will lead to ‘democratic spill-over’ was proposed (Rittberger, 2006). The negotiations of the Treaties of Rome have not been given the systematic political science account that these treaties, especially the EEC treaty, deserve. Again we do have memoirs from one of the most important actors during the process, Paul Henri Spaak (1971). But these memoirs are less fascinating and detailed than those of Monnet. A short but useful 3 account of the Treaties of Rome has been provided by Küsters (1987). Gerbet (1987b) goes into more detail, but his study is without references, which is regrettable from the point of view of serious scholarship.. A book by David Weigal and Peter Stirk that covers both the ECSC and EEC treaties is basically a collection of documents with introductions. (Weigal and Stirk, 1992). A book by one of the members of the first EEC Commission, Hans von der Groeben, is a mix of description and historical analysis of the 1958-66 period (von der Groeben, 1987). Its value for the study of IGCs is limited. The chief French negotiator of the Treaty of Rome, Robert Marjolin, has also written memoirs that include a chapter on the Treaty of Rome. It contains interesting details on French policy (Marjolin, 1989). The best collection of historical texts on the Treaties of Rome was edited by Enrico Serra on the basis of a colloquium in Rome in March 1987 celebrating the 30th anniversary of the treaties. Some of the texts, published in Italian, French, German and English, constitute detailed competent historical research (Serra, 1989). But none of the authors were political scientist trying to make theoretical conclusions, not to say apply theoretical frameworks. General De Gaulle’s effort to change the Communities in a more intergovernmental direction in the Fouchet negotiations was covered in great detail by Bodenheimer in the book Political Union (Bodenheimer, 1967). Although the book contrasted neofunctionalism and more Realism-inspired views of European integration the book was relatively a-theoretical. But in a certain way it anticipated liberal intergovernmentalism, the framework later developed by Andrew Moravcsik (1991, 1993 and 1998), by looking at domestic politics in the two main contending Member States, viz. France and the Netherlands, and by studying the interstate bargaining process. Early reforms of the EC treaties There are some accounts of the early reforms of the founding treaties. These include accounts of the Merger Treaty by Gordon Weil (1967) and P.-H. J. M. Houben (1965-66). But these were fairly descriptive legal accounts. Spierenburg and Poidevin also dealt with the Merger Treaty in their historical account of the ECSC (1994). We further have a more recent historical account of the Merger Treaty that had benefited from archival research in Brussels and Paris (Bitsch, 1998). 4 David Coombes dealt with the first budget treaty in The Power of the Purse in the European Communities (1972) and Strasser has had a section on both treaties in successive editions of The Finances in Europe (3rd ed. 1992). More recently Berthold Ritttberger included a chapter on the first budget treaty, also called the Treaty of Luxembourg, in his book on the European Parliament (Rittberger, 2005, pp. 114-142). The Rittberger book must be seen as one of the more important political science contributions to the literature. But, overall, we could use more detailed political science analyses of the early reforms. Nor are the primary documents, the various proposals put forward during the negotiations, readily available, although Commission and Council documents are now available at the EU Historical Archives in Florence. Many historical overviews of European integration have largely ignored the early treaty reforms (e.g. Gillingham, 2003). Dinan (2005) does mention the Merger Treaty briefly. Gerbet also mentions the budget treaties – the Luxembourg Treaty of 1970 and the Brussels Treaty of 1975 (Gerbet, 1983). But these accounts are brief and descriptive with no theoretical ambitions. The Single European Act A rather detailed account of the Single European Act (SEA) IGC exists in French. The author, a Belgian official who assisted the Belgian chief negotiator was well placed to have access to primary sources (De Ruyt, 1987). The study is clearly well-informed, but a-theoretical. Sadly, the documentary section only includes a few widely available documents. In terms of existing analyses and available documentation the Single European Act lies somewhere in between the early and later reforms. The interest in studying European integration re-emerged in connection with the SEA and the internal market plan in the 1980s. Moravcsik’s first important article was about the SEA (Moravcsik, 1991) and other articles appeared, often with different interpretations, e.g. by Richard Corbett (1987), Sandholtz and Zysman (1989) and Tranholm-Mikkelsen (1991). None of these analyses really opened the ‘black box’ of the negotiations and when Derek Beach tried to do so, he focused on the role of the EC actors (Beach, 2005). Still the book by Beach must also be singled out as a very important political science contribution. 5 The Maastricht Treaty The author of this review was involved in a research project on the Maastricht Treaty at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) in 1990-93. He co-edited with Sophie Vanhoonacker two volumes that included the most important primary documents, kindly provided by various actors during the negotiation process (Laursen and Vanhoonacker, 1992; Laursen and Vanhoonacker, 1994).

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