European Integration JHH Weiler Content type: Encyclopedia entries Product: Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law [MPIL] Module: Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law [MPEPIL] Article last updated: March 2009 Subject(s): Regional organizations Published under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law under the direction of Professor Anne Peters (2021–) and Professor Rüdiger Wolfrum (2004–2020). From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved.date: 24 September 2021 1 European Integration reflects both the telos and ethos for which the European ‘construct’—the various European Communities and the extant European Union—were established. Part of that telos and ethos are reflected in the particular ‘method’ adopted by the architects of the process. In this entry the focus will be on those features rather than the institutional set up or material economic provisions of the European Union and its constituent Treaties. Deciphering the political and juridical codes of Europe is the key to an understanding of European Integration both as an end and means. A. Origins: Political Culture 2 In the evolving political history of Europe through the 20th century, European Integration emerges after World War II as the most recent project of political ‘messianism’ (see also → European Union, Historical Evolution). It presented a powerful image of peace and prosperity as a justification for action. Its mobilizing force derived not from process, as in classical democracy, or from result and success, but from the ideal pursued, the destiny to be achieved, the ‘Promised Land’ waiting at the end of the road. Mark Mazower, in his brilliant and original history and historiography of 20th-century Europe, insightfully shows how the Europe of monarchs and emperors which entered World War I was often rooted in a political messianic narrative in various States (in Germany, Italy, and Russia and even Britain and France). It then oscillated after the War towards new democratic orders; that is to process → legitimacy, which then oscillated back into new forms of political messianism in fascism and communism. After World War II, the Western States, which were later to become the Member States of the European Union, became resolutely democratic, their patriotism rooted in their new constitutional values, narratives of glory abandoned and even ridiculed, and messianic notions of the State losing all appeal. Famously, former empires, once defended with repression and blood, were now abandoned with zeal. 3 By contrast, in their common venture, European Integration, was a political messianic venture par excellence, the messianic becoming a central feature of its original and enduring political culture. The mobilizing force and principle legitimating feature was the vision offered, the dream dreamt, and the promise of a better future. It is this feature which explains not only the persistent mobilizing force (especially among elites and youth) but also key structural and institutional choices made. It will also give more depth to explanations of the current troubling circumstance of and in Europe. 4 The Schuman Declaration issued on 9 May 1950 ([1980] 13 Bulletin of the European Communities 14–5), is somewhat akin to Europe’s ‘Declaration of Independence’ in its combination of vision and blueprint. Notably, much of its text found its way into the Preamble of the Treaty of Paris, establishing the → European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the substance of which was informed by its ideas. It is interesting to reread the declaration through the conceptual prism of political messianism. The hallmarks are easily detected as we would expect in this constitutive, magisterial document. It is manifest in what is in the Declaration and, no less importantly, in what is not therein. European Integration is, of course, nothing like its European messianic predecessors—that of monarchies and empire and later fascism and communism. It is liberal and noble, but its politically messianic features define in part its unique political identity. 5 The messianic feature is notable in both its rhetoric and substance. The language used— ceremonial and ‘sermonial’ with plenty of pathos (and bathos). World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it. From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved.date: 24 September 2021 The contribution which an organised and living Europe can bring to civilization is indispensable … … a first step in the federation of Europe [which] will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war … [A]ny war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. This production will be offered to the world as a whole without distinction or exception … [I]t may be the leaven from which may grow a wider and deeper community between countries long opposed to one another by sanguinary divisions. 6 The substance too is messianic: a compelling vision which has animated generations of European idealists where the ‘ever closer union among the people of Europe’, with peace and prosperity is an icing on the cake, constituting the beckoning promised land. It is the messianic model which explains (in part) why for so long the Union, realizing the project of European Integration could operate without a veritable commitment to the principles it demanded of its aspiring members—democracy and human rights. Aspirant States had to become members of the → European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), but the Union itself did not. They had to prove their democratic credentials, but the Union itself did not. 7 In its original and unedited version the declaration is quite elaborate in operational detail. But you will find neither the word democracy, nor human rights. It’s a ‘Lets-Just-Do- It’ type of programme animated by great idealism (and a goodly measure of good old State interest, as a whole generation of historians such as Alan Milward and Charles Maier among others have demonstrated). The European double helix has from its inception been Commission and Council: an international (supposedly) apolitical transnational administration/executive (the Commission) collaborating not, as we habitually say, with the Member States (Council) but with the governments, the executive branch of the Member States, which for many years had a forum that escaped in day-to-day matters the scrutiny of any parliament, European or national. Democracy is simply not part of the original vision of European Integration. 8 This observation is hardly shocking or even radical. The narrative of Europe is one in which ‘doers and believers’ (notably the most original of its institutions, the Commission, coupled with an empowered executive branch of the Member States in the guise of the Council and Committee of Permanent Representatives [‘COREPER’]), an elitist (if well-paid) vanguard, were the self-appointed leaders from whom grudgingly, over decades, power had to be arrested by the European Parliament (and even the European Parliament has been a strange vox populi). For most of its life, it has been a champion of European Integration, to the extent that, inevitably, when the Union created fears (only natural in such a radical transformation of European politics) the European Parliament did not feel the place citizens would go to express those fears and concerns. 9 The principal material instrument used to realize the project was economic. The principal systemic instrument was law. From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved.date: 24 September 2021 10 Economically, European Integration followed a path of a deepening and widening form of market integration, beginning with the narrow, but symbolically important sector of coal and steel, and then moving to the economy as a whole. First through the progressive establishment of a common market place which allowed the free movement of all factors of production and then by an aggressive programme of harmonization of the principal disciplines of the regulatory State with the culmination in the creation of economic and monetary union including a → European Central Bank (ECB) and a common currency in which a majority of the Member States participate. Fiscal authority was largely left in the hands of the Member States. The tension between Monetary Union and Member State fiscal sovereignty is a source of severe governance issues at times of asymmetrical recession putting strains on European Integration. B. The Constitutional Framework—the Uniqueness of European Integration 11 Law played an important role in the evolution of European Integration charting a new and original form of ‘federalism’ which encapsulates the original method and the deepest values of the construct. 12 In the vision of the great thinker and teacher of federalism, the late Dan Elazar the federal principle should not be confused with its specific manifestation in the federal State (Elazar 3). Echoing the same thought, Pescatore, the Marshall of European Law, observed: [T]he methods of federalism are not only a means of organising States. [F]ederalism is a political and legal philosophy which adapts itself to all political contexts on both the municipal and the international level, wherever and whenever two basic prerequisites are fulfilled: the search for unity, combined with genuine respect for the autonomy and the legitimate interests of the participant entities. (at ix–x) 13 It is, thus, not surprising that comparisons between the distinct federalisms in North America and Europe have constituted a staple feature in the on-going discussion concerning European Integration (see, eg Bowie and Friedrich; Macmahon for early comparative analyses in the formative years. For subsequent analyses of the more mature system see, eg Sandalow and Stein; Cappelletti, Seccombe and Weiler; Lenaerts).