number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

Introductory note – Introduction – Einführung 3
Introductory words
Gilbert Trausch
From the immediate postwar years up to the present controversies on the forthcoming
intergovernmental conference (1996), now and then already called Maastricht
II, the debates on Europe are moving within the frame of two extremes: a model of
integration and a model of close intergovernmental collaboration. In between, there
is room for a whole range of intermediate solutions, on which discussions actually
are focussing, as most observers agree that the possibility to apply the rules of a
federal State as well as the return to a mere collaboration are to be considered out
of reach.
The discussions are still marked by the vagueness that characterizes the terminology
and the ambiguities caused by their translation from one language to another.
Common words as ”federal” or ”integration” don’t have exactly the same
meaning in French and in English. One may wonder, whether all those, who like
Winston Churchill (1946) or Jean Monnet (1955), have used the phrase ”the United
States of Europe”, always have been aware of the implications that this kind of
expression involves in the matter of the organization of Europe.
It is the concept of supranationality, that has been at the heart of the discussions
of the last 50 years. From the start (1950), and again since Maastricht (1991), this
has been the touchstone on which minds are parting. Well-defined in theory, the
lines of cleavage are much less so in practice, especially in the statements of politicians
anxious to rally voters.
The years covering the period from the Schuman Plan to the Treaties of Rome,
considered the lucky age of European integration, are often opposed to the long
period of stagnation that are the sixties and seventies. A European relaunching
looms up in the second half of the 80ies, but given the events of 1989-1991, it may
not last. Actually, in a deliberately provocative manner, one may think that the concept
of a supranational Europe begins to decline in the days following Robert
Schuman’s declaration on May 9th, 1950. As a matter of fact, as soon as the general
principles elaborated by Jean Monnet are to be put in practice, vigorous national
interests emerge, agreeing that transfers of sovereignty shall be reduced to the strict
minimum. If nevertheless the Community hasn’t foundered and even could progress,
this is due to the same emerging national interests that, to different degrees,
saw the possibility to profit from well-aimed transfers of sovereignty.
Historians are discussing interminably the reasons that urged the different States
to join the Community and, once entered, to stay there. The discussions on the
pre-eminence of the economic or the political factor have not always been very
fruitful. If the European Community was constituted on an economic basis, this
fact does absolutely not exclude the intervention, right from the beginning, of political
factors. According to the good historic method, the reasons, even economic
ones, underlying the European process, cannot be postulated, but are to be determined
at every stage of the European process, without prejudices. Economic cal-