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Why call it a ‘European Community’? Ideological Continuities and Institutional Design of Nascent European Organisations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2018

ANTONIN COHEN
ANTONIN COHEN*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law and Political Science, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article challenges the idea that the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 was a break with ideologies of the past. It traces the political economy of the declaration from the interwar to the post-war period. It reconstructs the conceptions of economics and politics that underlay the proposal, tracing them back to the once influential corporatist and communitarian ‘third way’ ideology. It then shows that the original intent of the declaration was nevertheless crushed by a powerful dynamic of institutionalisation of transnational parliamentarianism. Thus, the article demonstrates the effects of long-lasting cleavages on the institutionalisation of European organisations.

Type
Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 27 , Special Issue 2: Continuity and Change in European Cooperation during the Twentieth Century , May 2018 , pp. 326 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 ‘Europe Day’ was even listed among the ‘symbols’ of the EU by Article I-8 of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. These symbols are now relegated to a separate Declaration annexed to the final Act of the Intergovernmental Conference which adopted the Treaty of Lisbon. The declaration has only been signed by sixteen out of twenty-eight member states.

2 ‘Texte de la déclaration du 9 mai 1950’, AMG 1/3/2, Fondation Jean Monnet pour l'Europe. For the English translation see, for instance www.cvce.eu/en/obj/the_schuman_declaration_paris_9_may_1950-en-9cc6ac38-32f5-4c0a-a337-9a8ae4d5740f.html (last visited 29 May 2016).

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4 It is not the aim of this article to discuss the existing literature in depth, for which the reader is invited to refer to the introduction of the special issue. Many aspects of the Schuman Plan that are not touched on here can nevertheless be found in: Wilkens, Andreas, ed., Le Plan Schuman dans l'histoire. Intérêts nationaux et projet européen (Brussels: Bruylant, 2004).Google Scholar

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7 A recent overview of this context can be found in: Nord, Philip, France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; and see Patel, Kiran Klaus, The New Deal: A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 The research originally unfolded for a PhD (1999), and thereafter in various publications, in particular: De Vichy à la Communauté européenne (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2012) and ‘Le Plan Schuman de Paul Reuter. Entre communauté nationale et fédération européenne’, Revue française de science politique, 48, 5 (1998), 645–63.

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