The Evolution of The EU and the Single Market
This post was written in August 2016, I was able to retrieve it from my old host server after being shutdown.
Saying that the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) is based on interests will not suffice in explaining how the EU emerged. To start with, politics can be defined as a social activity that deals with conflicts, which stem from conflicting interests of different people, and a search for resolving these conflicts with cooperation, compromise, and conciliation (Heywood 2013). However, interests don’t show the whole painting but part of it. You can imagine social life as a painting, and people compete and cooperate in defining what colors will be used in this painting. They compete when their interests diverge and cooperate when they converge. Yet seeing politics based on interests only is like seeing the painting with black and white colors, corrupting the painting and disabling the viewer from seeing the reality. It’s a matter of perception; the way you perceive social life tells about the way you perceive the painting. Interests do tell us that people want to put the color themselves, but they do not explain why they, for example, put green instead of yellow. It’s only when putting social events into wider historical, cultural, social, economic and political context that we will be able to find an explanation to that question.
This is the case with the European Union (EU) as well. The idea of a European union dates back centuries. As much as the UN had its idea back in the works of Kant (Kant 1795), so does the idea of a European union had its roots, for example, in the writings of William Penn (Penn 1694) who proposed a European parliament to settle disputes, a similar proposal can be seen with Abbot Charles de Saint-Pierre who proposed a European federation (Rousseau 1917). What connects these two proposals is that they, and several others, came as solutions to prevent the wars that were going on in Europe. A similar view emerged with the Federalist groups during the inter-war period and post-WWII, these groups envisaged a wider political system than their nation-states, and they wrote down a manifesto known as "The Ventotene Manifesto" of 1941 that called for a European federation (Archer 2008). Yet Europe didn’t become a federation as the world’s politics is administered by states most of them unwilling to lose their sovereignty for a higher authority, and this was one of the reasons used by the pro-Brexit campaign in the EU referendum.
Though there were proposals for a European union over the past centuries, it was only in the twentieth century that such an idea was realized. The above mentioned ideas of Penn and Abbot were also present in Bennett’s discussion of the ideological roots of international organizations, Bennett points out that there were two reasons behind the late growth of international organizations; the first, is that these ideas had little impact on the ruler’s thoughts and behavior, and second, the conditions that allowed for the emergence of such organizations were of recent origins (Bennett 2001). regarding the European case, it took two world wars and the influence of Jean Monnet’s idea to join the French and German Coal and Steel industries on the French foreign affairs minister Robert Schuman, that a union of European states pays its debt. (Archer 2008) with the Schuman Plan, six European states negotiated the Paris Treaty in 1951 that established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) the seed of the EC and then the EU.
Outside of the ECSC, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), established in 1948 whose establishing purpose was to guide the Marshall plan of the US, was negotiating to free trade from barriers. But it was not until the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) by the Rome Treaty in 1957, that action was taken. (Archer 2008) Such a move coincided with the world wide emancipation movement from colonialism, and the spread of communism. Article 9 of the Treaty of the EEC states that "The Community shall be based upon a customs union" The creation of a common market was the central part of the EEC, and a customs union was the first step needed to reach that part, as the parties who signed the EEC treaty had tariffs on many imports from the other countries, in an attempt to protect their economies. The quest of removing these tariffs was important to avoid any return to protectionist policies that were among the causes of the two world wars. The main reasons behind the creation of the EEC and then the EU, are to make war in Europe impossible by developing a common system of law and making the member states' economies interdependent (Barnier 2012). and the only way to achieve this was to create a common market, where the member states’ economies become so integrated and so interdependent on each other.
The mid-1980s revived the EC after it went through the dark ages of the EC in the 1960s and 1970s. de Gaulle’s withdrawal of France’s representatives caused a crisis in Europe, it later became known as the ‘empty chair crisis’, which basically caused the cogs of the EC from functioning, and was later resolved with the ‘Luxemburg compromise’, though the crisis didn’t prevent the process of removing trade barriers which were accomplished in 1968. However, in earlier 1970s as a result of international events such as the OPEC crisis, states started shifting towards favoring their domestic markets through non-tariff barriers (NTB). However, in the 1980s, things started getting better with the EC, as it became aware that US and Japanese developments in Technology may cause Europe to be dependent on them (Bache 2011).
With the new Presidentship of the EC by Jacques Delors; who had a great impact on the functioning of the EC, most of the major developments took place during his presidency. The British commissioner to the EC, Lord Cockfield proposed a white paper consisting of around 300 measures to free the market from NTBs and bring about the four freedoms; the freedoms of movement of; goods, persons, services and capital, by the end of 1992.
Though on the face of it, it seemed that the SEM was complete in 1992. However, the establishment of the single market proved a hard task with the absence of a strong decision-making authority, it was only the with the Single European Act (SEA) that achieving the single market was possible. The single market still remains an ongoing project, a project which later included the establishment of the Single Currency (Euro) and the European Monetary Union (EMU) headed by the European Central Bank (ECB) by Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which is also known as the Treaty on the European Union (TEU). The treaty, similar to the previous 1957 treaty, came as an adaptive response from Europe to the collapse of the Soviet Union (Bache 2011).
The SEA came as an amendment to some rules of the EEC treaty to increase the EC institutions powers in matters related to the single market only. This move was taken in an attempt to overdue the decision-making mechanism of the commission from unanimity; where everybody has to agree on the decision, to qualified majority voting (QMV); where decisions are made according to the majority of votes. As Bache clarified, “it would only be possible to pass all the laws necessary to complete the single market if there was a reform of the decision-making process” (Bache 2011).
At the end of the first decade of the 20th century the EU witnessed one of the hardest if not “the” hardest test of all. The Euro zone crisis proved the vulnerability of the EU once more from events that take place outside Europe. The mortgage crisis in US in the beginning of 2008 had ripples all around the world, showing how interdependent the world economies are on each other. However, the crisis had much intense consequences in Europe when multiple European countries were on the brink of running bankrupt. The way that the EU responded to the crisis was a failure, states were bailed out these countries while in return they had to apply austerity measures. (Bache 2011)
The austerity measures caused huge discontent, particularly in Greece, Euroscepticism was on the rise and reduced any desire for further integration (Bache 2011) coupled with the refugee crisis nationalist sentiment started rising, discontent and hatred was direct towards the heads of the EU the most striking example was seen in UK with the increasing voice by nationalists to break out from the EU, it seems as this is always the attitude of UK throughout its history with Europe; in times of prosperity it tries to have contact and build relations, but once trouble begins it isolates itself and showing its back to what goes on in Europe.
In conclusion, interests alone cannot explain how events around the world are made as it is argued by genealogists that “each historical event is a particular instance that takes place within the social relations framing it at that time” (Dillet 2013). There’re many factors that contributed to the evolution of the European Union, the idea of unity always came after existential threats to humanity, it took the world a great loss in the two major wars to be aware of this idea and take action. Further integration in Europe came also as a sense of threat from the Soviet Union and Communism, and in the period between 1947 and 1957 Western Europe witnessed the fall in Communist votes; in 1957 Communism was ruled unconstitutional in Germany, and votes in favor of Communism decreased in many Western European states as a result of this integration (Bartlett 1962). Furthermore, European integration was reinitiated in the 80s after being threatened of being dependent on US and Japan, after further integration was frozen due to the impact of international events such as the Oil Crisis. The EU still struggles between Supra-nationalism versus Inter-governmentalism, with governmental actors unwilling to surrender their sovereignty to a higher authority and the attempts of supra-nationalist actors to realize a more integrated Europe, and maybe a federalist state. The Euro zone crisis and the refugee crisis coupled with the Brexit shock just shows that Europe is not ready for such a state. Will the EU succeed in reaching its goals is a question answering it is no more than gambling. However, the EU now faces an existential test as polls indicated that many EU countries were supportive for a Brexit and called for their own exit referendums too (Bernard 2016). Whether the British leave will trigger other leave referendums is unclear just as nobody expected that UK would like the EU so this could be the case with other states.
What will happen to the single market after the Brexit remains unclear, one thing sure of course that the UK will not enjoy the single market as it did before leaving it (in case if it left, which is unclear yet) will UK have access to the single market as Norway does? It’s possible unless it accepts the four freedoms that the market stands upon; including the freedom of movement of persons, which is one of the main reasons that UK voted to leave the EU.
Saying that the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) is based on interests will not suffice in explaining how the EU emerged. To start with, politics can be defined as a social activity that deals with conflicts, which stem from conflicting interests of different people, and a search for resolving these conflicts with cooperation, compromise, and conciliation (Heywood 2013). However, interests don’t show the whole painting but part of it. You can imagine social life as a painting, and people compete and cooperate in defining what colors will be used in this painting. They compete when their interests diverge and cooperate when they converge. Yet seeing politics based on interests only is like seeing the painting with black and white colors, corrupting the painting and disabling the viewer from seeing the reality. It’s a matter of perception; the way you perceive social life tells about the way you perceive the painting. Interests do tell us that people want to put the color themselves, but they do not explain why they, for example, put green instead of yellow. It’s only when putting social events into wider historical, cultural, social, economic and political context that we will be able to find an explanation to that question.
This is the case with the European Union (EU) as well. The idea of a European union dates back centuries. As much as the UN had its idea back in the works of Kant (Kant 1795), so does the idea of a European union had its roots, for example, in the writings of William Penn (Penn 1694) who proposed a European parliament to settle disputes, a similar proposal can be seen with Abbot Charles de Saint-Pierre who proposed a European federation (Rousseau 1917). What connects these two proposals is that they, and several others, came as solutions to prevent the wars that were going on in Europe. A similar view emerged with the Federalist groups during the inter-war period and post-WWII, these groups envisaged a wider political system than their nation-states, and they wrote down a manifesto known as "The Ventotene Manifesto" of 1941 that called for a European federation (Archer 2008). Yet Europe didn’t become a federation as the world’s politics is administered by states most of them unwilling to lose their sovereignty for a higher authority, and this was one of the reasons used by the pro-Brexit campaign in the EU referendum.
Though there were proposals for a European union over the past centuries, it was only in the twentieth century that such an idea was realized. The above mentioned ideas of Penn and Abbot were also present in Bennett’s discussion of the ideological roots of international organizations, Bennett points out that there were two reasons behind the late growth of international organizations; the first, is that these ideas had little impact on the ruler’s thoughts and behavior, and second, the conditions that allowed for the emergence of such organizations were of recent origins (Bennett 2001). regarding the European case, it took two world wars and the influence of Jean Monnet’s idea to join the French and German Coal and Steel industries on the French foreign affairs minister Robert Schuman, that a union of European states pays its debt. (Archer 2008) with the Schuman Plan, six European states negotiated the Paris Treaty in 1951 that established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) the seed of the EC and then the EU.
Outside of the ECSC, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), established in 1948 whose establishing purpose was to guide the Marshall plan of the US, was negotiating to free trade from barriers. But it was not until the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) by the Rome Treaty in 1957, that action was taken. (Archer 2008) Such a move coincided with the world wide emancipation movement from colonialism, and the spread of communism. Article 9 of the Treaty of the EEC states that "The Community shall be based upon a customs union" The creation of a common market was the central part of the EEC, and a customs union was the first step needed to reach that part, as the parties who signed the EEC treaty had tariffs on many imports from the other countries, in an attempt to protect their economies. The quest of removing these tariffs was important to avoid any return to protectionist policies that were among the causes of the two world wars. The main reasons behind the creation of the EEC and then the EU, are to make war in Europe impossible by developing a common system of law and making the member states' economies interdependent (Barnier 2012). and the only way to achieve this was to create a common market, where the member states’ economies become so integrated and so interdependent on each other.
The mid-1980s revived the EC after it went through the dark ages of the EC in the 1960s and 1970s. de Gaulle’s withdrawal of France’s representatives caused a crisis in Europe, it later became known as the ‘empty chair crisis’, which basically caused the cogs of the EC from functioning, and was later resolved with the ‘Luxemburg compromise’, though the crisis didn’t prevent the process of removing trade barriers which were accomplished in 1968. However, in earlier 1970s as a result of international events such as the OPEC crisis, states started shifting towards favoring their domestic markets through non-tariff barriers (NTB). However, in the 1980s, things started getting better with the EC, as it became aware that US and Japanese developments in Technology may cause Europe to be dependent on them (Bache 2011).
With the new Presidentship of the EC by Jacques Delors; who had a great impact on the functioning of the EC, most of the major developments took place during his presidency. The British commissioner to the EC, Lord Cockfield proposed a white paper consisting of around 300 measures to free the market from NTBs and bring about the four freedoms; the freedoms of movement of; goods, persons, services and capital, by the end of 1992.
Though on the face of it, it seemed that the SEM was complete in 1992. However, the establishment of the single market proved a hard task with the absence of a strong decision-making authority, it was only the with the Single European Act (SEA) that achieving the single market was possible. The single market still remains an ongoing project, a project which later included the establishment of the Single Currency (Euro) and the European Monetary Union (EMU) headed by the European Central Bank (ECB) by Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which is also known as the Treaty on the European Union (TEU). The treaty, similar to the previous 1957 treaty, came as an adaptive response from Europe to the collapse of the Soviet Union (Bache 2011).
The SEA came as an amendment to some rules of the EEC treaty to increase the EC institutions powers in matters related to the single market only. This move was taken in an attempt to overdue the decision-making mechanism of the commission from unanimity; where everybody has to agree on the decision, to qualified majority voting (QMV); where decisions are made according to the majority of votes. As Bache clarified, “it would only be possible to pass all the laws necessary to complete the single market if there was a reform of the decision-making process” (Bache 2011).
At the end of the first decade of the 20th century the EU witnessed one of the hardest if not “the” hardest test of all. The Euro zone crisis proved the vulnerability of the EU once more from events that take place outside Europe. The mortgage crisis in US in the beginning of 2008 had ripples all around the world, showing how interdependent the world economies are on each other. However, the crisis had much intense consequences in Europe when multiple European countries were on the brink of running bankrupt. The way that the EU responded to the crisis was a failure, states were bailed out these countries while in return they had to apply austerity measures. (Bache 2011)
The austerity measures caused huge discontent, particularly in Greece, Euroscepticism was on the rise and reduced any desire for further integration (Bache 2011) coupled with the refugee crisis nationalist sentiment started rising, discontent and hatred was direct towards the heads of the EU the most striking example was seen in UK with the increasing voice by nationalists to break out from the EU, it seems as this is always the attitude of UK throughout its history with Europe; in times of prosperity it tries to have contact and build relations, but once trouble begins it isolates itself and showing its back to what goes on in Europe.
In conclusion, interests alone cannot explain how events around the world are made as it is argued by genealogists that “each historical event is a particular instance that takes place within the social relations framing it at that time” (Dillet 2013). There’re many factors that contributed to the evolution of the European Union, the idea of unity always came after existential threats to humanity, it took the world a great loss in the two major wars to be aware of this idea and take action. Further integration in Europe came also as a sense of threat from the Soviet Union and Communism, and in the period between 1947 and 1957 Western Europe witnessed the fall in Communist votes; in 1957 Communism was ruled unconstitutional in Germany, and votes in favor of Communism decreased in many Western European states as a result of this integration (Bartlett 1962). Furthermore, European integration was reinitiated in the 80s after being threatened of being dependent on US and Japan, after further integration was frozen due to the impact of international events such as the Oil Crisis. The EU still struggles between Supra-nationalism versus Inter-governmentalism, with governmental actors unwilling to surrender their sovereignty to a higher authority and the attempts of supra-nationalist actors to realize a more integrated Europe, and maybe a federalist state. The Euro zone crisis and the refugee crisis coupled with the Brexit shock just shows that Europe is not ready for such a state. Will the EU succeed in reaching its goals is a question answering it is no more than gambling. However, the EU now faces an existential test as polls indicated that many EU countries were supportive for a Brexit and called for their own exit referendums too (Bernard 2016). Whether the British leave will trigger other leave referendums is unclear just as nobody expected that UK would like the EU so this could be the case with other states.
What will happen to the single market after the Brexit remains unclear, one thing sure of course that the UK will not enjoy the single market as it did before leaving it (in case if it left, which is unclear yet) will UK have access to the single market as Norway does? It’s possible unless it accepts the four freedoms that the market stands upon; including the freedom of movement of persons, which is one of the main reasons that UK voted to leave the EU.
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