Posted by Hans Müller on February 27, 2022 at 14:34 p.m

I wrote this article on July 8th, 2011 in the course of my work as a working group leader for the history of the EUROPA-UNION Heilbronn.

Every year on May 9th the citizens of Europe celebrate Europe Day. It is reminded of the
May 9, 1950, when the French Foreign Minister at the time, Robert Schuman, presented the plan to an astonished public in Paris that would later go down in history as the “Schuman Plan”.

"The French government is proposing to place all Franco-German coal and steel production under a common supreme authority, in an organization open to other European countries to join."(1)

Just under a year later, on April 18, 1951, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the treaty on the "European Coal and Steel Community" (ECSC) - also known as the Montanunion - in Paris became the starting point of the European integration process.

The political history and the different preliminary considerations for this far-sighted step are presented in historical works - some of these works are listed in the bibliography. Time and again there were considerations as to how the epoch of the European nation states, which had brought wars and destruction to the continent with great regularity, could be overcome. A few of these considerations should be mentioned here:

- The oldest movement aimed at uniting Europe was in the early 20s
years of the last century by the Austrian writer and
Politician Nikolaus Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894 - 1972) (2) under the impression of
Paneuropa Union founded after the horrors of World War I. Her goal was that
unification of Europe up to the founding of the "United States of Europe".
To preserve peace in Europe in the long term and to secure Europe's global standing. In the
Present is the German Pan-European Union of the CSU and the expellees' associations
vicinity. “It differs from other right-wing conservative associations in the country
Condemnation of nationalism, implying that the interests of the displaced
are best represented within the framework of European unification." (3)

- The socialist French also counts among the masterminds of European unification
Politician and temporary French Prime Minister Aristide Briand (1862 – 1932). At-
On the occasion of Germany's admission to the League of Nations (1926), he said: "Between
Germany and France, the painful and bloody collaborations are over
meet with which all pages of history are stained. It's over with them
long veils of mourning over sufferings that will never abate. No wars
no more brutal and bloody solutions to our disagreements-
units …” (4)
Around 1929/1930 Aristide published Briand, who in 1926 together with the German
Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had received the Nobel Peace Prize, a "thought
Paper on the Establishment of a European Union”. But such thoughts remained
reserved for a small group of interested intellectuals, because in Europe
there were signs of a storm. (5)

- Swept away by that storm that ended so horribly for all the countries of Europe in 1945
should, the demand in the Heidelberg program of the SPD from 1925: “You
(the SPD) advocates the creation, which has become mandatory for economic reasons
the European economic entity, for the formation of the United States of Europe,
in order to achieve solidarity in the interests of the peoples of all continents." (6)

- Swept away by the developments after the end of the war were also the considerations that
Willy Brandt (1913 – 1992) in Norwegian exile. One of his newspaper
artikel (1939) was entitled The Dream of Europe's United States. "Around
the independence of the nations with consideration for an international
However, in order to reconcile the community, the individual states must “on a part
"renounce" their national sovereignty in favor of the international organization. (7)
Brandt wanted to achieve the goal of a democratic, federal reorganization of Europe
Reach the intermediate step of "regional mergers", for example in Central Europe,
in the north, in the Balkans and between the Danube countries. But "the further development
The development of the world war made many plans and ideas obsolete." (8)

Some might say that all these politicians, writers and European thinkers were ahead of their time. But you could put it another way: there were too many people in all states who were behind the times. Nationalism, escalated to national arrogance, striving for great power, hatred and contempt for humanity had – once again – led Europe into the abyss. "It was only after the Second World War that Briand's push for European unification had a lasting effect." (9)

In his famous “Zurich Speech” of September 19, 1946, Winston Churchill (1874 – 1955) named the partnership between France and Germany as the first step in the reestablishment of the European family. He spoke of a remedy that could make all of Europe free and happy within a few years. "This means consists in the renewal of the European family of peoples... We must establish a kind of United States of Europe."

Other far-sighted people were also thinking about an integrated Europe shortly after the end of the war. A few days after Churchill's Zurich speech, on September 14, 21, representatives from 1946 European countries and the USA adopted twelve theses in Hertenstein, Switzerland, which are known today as the "Hertenstein Program". "A European community built on a federal basis is a necessary and essential part of any real world union" is the first thesis. And Thesis 1 anchors what is still hotly debated 4 years after Hertenstein: "The members of the European Union transfer part of their economic, political and military sovereignty rights to the federation they have formed."

The Council of Europe, founded by ten states in 1949, is also one of the driving forces behind European unification to create a common heritage and to promote their economic and social progress.” In a resolution of the Consultative Assembly of October 5.5.1949, 20.10.1949, there was talk of a European “political authority” with limited functions but real powers. But the Committee of Ministers did not support these ideas. At the latest with the Schuman Plan announced a year later, the European integration process received a different basis. The most important result of the work of the Council of Europe is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which was passed in 1950 and is now binding for 47 members. The European Court of Justice in Strasbourg monitors compliance with this convention. With the Lisbon Treaty, the EU also joined the ECHR.

But the concrete and often critical questions were formulated differently, especially in France after the end of the war: How can Germany be kept so small that it will never again be able to wage a war? And even if there will be a Germany again at some point: can it then have the same status as France? (10)
"Anyone who did not experience the time at that time will hardly be able to understand how much European politics in the post-war years was dominated by the fear of a renewed
strengthened Germany and the intention to prevent this once and for all." (11)

Many ideas and strands of thought, questions and counter-questions lay like a mosaic on the European table, crossed or ran together and ultimately served as the inspiration for the formation of Europe as we know it today. It was and is remarkable that at the beginning of the integration process there was no finished master plan, no blueprint of what future Europe could look like in concrete terms. Shaping Europe was and is an open political process.

At least now Jean Monnet (1888 – 1979) has to be mentioned. At the end of 1945 he presented the French President Charles de Gaulle with a paper that became the basis for national economic planning in France. Shortly thereafter, Monnet became director of the newly established planning office - French planification was born.

Another piece in the jigsaw puzzle in Europe's development was the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan, the project for the reconstruction of Europe that the American Secretary of State George C. Marshall presented in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. "The Marshall Plan was an economic program, but the crisis it averted was political," writes Tony Judt (12). “The real benefit of the Marshall Plan was psychological. One could almost say that he gave Europeans a more positive self-image. They gained the strength to say goodbye once and for all to chauvinism and authoritarian solutions. A common economic policy now seemed normal..." (13), because the Marshall Plan forced Europeans to plan together and estimate their investment needs. "They had to negotiate not only with the United States, but also with the other European states, since the aim was to establish multilateral economic relations as quickly as possible" (16). In addition, supranational institutions were created, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation in Europe (OEEC) and the European Payments Union - to a certain extent training and experience fields for politicians and administrative officials, which they could later put to good use in the European institutions.

After this history, after this previous experience, was it surprising that it took just under a year until the Schuman Plan worked out by Jean Monnet was signed by the 18.4.1951 founding states of the Montanunion on April 6, 1952? Jean Monnet - later called "Father of Europe" - was the first President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) from 1954 to XNUMX.
"The motives of the six states in signing this treaty may have varied, but the result was of historic importance. The fact that former enemies found such a community a few years after the end of the war is unprecedented in world history." (15)

In retrospect, it has to be accepted that this European dynamism could not continue uninterrupted. Above all, the fact that the plan for a European Defense Community (EDC) proposed by France in 1950 failed four years later in the French National Assembly was a setback in the European integration process.
process. Two men - again Jean Monnet and the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak (1899 - 1972) started the wheel of development again. On March 25, 1957, the treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) were solemnly signed in Rome.