Transcription
The European Union. It’s one of the most confusing political entities on the planet. But one of the most common questions people will ask is simple - why does the EU exist? What does it hope to achieve, and why can’t its members just do it themselves?
For most of human history, if you lived in Europe, this is what you saw when you woke up in the morning and looked outside your window. [FOOTAGE OF FIGHTING]. Europe has always been a continent jam-packed with hundreds if not thousands of different peoples, cultures, and countries. These countries would often come into conflict, either for natural resources, territory, or ideological reasons. Leaders operated on the idea that their neighbours were always out to get them. Europeans saw each other as potential enemies, not friends.
The First World War wasn’t anything new - it was just another European conflict like the ones that had come before. Another tipping of the balance of powers. The Napoleonic Wars, the 30 Years War, the Wars of Unification in Germany and Italy, the War of Austrian Succession - the list goes on. But when the Central Powers surrendered in 1918, Europeans looked around and saw that their countries had been utterly destroyed. Millions had died, and those who survived were left traumatised. Some began to wonder if there was a better system for Europe than letting the Great Powers fight over land all the time.
The League of Nations, a kind of early United Nations spearheaded by US President Woodrow Wilson, was an attempt at building a new world where peaceful cooperation and self-determination are key. Wilson wanted it so that a people can only be ruled by a government they choose. But Europe didn’t really listen to this half-hearted attempt. The colonial powers wanted to hold onto their overseas territories to stay at the top of the food chain. History repeated itself when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, leading to the Second World War. Europe was again left utterly devastated by war, and the threat of nuclear annihilation now hung over the continent. That’s when many Europeans told themselves enough is enough. “Surely, there has to be a better way of settling our differences? This system only leads to death and destruction.”
The Founding Fathers
These eleven men are named as the architects of the EU. Think of the Founding Fathers in the United States, but for Europe! They all played a part in forming the EU, but one in particular stands out above the rest - Robert Schuman. Schuman was the French foreign minister in 1950. He had protested the Nazi occupation during the war, and had almost been sent to a concentration camp, so was determined to see peace finally come to Europe. Schuman believed the only way to stop the European powers from fighting was by tying their economies together, making war “...not just unthinkable, but materially impossible”.
In 1950, he announced the Schuman Plan, a proposal to bring the German and French coal and steel industries under one supranational authority. France and Germany specifically because they were the two powers that had pretty much always been enemies. Coal and steel because they were the two key materials needed to manufacture weapons. But there was another part of the agreement - there would be no trade tariffs on steel imports between France and Germany, and the central authority would invest into improving working conditions for coal miners. The economic potential of free trade drew the attention of other neighbouring countries.
In 1951, France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy signed the Treaty of Paris, creating the European Steel and Coal Community - the institution which would later become the European Union itself. This was only the first step, however. Six years later, in 1957, the six founding nations decided to integrate their economies even further, hoping to boost their economies through free trade and make it even more difficult for a war to take place. They set up a common market and a customs union, meaning there were no tariffs on goods flowing through the countries, and they all adopted the same tariffs for external country’s imports. If Saudi Arabia wanted to sell oil to France, it would pay the same tariffs as if it sold to Belgium.
Over time, the six countries also agreed to adopt common policies on things like transport and agriculture, bringing them even closer together. The organisation was renamed to the European Economic Community, and was brought to life with the signing of the Treaty of Rome. From an economic point of view, the EEC was a great success! The six economies boomed, and living standards rose across the board. Soon, those outside the EEC started looking on and wanted in on the free-trade club. Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Ireland joined the economic union, now called the European Community, in 1973 - the first non-founding member-states to do so.
We grew accustomed during these years and all these arguments, to hear the Community described as the Common Market. I hope this is a habit we can now abandon. Certainly the unified market is a matter of enormous signficance. But it is only the first step which will carry us well beyond the questions of tarrifs and trade. But what we are building is a Community. A Community. We were able to show in one field after another we were able to come together as neighbours, to achieve by cooperation the many aims which we share and which we could not possibley hope to realize in isolation.
Over the course of the following two decades, more and more European neighbours saw the success of the EC and applied to join. First Greece, then Spain and Portugal, followed by Austria, Finland, and Sweden. On top of expanding, the European Community also tied together the member-states even closer together. European citizenship was established, a parliament of elected representatives created, free movement across the Schengen Area allowed, and the European Court of Justice given more responsibilities. In 1993, the member-state leaders signed the Maastricht Treaty, which officially remade the European Community into the European Union we know today. Schuman’s vision of a united Europe was slowly becoming a reality.
But that’s the EU’s past. What about the EU’s present, and what are its plans for the future? When the first version of the EU first formed, it looked like this. In 1993, it looked like this. Today, it looks like this. The EU has expanded massively since its birth, and has brought Europeans closer together than ever before. A man living in Porto can move all the way to Helsinki without showing their passport or changing currencies thanks to the Euro. Once he arrives, he can work and live there without a visa, and is protected by the same EU laws as everyone else. If you told a French man in 1940 that this would be possible, he would never have believed you. “Europe is too fractured!”, he’d say. “Germany and France have always been enemies.”
In this sense, the European Union has been a tremendous success, but not everything has gone according to plan. The founding fathers of Europe wanted member-states to be connected not just economically, but also militarily. The European Defence Community, which sought to build a pan-European army, was rejected by the French Assembly in 1954. An EU-wide Constitution was drafted in 2004 but was rejected by member-states concerned about losing national sovereignty. And the EU is still reeling from the UK’s departure from the Union in 2019, the very first member-state to leave the EU. But at its core, the mission of unifying Europe and preventing war through cooperation are still alive and well, even if the road towards that end goal is bumpy, at best.
So, why does the EU exist? The EU is Europe’s way of rejecting the old systems of international relations on the continent, where Great Powers fought over every single asset they could. The EU exists to tie Europeans together economically, politically, and maybe even militarily, so that the horrors of the last centuries can’t happen again, and so that the continent can stand against other actors looking to undermine our sovereignty.
What do you think of the EU’s reason for existing? Does it accomplish its goal, or does something new need to take its place? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for watching. Hit the like button, subscribe, and please sign up to our Patreon if you want to support us further.