What was the most important date in post-war European history? Some historians would say
all European history as it changed Europe for ever.
Who made the real turning point where his government created a
democratic solution for the whole Continent, its politics, economics and
its defence?
Robert Schuman in 1948!
EU70 comes the year after EU’s Brussels “elite”
mistakenly celebrated
EU60!
The distinguished French professor of history, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle said that the date of
20 July 1948 must be considered as the real turning point of European history. It was a new point of departure.
“For the first time a government officially presented a
project aimed at the construction of Europe. While the idea of
supranationality was not clearly delineated, it seems that the project
implied it. Before 1914, Europe was only conceived in terms of
equilibrium or balance of power.”
At the start of the 20th century, the system of alliances Europe into
two blocs, he wrote. The European equilibrium, was, as US President
Wilson stated, the deep cause of the Great War. The interwar initiative
of Briand tried to shape an entity called Europe within the global
system of the League of Nations. Aristide Briand did not propose
something new. To attribute the paternity of a governmental initiative
for present-day European construction to Briand would be to commit
a dangerous anachronism, warned Duroselle.
After
World War II ended, Europeans started to turn their minds to rebuilding
the ruins of broken cities and industries. But they were immediately
faced with other matters of life and death. The Soviet Union, USSR,
occupied eastern and central Europe. During the war, Communist party
cadres from Germany, Poland, Hungary and other countries were trained in
Moscow about how to seize power at war’s end. They knew where the main
levers of power were in each country and how to subvert parliaments
even with a small Communist party.
As
Winston Churchill put it in his famous Fulton, Missouri speech on the
Iron Curtain on 5 March 1946:
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain
has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the
capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw,
Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all
these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must
call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not
only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases,
increasing measure of control from Moscow. … The Communist parties,
which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been
raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are
seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments
are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in
Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.”
He added:
“The
safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a new unity in
Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from
the quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we
have witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung.”
A few days later on Bastille Day that year Churchill met with Robert Schuman in Metz, France and delivered his
first great European speech.
Schuman was then Minister of Finance for France. France was in deep
danger of being sucked into the Soviet sphere. The French Communist
party was the country’s largest. It tried to take over parliament. US
diplomats warned President Truman that France too could fall. But by
late 1947, Schuman had become Prime Minister. He showed iron-willed
opposition to Communist threats, revolutionary strikes and sabotage.
Schuman also prevented a future war by gradually changed the nationalistic policies of the
Gaullists
who wanted a land-grab of territory up to the Rhine. De Gaulle was no
longer in power but was still a powerful influence in parliament and in
mass rallies. De Gaulle’s followers tried opportunistically to bring
down the Schuman government by voting and working in lock-step with the
Communists’ insurrection.
In
the last days of his first government, Schuman made a decisive step
that has affected all Europeans ever since. First, his government,
working with UK’s foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, created a defensive
pact, known as the Brussels Treaty Organization. Ostensibly, the pact of
France, UK and the Benelux countries was to guard against further
German aggression. Schuman’s foreign minister Georges Bidault was very
nervous about openly declaring it was to prevent Soviet invasion.
Schuman much less so.
On 19-20 July 1948 Bidault delivered Schuman’s message to the foreign
ministers of the Brussels Pact, meeting in The Hague. It astounded them
too. Bidault described Belgium’s foreign minister, Paul-Henri Spaak as a
man hard to surprise. On making his speech, Bidault said his eyes were
extraordinarily round with shock.
“We are at a moment, perhaps unique in history, where it is possible to create Europe,” said Bidault.
He made two propositions.
The first proposition was to create a
European parliamentary assembly.
It would be made up initially of parliamentarians of national bodies
and also open to other nations who wished to apply. The second was for
an
economic and customs union for the six countries, to which other nations could apply to join.
“Thus in the economic sphere the Common Market was
created and from the political perspective, the Assembly of the Council
of Europe in Strasbourg. In spite of all later obstacles and violent
opposition to these two ideas, both of them have flourished,” Bidault
wrote.
A
third major institution arose out of Schuman’s initiative at the
Brussels Pact. Washington required a demonstration of Europeans’
willingness to defend itself before it could politically commit its
forces to Europe again. With the Berlin blockade that year, and
following Schuman’s lead, talks began with USA and Canada to create
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It entered force around
the same time as the Council of Europe began its sessions in summer
1949.
This year 2018 represents the 70th birthday of that positive turning point,
#EU70.
How to solve Fish Quotas? Continue to let the politicians meeting behind closed doors and override scientific advice? Obviously not. Or use the institutions that Schuman designed? An open Consultative Committee with equal representatives of
Every Customs Union requires a final legal arbiter, such as a Court whose decision is respected. The Single Market has the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. All Europeans in the EU and UK are subject Court of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Strasbourg.
