Exactly 73 years ago, on 9 May 1950, France’s then Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presented a document that we, later generations, know as the Schuman Declaration. The declaration proposed establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which would create the foundation for the economic and political union we now know as the European Union. Just under a year after the Schuman Declaration, the European Coal and Steel Community was born through the Treaty of Paris. The history between the six original founding countries – France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries – is not a particularly easy one. The founding countries agreed specifically to pool raw material reserves important to the arms industry. The aim was to permanently prevent the horrors of the World Wars of the preceding decades.
European integration has taken great leaps forward over these 73 years. Cooperation that began with the Coal and Steel Community expanded into the European Community, and the European Community became the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Over the years, the number of member states has grown from the original six to today’s twenty-seven. Cooperation between member states has, year by year, become more diverse, deepened, and taken on new forms. This expanding cooperation has led to major, union-wide reforms, such as new founding treaties and institutions.
A great deal has therefore changed since the time of Schuman and the EU’s other founders. So much, in fact, that the fundamental underlying idea of European integration has gradually faded, buried beneath an overflowing present.
It is only human that we judge the world through the eyes of our own time. So we also judge the success of European integration by quite different criteria than those who lived through its early years. Today’s criticism of the EU relates, for example, to its overall role in the economy, its fragmented migration policy, and power seen as excessive relative to the member states. This criticism reflects the difficulties that have tested Europe, and the world in general, in this millennium.
Yet easily buried beneath this criticism is the European Union’s greatest achievement, one that Schuman himself outlined in an almost prophetic way in his declaration:
”By pooling the production of coal and steel, common foundations for economic development will be immediately established, as a first step in the federation of Europe, changing the destiny of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.” (https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/1945-59/schuman-declaration-may-1950_fi)
That quote from the Schuman Declaration has come true exactly as written. European history has largely been defined by wars between European states. There have been wars of succession, wars of religion, civil wars, revolutionary wars, wars of independence, and world wars. The post-Second World War European project has not eliminated war from the world, but it has succeeded in eliminating wars between EU member states entirely. Today’s European imagination barely bends towards the violent thinking of our forebears, in which human lives were squandered fighting wars within Europe. For this we have a treaty-based world order to thank, and the European Union is its successful product.
However, the state of peace within Europe must not blind us to what is happening today on Europe’s periphery. Throughout the 2000s, Russia has stoked war in Europe’s eastern neighbourhood. February 2022 was the final proof that Russia is not committed to the same treaty-based thinking as Europe, but instead seeks to expand through a war that violates human dignity.
Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine may mark a turning point in European thinking about peace. Having succeeded in maintaining peace between member states, it is now possible to turn more attention to Europe’s periphery. The unity shown in supporting Ukraine may be a sign of exactly this kind of shift. European states have coordinated support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia with historic effectiveness. Support for Ukraine should be thought of on a long-term horizon – a potential prolonging of the war must not mean forgetting Ukrainians’ plight. On the contrary, Europe must invest in the continuity and diversity of its support, whether that means aid during the war or after it. Ukraine’s reconstruction cannot be supported, however, if Ukraine loses its fight for its very existence. In such a scenario, a government in line with European values would hardly rise from Ukraine’s ruins. Another striking passage from the Schuman Declaration, however, offers hope for the future:
”World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.” (https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/1945-59/schuman-declaration-may-1950_fi)
Text: Santeri Anttila
The author is JEF Tampere’s EU Affairs Officer and studies political science at the University of Tampere.