The constitutional dimension of the European Union (EU) has to account for the fact that the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TECE) seems to have failed in 2005 in the Dutch and French referenda. Thus we are unlikely to have a legal document officially called a ‘constitution’ in the foreseeable future. Yet, the designation is not decisive on its own (cf. the German Grundgesetz or the Hungarian Basic Law). Treaties can also be constitutions, as the examples of Cyprus (1960, Treaty of Establishment),1 the Constitution of Württemberg (1819), the Constitution of Saxony (1831)2 and the Norddeutsche Bund (1867) show.

Development policy is currently one of the pillars of external action of the European Union (EU). The volume of official development assistance disbursed by the EU and its member states makes the EU one of the world’s largest donors. Despite its significance today, development assistance was not discussed in the meetings of the Spaak Committee in 1955–6 and was only later placed on the table during negotiations for the EEC Treaty.

The principal theories of European integration (neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism and social constructivism) have been rather silent about the presence and role of the religious factor in the process of unification of Europe. Such an approach, based on a certain underestimation of religion, seems to be unjustifiable nowadays, since it has become evident that the religious component of European integration appears in various forms and formats. For instance, some Protestants regard this integration as a religious ‘plot’, usually of the Roman Catholic Church, aiming at the construction of a new European Catholic empire and the undermining of Protestantism. Also, the religious dimension was one of the most controversial and fiercely debated issues at the time of drafting the European Constitution, namely the inclusion in the text of the reference to the Christian inheritance of Europe, or the reference to God. The religious or religion-related arguments played an important role in the debates on the EU membership of the largest ‘newcomer’ of the 2004 enlargement (Poland), and in the discussion in Ireland on the referendums on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 and 2009. Finally, the importance of religion has been confirmed in the referendums on EU membership, including the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum in the United Kingdom.

It is therefore pertinent to claim that the presence of religion, or, to be more precise, Christian Churches, in the process of European integration is not disputable; we can only discuss how this presence has been seen, analysed and interpreted. This is addressed in chapter 26, in accordance with the following structure. First I discuss how the role of Churches in European integration has been described in the relevant literature. Then I analyse the role of Churches at the beginning of integration, in terms of their role as non-state actors and identity formers, as well as the Churches’ influence and their presence at supranational level. The final pages of this chapter have been devoted to the discussion of the practical cooperation of the Churches and EU institutions.

European integration is not the result of a preconceived plan. It rather consists of messy procedures and heated discussions. Ad hoc decision-making, crises and even utter chaos have been constants in the history of the European Union (EU). This complex reality has induced scholars to zoom in on its infamous ‘muddling through’ to better understand what is going on in European integration. Consequently, the primary focus of research has been on ways, means and outcomes: inter-state bargaining, and the resulting treaties and European institutions. However, this focus on institutional ways and means, and on the outcomes of inter-state bargaining, has implied that ideas about Europe’s future mostly have been treated as proxies of specific, rather one-dimensional, state, or institutional, interests. This leads to distorted images of history. If the recent crisis years made one thing very clear, it is this: that it proves quite complex to adequately analyse the multilevel, multipolicy and demoi-cracy muddling through that characterises the EU’s laborious management of crises and day-to-day politics and policies, let alone that a mere focus on institutional interests would be sufficient.

Before the Great War of 1914–18 ended, the successor states of four Eurasian empires split into conservative, liberal and revolutionary camps; ideological battles that had been waged for nearly a century were resumed like trench warfare in the streets of cities, in diplomatic salons, in the pages of broadsheets and in parliamentary halls. By the middle of the 1930s these ideological battles had again brought forth a civil war, this time in Spain, which came as an augury, tragic and bloody, conjoining the past, present and future in a grim garden of forking paths. This was the setting after the Second World War in which some western European nations sought to lay the basis for what would come to be called ‘an ever closer union’, whilst a rather different ‘union’ settled upon their eastern neighbours under Soviet rule. The processes of unification in eastern and western Europe were reactions and stimuli to the diminution of European power during the post-war period.

In 2000 the European Union (EU) entered the new millennium after two substantial treaty reforms, those of Maastricht and of Amsterdam, that had significantly expanded its mission and objectives, capacity for internal and external action and democratic credentials. Two fundamental treaty objectives, Economic and Monetary Union and the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ), had been added, with the first resulting in the successful introduction of the euro on 1 January 2001 and the second equipping it in time with possibilities for action in a common European response to the new challenges of global terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that was unprecedented in terms of the range of instruments used.

Since its very beginnings, a central narrative of European integration has been that only a form of profound cooperation between the European states will allow the promotion of prosperity and social security. The narrative of prosperity is one of the oldest and most constant meta-arguments of regional European integration. The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 already stated that the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) would contribute to ‘raising living standards’.1 In the European Union’s (EU’s) self-portrayal, prosperity, growth and employment are still among its hardly questioned and fundamental goals, as former President of the Commission Emanuel Barroso put it: ‘Today the raison d’être of our Union is also the same that was there sixty years ago: peace, democracy, to be freed from fears, mistrust and divisions, to share security, stability and prosperity.’

On 3 October 1990, something very strange happened. The European Community (EC) expanded without formally acquiring a new member. The reason for this was the reunification of Germany – on this day, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) acceded to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). As a result, the FRG gained five new federal states, which then also became part of the EC.

In 2020, ‘strategic autonomy’ became a buzzword in Brussels. The phrase catches different meanings, ranging from the self-sufficiency of the European Union (EU) to the management of interconnectedness in a globalised world. In EU parlance, ‘strategic autonomy’ is used in a sense that aims to be different from the traditional concepts of sovereignty and power, but should, however, not be read in contradiction with free trade. ‘Strategic autonomy’ seems to have been articulated first by President of the European Council Charles Michel in two speeches in September 2020. But in reacting to the clichés that US President Donald Trump voiced against the EU in January 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had already expressed her desire for European autonomy in declaring that ‘we Europeans have our fate in our own hands’. French President Emmanuel Macron has regularly used the related concept of ‘European sovereignty’ since his speech on Europe at the Sorbonne in 2017. Regardless of the origin and meaning of the phrase, ‘strategic autonomy’ touches therefore on a perennial motif of European integration that largely predates the 2010s, namely the place and role of the EU in a globalising (or globalised) world.

The decade-long process of European monetary integration has been the most ambitious, and probably the most controversial, project of its type.1

The Eurozone crisis of the early 2010s reinforced the scepticism toward monetary integration experienced not only by populist politicians but also by disillusioned academics. Belke and Verheyen, for example, argued in 2012 that: ‘It is time to admit that under the prevailing structure and membership, the euro area simply does not work successfully.’