The ‘European project’ at first sight might seem a ploddingly pragmatic, even technocratic, instrument for achieving harmonisation between its member states. As such, it is habitually contrasted with the ‘nation-states’ which make up its members, and which, unlike the office blocks of Brussels and Strasbourg, are seen as historical communities (‘nations’) as well as states, united in their shared historical memories, language and culture. This unproblematic acceptance of the ‘nation-state’ makes for a skewed comparison when used in a problematisation of ‘Europe’. There seems to be little that Europe can offer by way of a common cultural bonding agent; at best, there is a notion of ‘unity in diversity’ (the official motto of the European Union (EU) since 2000). Indeed, the Treaty of Maastricht included a cultural paragraph which uneasily balanced the requirements of that cultural diversity and unity. The uncertainty concerning a common cultural basis is even seen as a characteristic weakness in the European project, something that deprives it of a centripetal, cohesive force. Its absence means that the EU is perpetually and self-consumingly in quest of a self-definition and, in Cris Shore’s formulation, lacks an identifying focus ‘to capture the loyalty and allegiance of its would-be citizens; to transform nationals into self-recognising European subjects’. Shore has also traced, in the mode of cultural anthropology, the corporate culture of the EU institutions, rather than analysing a cultural history or cultural agenda informing the European project.

It is 9 October 2001 and one of the authors, Thedvall, has been working for a month as a stagiaire/researcher at the Directorate General (DG) of Employment and Social Affairs (DG EMPL). It is morning, and she is taking part in an induction course at the DG EMPL to become familiarised with the European Commission, the DG, and their ways of working. Induction courses are frequently held at the DG and the European Commission in general. There is a constant influx of people starting to work as fonctionnaires with permanent positions or arriving as detached national experts (DNEs) or stagiaires staying for a few months or a few years. The influx is matched only by the constant stream of farewell parties and goodbye drinks. People move in and out of the city all the time. Brussels is a city where friends constantly leave. The room, a typical meeting room in the DG with grey/blueish chairs, tables, floors and walls, is filled with a mix of people of different nationalities, positions and levels, from directors to trainees/stagiaires. The day starts out with the Director General welcoming us and talking about the European Union (EU) project. As Director General of DG EMPL, he is particularly pleased that the EU project has expanded to include social issues, moving the EU closer towards a federation. He is convinced that, within this decade or the next, the EU will become a proper federal union with working political processes and a European Parliament as important as its member states’ parliaments.

In the history of European integration, the years after 2004 have been characterised by three main processes: the dialectic of deepening and broadening, the unfolding and impact of major crises, and new types and levels of European politicisation. This chapter aims to develop a perspective on how these three contemporary historical processes relate to the longer-term process of European integration. I claim that the enlarged European Union (EU) of the early twenty-first century may have been moderately failing forward when managing its numerous crises, but it has been able neither to substantially counter the fallout from repeated crises, nor to meaningfully reverse internal processes of socio-economic and increasingly also political divergence. In global comparison, the failings of the EU have clearly been relative rather than catastrophic. At the same time, the steps the EU has taken in these years – to counter crises, integrate and democratise – would need to be assessed as rather moderate precisely because internal challenges have been mounting amidst a worsening external environment.

In 1832, the Prussian novelist Gotthilf August von Maltitz published a curious epistolary novella, the Journey among the Ruins of Old Europe in the Year 2830. Telling of a journey of an American tourist to Europe to visit its ruins and learn about its past, von Maltitz meant this to be a ‘serious and satirical’ work. In it, Europe was a devastated land, invaded and despoiled by hordes from the East, the Russians first and foremost. Its peoples had been easily subdued because of their weakness after centuries of decadence, brought about by their materialism and individualism. In the novella, the comparison between Europe and the United States was a grim one indeed. Von Maltitz’s text, now a forgotten literary curiosity, was rather unusual in its day, and few of its readers would have seen in it a serious foreshadowing of European decline. In truth, the nineteenth century was an age of unprecedented economic, military and cultural expansion for Europe. Admittedly, Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that its nations had attained the acme of their power and that Russia and the United States, ‘called by a secret design of Providence’, would one day hold in their hands the destinies of the world. Yet few others, at that time and for the best part of the century, were so prescient.

This chapter analyses how the United Nations (UN) as an intergovernmental organisation, has shaped the functioning of the European Union (EU) and its member states in global governance over the years. The EU is often seen, both by scholars and by practitioners, as a special, even unique actor in the UN context, characterised by high levels of support, cooperation, institutionalisation and formalisation.

This chapter approaches uniqueness not as a mantra, but as a question of empirical validation, by zooming in on the UN General Assembly (UNGA). This organ embodies the principle of universality by bringing together all UN members and, in addition, allowing a wide variety of observers to participate in its work, including the EU. While the latter’s functioning is well-documented, there remain some blind spots to be addressed, such as the UNGA’s decision to grant the European Economic Community (EEC) observer status in October 1974.

In ‘Göttingen’, the French singer Barbara, who as a Jewish child hid in German-occupied France during the Second World War, celebrated Franco-German reconciliation after the bloodshed and hatred that had marked bilateral relations in the past. The song, recorded in 1964 first in French and later in German, was hailed as a hymn to Franco-German reconciliation and credited for improving post-war Franco-German relations. The song’s melancholic tunes certainly captured the Zeitgeist of an era: it was recorded roughly a year after the signature of the Élysée ‘friendship’ treaty on 22 January 1963. The treaty was instrumental in forging a narrative of how the two countries overcame a shared history of conflict and rivalry to become a driving force of European integration.

This chapter sets out to conceptualise the institutional and legal evolution of the European Communities (EC) over time from the Treaties of Paris and Rome to the Treaty of Maastricht.

The founding treaties of Paris and Rome were essentially open-ended efforts for integration, despite their undeniable differences in nature. At the moment of negotiating the founding treaties and during the first years of the Communities, it was unforeseeable whether the Communities would go through a process of gradual and increasing federalisation, or whether member states would eventually manage to dominate the Communities. The balance between these contradictory tendencies inherent in the founding treaties was clarified only through the open political battles in the 1960s. In a sense, the battle between federalist and intergovernmentalist streams has continued beyond Maastricht to the present day.

After a dozen years of Eurosclerosis, a European revival was ready in 1985 to transform the European Communities. With the aim of creating an internal (or single) market without internal frontiers by the end of 1992, the new Commission presided over by Frenchman Jacques Delors launched a very important legislative programme which was to be adopted in 8 years and which succeeded in convincing the member states to modify the founding treaties of the 1950s. Accordingly, the Single European Act (SEA) was signed in 1986 and entered into force in 1987. The single market programme (SMP) captivated the minds of Europeans and had a lasting influence on the construction of Europe. We will examine several crucial questions in this chapter. What did the SMP and the SEA consist of? What was the motivation behind the will to complete the internal market? What was the outcome? How and in what way has the SMP had a lasting influence on the construction of Europe? Where are we today, almost 30 years after the supposed completion of the internal market?

In October 1949, the Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin recalled the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreements of July 1944. From a luxurious hotel in the secluded forests of New Hampshire, the world had aimed to stabilise the international economic system by creating a new rules-based global monetary order. At the time, the financial experts of continental Europe had little to say in bringing about this new order, which was predominantly of Anglo-American design. In a parallel effort to the Anglo-American financial experts, most notably John Maynard Keynes and Harry D. White, Europe’s leaders envisioned the post-war monetary system differently. They deliberated ‘regional monetary groups’ that should tie in with a ‘skeleton world council’ in the form of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

European integration as the solution that brought peace and democracy after the devastating wars ravaging Europe in the early twentieth century: this is still one of the most widespread narratives about European cooperation. It is, and was, also the pivot of the discourse of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors to justify their existence and create their success in a bold form of self-fashioning.1 Just like the German Stunde Null (zero hour) and the international caesura that the United Nations emphasised between itself and the League of Nations, European cooperation projects after the Second World War emphasised the novelty of their endeavours and the break with the preceding, violent era.

In 1979 the French economist Jean Fourastié, who had been a member of Jean Monnet’s ‘Commissariat au Plan’ and an expert both in the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), published the volume Les Trente Glorieuses ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975. The book analysed the development of the French economy after the Second World War until the aftermath of the oil shock which hit the Western world in late 1973, after the Yom Kippur War. When it was published, Western countries had already launched a number of initiatives to respond to the economic troubles caused by the oil shock. At the same time, they had begun to seek solutions to the monetary problems caused by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, with the start of the Group of Seven meetings and the first attempts at monetary coordination among the European Economic Community (EEC) member countries.