The Political Background to European Integration

André Szász
Additional contact information
André Szász: Dutch Central Bank

Chapter 1 in The Road to European Monetary Union, 1999, pp 1-6 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Political motives dominated European integration from the start. An overriding motive was the determination to prevent another war between Germany and France. Three wars had taken place within a century, at ever decreasing intervals. The firm intention to render further wars impossible inspired six European countries — France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries—to single out the two sectors of national economies then indispensable for waging war, the coal and steel sectors, and to subordinate them in a European Coal and Steel Community to a High Authority, which was intended to be supranational. As French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann, after whom the project was named, put it in May 1950: ‘The common production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not only unthinkable, but materially impossible.’1

Keywords: Foreign Policy; European Economic Community; European Monetary; Steel Sector; Political Background (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59947-5_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230599475

DOI: 10.1057/9780230599475_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().