The economic turbulence of the 1970s and dollar dominance induced efforts to establish closer monetary coordination, and in 1979 the European Monetary System (EMS) was launched in order to create a zone of monetary stability in Europe (Dyson and Featherstone 1999:2). After a period of ”Europessimism” and ”Eurosclerosis” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, integration was relaunched in 1986 with the Single European Act (SEA). This reform aimed to create ”an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital is ensured” (Article 8A of the 1985 Commission White Paper, as amended by the SEA. Cited in Moravcsik 1991:41). In addition, the SEA reformed procedural matters by expanding the use of qualified majority voting (only on internal market issues, however) in the Council of Ministers (Moravcsik 1991:42).
Sovereignty and autonomy – Declining state powers?
This section considers some state-centric accounts on how the major developments of European integration between 1957 and 1989 affected the sovereignty and autonomy of the member states. It indicates that states by 1989 still remained in control, even though an increasing number of decisions were being made, either at supranational (in the Commission) or intergovernmental (in the Council) level.
The state-centric approach, commonly termed intergovernmentalism, sees integration as being driven by a series of inter-state bargains. There are, however, different views on how the member states have been affected by this process. Milward (1992), for example, claims that the evolution of the EC has been an important part of the reassertion of the nation-state as an organizational unity, after the interwar period and WWII had left it in crisis.
For Milward, European integration was simply a question of adapting to global forces, which posed a significant challenge to the medium-sized, modestly resourced European states. Cooperation, rather than competition, was necessary for these states to maximise their interests in the new international order. Integration, however, was limited to isolated areas, and intrusion on sovereignty was only nominal (O’Neill 1996:55).
A scholar who argues that European integration has fundamentally changed the West European states, is Wallace (1997). He agrees with Milward in that the European nation-state was indeed strengthened in the early post-war period, and claims that integration must be seen in a wider global context. Especially important was the American efforts to promote regional integration in Europe. He argues (with Milward, Hoffmann, and others) that until the end of the 1960s there was “positive-sum relationship” between the institutions for economic integration (EEC and OEEC) and security (NATO) which re-established national legitimacy and autonomy. However, he says,
the years in which formal political integration seemed to be making least progress – between 1972 and 1984-85 – appear in retrospect to have witnessed a progressive erosion of national autonomy, arising out of changes in technology (…), in methods of production and management, and in the explosion of cross-border movement throughout Western-Europe. These trends have been reinforced by the integration of financial markets (…), which has been such a marked development during the 1980s (Wallace 1997:24).
Wallace (1997:39-44) argues that the states of Western Europe have changed dramatically, and have moved far away from the ideal held by national leaders, such as de Gaulle, in the early stages of European integration. But how far one thinks the functions of the state have been undermined depends on one‘s conception of the state, and this differs between different European countries. Some general remarks can still be made, though. Wallace mentions that states have lost control over national economies, and that the importance of national defence has declined. This has “left the provision of welfare and related public goods as the most significant function of West European nation-states“. Furthermore, state sovereignty was formally challenged by the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which provided for the removal of internal frontier controls both on goods and people, and provided consequently for cooperation among police, customs and intelligence services. This involved the abandonment of one of the most basic principles of the nation-state. And, finally, the most remarkable development to challenge national sovereignty formally was the acceptance of EC law as superior to domestic law in all areas of Community competence under the Treaties.
Even though sovereignty had been altered, it can be argued that states had had their autonomy reduced as a result of broader developments in the 1970s and 1980s, rather than having lost ground fundamentally in the area of sovereignty. For example, Wallace (1997:35) maintains that the states remained in control of the integration process as they bargained to gain the benefits from cooperation and increased openness, and at the same time not conceding too much national autonomy. The SEA was in that respect “a classic compromise, in which governments committed to the maintenance of as much autonomy as possible nevertheless agreed a new package of rules under what seemed to them powerful economic and political imperatives”. Dinan (1994:3) argues along the same line as he holds the SEA as a typical example of how intergovernmentalism and supranationalism are reconciled, and that that member states share sovereignty simply because it is in their national interest. Furthermore, Keohane and Hoffmann (1990:227) claim that European integration indeed is “an experiment in pooling sovereignty, not in transferring it from states to supranational institutions”. And, that decisionmaking to a large extent is still intergovernmental rather than supranational can be reflected by the fact that many of the key decisions of the integration process have come out of intergovernmental conferences, outside the formal institutional framework of the Community (McCormick 1999:143).
Europeanisation of national interest?
This section discusses whether national interest formation increasingly became influenced by the Community level or, if by the end of the cold war, national interest continuously was being defined domestically. It is argued in line with institutionalist theories that EC institutions increasingly did shape interests of governments.
In the early years of European integration, social science explanations of this process were dominated by neofunctional theory. It predicted that integration would become a self-reinforcing process of spillover, as cooperation in one area soon would lead to cooperation in another.
The neofunctionalists had to revise their theory as the European Community in the 1960s took a clear intergovernmental direction, especially as the French government sought to limit the influence of the supranational institutions. Neofunctionalism has, however, been revived under the label of (historical) institutionalism. The institutionalist perspective argues that national preferences shift as an unintended consequence of prior integration, any development is “path-dependent”. In this view, power and preferences, rather than being given as exogenous structures, are influenced by the integration process itself. Economic integration and institutional development reinforces itself through feedback or “spillover”. Either the development generates changes in national interest, thereby spurring further integration, or deepening supranational institutions themselves start to influence policy decisions. Institutionalists do not claim that given structures are unimportant, but they see previous integration and institution-building as being crucial in shaping decisions made by state representatives (Moravcsik 2003:489). For example, Sandholtz (1993:3) argues that there is a link between EC institutions and state interest formation: “Community decisions are bargains that reflect state interests, but those interests are shaped in part by membership in the EC”.
Transnational exchange has pushed the organisations of the EC to construct new policies and new arenas for policy-relevant behaviour, arenas, which once established, promote further transactional exchange. Once there is movement towards supranationalism, EC rules also produce a logic of its own, which may be called “institutionalization” (Sweet and Sandholtz 1998:2-16).
Pierson (1998:34-50) lists four reasons for why the integration process may not be fully controlled by the participating governments. Firstly, EC organisations have acquired autonomous capabilities for decision-making; secondly, political decision-makers have a restricted time-horizon; thirdly, unintended consequences of decisions may be considerable; and, finally, there may be shifts in the preferences of political leaders. Furthermore, he argues that once states lose some control over the process, it may be difficult to regain it because of three reasons, namely, the resistance of supranational actors, institutional barriers to reform, and sunk costs and the rising price of exit.
Whereas early European integration theory and ideology envisioned the “end of politics” as the result of an increasingly technocratic supranational management, political struggles remained very much alive, and interest conflict continued to be channelled through the state; the state remained the arena where the ‘national interest’ was being defined, and the state continued to represent the national interests vis-à-vis other states. Politics continued after the establishment of the European institutions to be shaped in a domestic setting. As noted by Grosser (1980:330),
the common Franco-German aim which was affirmed in 1950 and then with growing vehemence up to 1963, and after that date with a persistence of varying but dependable intensity, does not prevent a kind of drifting apart of the two countries, less in their relations than in the differing evolution of their internal political climate. Yet it is not contradictory if one also notes growing convergences which are anchored in reality rather than fully perceived”.
The steady growth of interaction between the national societies of the EC implied an ever increasing interdependence between them. This was true especially for the economic field and consequently economic groups had their interests vested in continued cooperation and even greater integration.
The interconnectedness of the national economies was also evident through the EMS and as the economies became more and more open, domestic macroeconomic conditions came to be increasingly influenced by evolvements outside domestic control. Dyson and Featherstone (1999:2), for example, argue that in the 1980s a monetary “stability culture” was beginning to form.
Neofunctionalism under the new label of institutionalism was more modest than mainstream theory of the 1960s in that it acknowledged that spillover could only be a partial explanation of regional integration. Institutionalists tend instead to take a more “syncretic” approach incorporating assumptions from both sides of the debate (O’Neill 1996:51).
It was clear, even before the relaunch of the Community project with the Single Market proposal of 1985, that European integration was by no means the modest intergovernmental enterprise reflected in the dominant state-centric paradigm. The regional process has never been driven solely by the domestic priorities of its member states, even though they have all utilised the Community’s policy procedures to pursue their respective national interests. Although the state-centric paradigm did reflect the national preferences that continue to motivate the member states, exclusive domestic agendas were by no means their only concern. At the same time, the evolving Community process was far from being the sort of inexorable push towards a Pan European polity predicted by the supranationalist account of events” (O’Neill 1996:83).
Newman (1996:23) also argues that integrationist theories are correct in that the European Community had become more than just the sum of its components, and that the separation between the “domestic” and the “external” had eroded. However, he says that state-centric theories are right in upholding the continued dominance of governments, or at least some of them.
Some intergovernmentalist theorists too take a somewhat more modified view on the dynamics of European integration. Keohane and Hoffmann (1990; 1991), for example, agree with the point that spillovers are important.
Thus, there seems to be support for the institutionalist argument that national interest formation is influenced by the common interest in cooperation, and that integration, in a sense, may have its own logic, even if one may accept that the EC has an intergovernmental character.
European integration post-1989
While states still remain the most powerful actors in the European Community (European Union after Maastricht), the pooling of sovereignty and even concession of sovereignty at the supranational level have taken a seemingly radical turn especially since the Maastricht treaty.
According to Wallace (1997:35), this treaty encompasses almost all the core functions of the European nation-state in some way or another. The states no longer have full control of the national territory and borders, police, citizenship and immigration, currency, taxation, financial transfers, management of the economy, promotion of industry, representation and accountability, foreign policy and defence, and “[o]nly welfare remained securely in the hands of national governments “.
The importance of the institutions in Brussels can also be witnessed by the dramatic growth in the number of interest-groups present there (Marks, Hooghe and Blank 1995). Milward (2002:27), though, upholds that “[t]he Union remains what it has always been, a support framework for national state politics in a period in which these have become increasingly difficult to pursue”.
Conclusion
This essay argues that the EC member states by 1989 had changed as a result of the integration process. Some important changes had slowly evolved during the years from 1957: increasingly more decisions were being made at the intergovernmental or supranational level, and national interest formation was increasingly being shaped by developments at the European level. It can be argued, in line with a syncretic approach, that European integration certainly displays intergovernmental features, but that “over time they have given way to a growing emphasis on supranationalism” (McCormick 1999:145).
What the reviewed approaches do not capture, however, are the implications for social relations in Europe as a result of the integration process. With a more broadly based social theory understanding of the state we could have explored how integration has affected Europe’s socio-economic order, as do for example Rhodes and Van Apeldoorn (1997) in their discussion of the transformation of national capitalisms in Western Europe. This would arguably have given us a deeper understanding of the investigated issue, but would obviously have required a more complex framework than the one presented here in this essay.
In conclusion, one might have to give a somewhat ambiguous answer to the question of whether European integration had, by 1989, become more of a mechanism for bargaining rather than having changed the nature of its member states. It should be clear that the process of European integration actually had changed member states, both in terms of sovereignty and autonomy, as well as having shaped national interest. But even though the EC perhaps had become more than simply just a mechanism for inter-state bargaining in the late 1980s, it was also clear that it still was very much so.
References
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Grosser, Alfred (1980), The Western Alliance: European-American Relations since 1945, London: MacMillan Press.
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European Economic Community from 1957 to 1967.
In the literature they may also be referred to as realist versus functionalist theories, or more generally, as intergovernmental versus supranational theories (which then also include federalist theory).
This does not necessarily rule out an understanding of the social base of the state and the “national interest”. Moravcsik (2003:36) refers to Charles Lindblom and his Politics and Markets (1977) when describing how powerful private economic sectors play a decisive role in determining government policy. This essay will, however, not go into the discussion of what impact European integration has had on social relations in Europe.
There is a third possible approach, which may be labelled the multi-level governance model. This approach argues that states are not unitary actors, and that different groups and layers within states pull in different directions, and that states have lost control of the institutions they set up. Supranational institutions have independent influence in policy-making beyond state control. The question of state sovereignty and national interest is thus less relevant as competencies are shared by actors at different levels (Marks, Hooghe and Blank 1995). This approach is not going to be discussed, however, as it seems to be most relevant for the development after 1989.
Keohane and Hoffmann (1991:10) still maintain, though, that the EU has always rested on a set of intergovernmental bargains.
The reason why European integration was not so much driven by geopolitical motives as one initially might think, they say, is because US presence already guaranteed regional security.
This, according to Moravcsik (2003:102), was one of the few incidents where geopolitical motives prevailed over economic ones. According to him, a free trade agreement between Britain and Germany could have been the outcome had Adenauer followed the advice of his economics minister, Erhard. Since German industry on the whole was indifferent between a customs union and a free trade agreement, Adenauer could prevail.
De Gaulle’s motivation is conventionally said to have been geopolitical, driven by a sense of rivalry vis-à-vis Britain and a fear of too strong Atlantic influence over the Community. Moravcsik (2003), however, contends that the general’s main motivation was economic, namely to protect French farming interests.
The discussion leaves out, however, a large part of neo-realist and neo-liberal accounts on the relationship between the EC and the member states. For example, one of the most important proponents of an intergovernmental approach to European integration, Moravcsik, is not given much attention in the discussion of this essay. The reason for this is that he, and others, largely adopts a static model of the state, and focuses more on the process of bargaining between states than on the dynamics of the relationship between the states and the EC institutions.
Perry Anderson (1997:55-65) shows that Milward’s conclusions rests on four assumptions: primacy of domestic objectives, and continuity of foreign goals with them; democracy of policy formation, and symmetry of national public opinions. He argues that if these really were the main driving forces behind integration, the result would have been something different than what was established by the treaties of Rome, and would have implied a plainer framework, more in line with the desires of nationalist leaders as de Gaulle. Thus, Anderson argues that another force must be taken into account. “That, of course, was the federalist vision of a supranational Europe developed by, above all, Monnet and his circle, the small group of technocrats who conceived the original ECSC, and drafted much of the detail of the EEC.” Furthermore, American pressure was crucial in sealing the realisation of the Treaty of Rome. Anderson salutes, however, the modified tone taken by Milward in his more recent writings. “Instead of relying on the claims of consensus, Milward now proposes the notion of allegiance - ‘all those elements which induce citizens to give loyalty to institutions of governance’ - as the key to understanding European integration”.
The perhaps most prominent neofunctionalist scholar, E.B. Haas, predicted in his book The Uniting of Europe (1968:29) that “the established nation state is in full retreat in Europe”. The events of the late 1960s and early 1970s induced him to first qualify his theory, and later commit full retreat, as he admitted that “what once appeared to be a distinctive supranational style now looks more like a huge regional bureaucratic appendage to an intergovernmental conference in permanent session” (Haas 1976:6).
According to Wallace (1997:25-26) the “idealists who defined the rhetoric of European integration were anti-nationalists: shaped by the bitter experiences of the Second World War, the pathological mutation of nationalism into Fascism and National Socialism, the military defeat of Germany’s neighbours and the corrosive impact of occupation.” Furthermore, the “technocratic” approach of early theorists and practitioners of “the Community Method” was also anti-political.
It relied on technology as the fuel, and on the logic of the market as the motor of integration: the drive for economic modernization would lead to political unity. It was the old Saint-Simonian dream of depoliticised progress, accompanied by one idea that, at first sight, seemed quite political: the idea that the gradual dispossession of the nation-state and the transfer of allegiance to the new Community would be hastened by the establishment of a central quasi-federal political system (Hoffman 1982:29).
They argue, however, that these must be seen in the context of influences and pressures, as they depend on prior intergovernmental bargaining. Institutional change must also be understood as some form of adaptation to the global economy, and in addition, they say that European integration in the 1980s cannot be fully understood without seeking explanation in a hypothesis of preference-convergence between the states in the EC (Keohane and Hoffmann 1990; 1991:18-25).
