The beginnings of European integration

• Speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich
• The Hague Congress
• Creation of the OEEC
• The birth of NATO
• Creation of the Council of Europe
• The Schuman Declaration
• Inaugural session of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe
• Signing of the Treaty of Paris instituting the ECSC
• France rejects the EDC
• Conference of Messina
• Jean Monnet announces a new stage in European integration

• Home
• The origins of the European idea
• The European idea at the beginning of the 20th century
• From the Six to the Nine
• Overcoming the crises
• The relaunch of the European idea
• The birth of 'political union'

In 1945, Europe emerged traumatised from a bloody and destructive conflict. As a new period of international tension – the Cold War – began, some people quickly realised that only a union of the countries of Europe would enable the continent to recover its position on the world stage. It was a time for reconstruction and reconciliation. Cooperation agreements proliferated, some at the instigation of the American allies (the OEEC, NATO), some at the initiative of the Europeans themselves (the Council of Europe, the ECSC). In this period of burgeoning intellectual activity, a number of movements clashed on the means of attaining European unification: federalists, supporters of intergovernmental cooperation, functionalists, and so on. In the end, it was the gradualist, pragmatic approach advocated by Jean Monnet that would have the most striking impact, as the common management of coal and steel among the Six gave rise to the most complete form of peaceful integration the world had ever seen.

1945