Jan Młynarczyk reviews Koen van Zon, Matthew Broad, Aleksandra Komornicka, Paul Reef, Alessandra Schimmel, and Jorrit Steehouder’s The Unfinished History of European Integration (2nd edn, Amsterdam University Press 2024).
„Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre”. These words, famously uttered by François Mitterrand in his address to the European Parliament from 1995, are invoked by Frans Timmermans, the former Vice-President of the European Commission, in the foreword to The Unfinished History of European Integration (7). At a time of “the end of history,” when calls for strengthening Europe’s unity and strategic autonomy as the only means of survival in an increasingly unstable world are met with nationalist backlash, studying the history of European integration – and drawing lessons from it – seems pertinent as ever.
The authors express the intention for this book to serve as a sort of a “beginner’s guide” to European integration, useful to readers coming from various disciplines. They boil down their concept to four leading questions: What is Europe? Why the European Union? Who made the European Union? How does it function?
The first six chapters contain a succinct account of consecutive stages of European integration, from Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europeanism as a result of the disenchantment with the dysfunctional League of Nations to the reinvigoration of the enlargement debate, following Russian aggression against Ukraine. After discussing these consecutive stages, the last two chapters provide an overview of theoretical and historical perspectives on European integration.
Early into the first substantive chapters, it becomes clear that the tension between supranational ambitions and nationalistic sentiments did not appear with the recent democratic backsliding but rather characterized European integration from the very outset. A good example is Churchill’s famous 1946 speech at the University of Zurich, in which he expressed support for the creation of the “United States of Europe” (42) – but did not count the UK in, seeing the future of the British within a project of a grander scale than “mere” Europe, the Commonwealth. Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” rhetoric attests to the perseverance of those sentiments, even long after the fall of the British Empire. Consequently, Churchill blocked the attempts to design the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC; OECD’s predecessor) as a supranational entity. Conversely, De Gaulle did not eschew European integration as such but rather saw it as a means of realizing his “grand design” of reinstalling France as the hegemon in Europe (89). Transactional approach to the Communities was also prevalent in Member States’ societies, as evidenced by the economic benefits being a prevailing topic in accession campaigns in countries like Ireland or Denmark. All this led to Europe repeatedly missing its chances to move forward with more ambition, for instance, on defense – the authors draw attention to a compelling fact that the US first objected to Europe’s defense initiatives only in the 1990s. Prior to that, progress in that regard was hampered by internal actors, such as the French National Assembly, which, in 1954, voted to postpone the Treaty establishing the European Defence Community indefinitely.
The close examination of this tug of war between supranationalist and sovereignist forces, which set out the trajectory of European integration, makes for an insightful answer to the third question serving as a premise for this book: who made the EU? It is all the more valuable, as the authors, though open about their pro-European sympathies, did not fall into the pitfall of overly idealizing the “ever closer union” and its “Founding Fathers.” For instance, they rightly point to “the reformist nature of Europe [going] hand in hand with imperial conservatism” (45). Conversely, they do not demonize EU’s critics such as De Gaulle or Thatcher as opposed to the “good” Europeans like Adenauer or De Gasperi (225). Instead, the sceptics’ contributions to the integration project are acknowledged, despite their partnership with Brussels being “awkward” at times (111). Lastly, the answer to the question how does the EU function is addressed in a helpful manner, with timelines and maps indicating key milestones in the integration process as well as graphs clearly illustrating the evolving institutional dynamics. As such, The Unfinished History performs its function of an introductory, interdisciplinary account of European integration effectively and elegantly, providing just enough substance to allow the readers to develop an understanding of the topic without discouraging them with too many technical details.
Meanwhile, the answers to the questions what is Europe and why the European Union leave the reader wanting for more. Firstly, the starting point of the book is 1919, right after the end of the First World War. While the idea of keeping the book an introductory guide to European integration is fully warranted and rules out the possibility of providing a comprehensive intellectual history of European integration, arguably, a brief chapter discussing key historical influences to which so much of EU’s narrative and symbolism harks back – the Roman Empire, medieval universalism, Enlightenment philosophy – would greatly aid the understanding of what Europe is and how thousands of years of history led to the unprecedented project of supranational integration. The brief mention of the difficulty of defining Europe geographically, which, during the Renaissance, applied not only to its eastern but also northern boundary, only whets the appetite for a more fully-fledged discussion of those fundamental issues.
The title, The Unfinished History of European Integration, appears to place focus on the ongoing character of this process – this is a history with many more pages waiting to be written. Finishing the book, one cannot ignore how powerful and compelling of a framing device it would be to include a final chapter drawing from the analysis performed in the previous ones and, on that basis, outline the trends to look out for as we step into the second quarter of the twenty-first century. This is certainly something to hope for if the book gets its third edition.
Overall, The Unfinished History of European Integration, despite leaving the reader hungry for more at times, offers a compelling account of the unique beast in the history of interstate relations which is the EU. It is a particularly useful read to those wishing to get an introductory, interdisciplinary overview of the struggle between conflicting national interests and the various swings of the pendulum between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism, which shaped the EU’s institutional architecture as it is today. The volume does not answer all questions but rather invites students and scholars from different backgrounds to delve deeper into the study of European integration – at a time when rethinking the EU in the face of global challenges is as pressing as ever.
Jan Młynarczyk (LSE LLB ’24) is Assistant Editor at the Rule of Law section of the Review of Democracy.
