Summary EI

European Integration
Powerpoint Session 1: 08/02
The 3 worlds of European Integration:

 Integration of states: Why do states integrate?
o International relations
o Bottom up
 Functioning of the EU/ EU Governance
o Comparative politics
o How does it work?
o Within
 Impact of the EU on member states
o Comparative politics
o Top down

3 generations of EU studies:

 Bottom up
o Theories from IR try to explain why sovereign states integrate
o (Neo-)functionalism, intergovernmentalism, …
 Within:
o Theories from CP try to understand the functioning and the output (governance)
of the EU as a political system
o Policy analysis, institutionalism
 Top down:
o Europeanization tries to explain how and to what extent the EU integration
process has got impact on the member states

Integration vs functioning of the EU:

 History of the European Integration:
o What is the degree of integration?
o Why do sovereign states integrate?
o Theories from IR/EI
 Functionalism, liberal intergovernmentalism
 Functioning of the EU/ EU as a political system/ EU governance
o How does EU decision-making work?
o Who determines policy contents?
o Theories from CP
 Institutionalism, policy networks, multi-level governance, …




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,Major achievements of the EU:

 Supranational cooperation
 Trade
 Courts
 Democracy
 Intergovernmentalism
 Peace and security
o Major achievement
 Freedom
o Liberal democracy
o The EU pretends to be a democracy
o Rule of Law
o Freedom of speech, …
o Promotion of Human Right
o Schengen Area
 Small village in Luxemburg
 Symbolizes the free movement
 The open borders with the EU
 Economy, trade, the single market
o Open borders within travel but also within trade (goods, capital, services, …)
o Free trade within the EU, the single market, all the spin off policies that started
from this core idea ‘the single market’
 Policy outputs
o Erasmus
 Common market
o The Euro

Most pressing challenges for the EU:

 China
 Migration policies
 Brexit
 Inequality
 US
 Trade
o Related with China an the US
 Economic issues
o The financial crisis still has a lot of repercussions today
 Climate issues
 Health policies

European (Dis)Integration?

 Some leaders are criticizing the EU
o Related to migration and other aspects
 Some say that Europe is being abducted by nationalist and populist groups



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,Powerpoint: Session 2: 15/02
Theories of European Integration

David Mitrany: A working Peace System (1943):

 Legacy of the failed LON: nationalism as the cause of war
 Eliminate nationalism by making states work together
 Establishment of a series of international functional (sectoral) agencies
 Expectation that states will discover the benefits of cooperation and that inceasing
cooperation will refrain states from acting independently
 Political elites and eventually citizens will be socialized in an international environment
 Depoliticization of the power transfer, bureaucratic process
 No aim to build regional or worldwide federations
 Depoliticized way
 We need to start to cooperate in a number of agencies and these will make clear to the
states that cooperation delivers a positive effect and that it is beneficial to cooperate
 We don’t need a political ground of manifestation, that won’t work
o We need a behind the scenes bureaucratic processes that will organize
international cooperation
o If this works the states will see that it is the better way than conflicts or war


Altiero Spinelli and the European Union of Federalists:

 Legacy of the Resistance Movements of WWII
 Ventotetene Manifesto (1941): call for a European Federation
 Explicit aim of a transfer of political authority: abolishment of the sovereign nation-
states & creating of a European federation, political project
 European Congress (The Hague 1948) failed to establish the expected federation
 Resistance movement of WW2
 Ventotene Manifesto
 Politician
 We need politicians to step up, to show leadership en to show the way
o Differs from Mitrany, Mitrany said no political ground
 Ultimate aim: united federation




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, Jean Monnet: Functional Federalism

 Technocrat & planner
 Context
o Economic reconstruction of France
o The need to control German economic reconstruction
 Establishment of supranational institutions to make states mutually dependent
 Start with strategic sectors & add other sectors later:
o Spill over
 Ultimate aim is a political union by starting with economic integration
 One of the founding fathers of European integration
 Civil servant
 Worked behind the scenes for many governments before the second WW and during
the war he started working for the government again when the war was over
 Common institutions were important
 For western Europe to be rebuild, to be economically reconstructed, it needs to be
done in all the countries
o To overcome the distrussed that Germany would do it all by itself there need
to be common institutions so that they would become mutually depend to
each other
o So that there can’t be war anymore but cooperation
o To have economic cooperation that would entangle and make member states
of this supranation institutions so much entangled with each other so that it’s
really hard to fight differences out by military means
 Needs to be done very gradually
o It will take many years
o The aim is to have a political union
 But this needs to grow
 It needs to start small, with a couple of strategic economic sectors,
make clear that this works and when these first sectors show that
they’re beneficial than the members of this supranation institution will
add more sectors until it becomes clear that there needs to be
economical integration but also political integration
 He was a thinker so he couldn’t implement this
o He didn’t take any decisions
o He didn’t have the legitimacy to take decisions, but he was extremely
legitimate




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