The Struggle for EU Legitimacy

Public Contestation, 1950-2005

Claudia Sternberg

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137327833
• eBook ISBN: 9781137327840
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This award-winning book answers some of the big questions on the legitimacy of the European Union. Specifically, it looks at what it would mean for the EU to be considered a legitimate body and where our ideas on this question come from. The Struggle for EU Legitimacy traces the history of constructions and contestations of the EU's legitimacy, in discourses of the European institutions and in public debate. Through an interpretive, non-quantitative textual analysis of an eclectic range of sources, it examines both long-term patterns in EU-official discourses and their reception in member-state public spheres, specifically in the German and French debates on the Maastricht and Constitutional Draft Treaties. The story told portrays the history of legitimating the EU as a continuous contest over the ends and goals of integration, as well as a balancing act—which was inescapable given the nature of the integration project—between 'bringing the people in' and 'keeping them out'. In addition, it was a balancing act between actively politicizing and deliberately de-politicizing the stakes of EU politics.

1

Peace, Prosperity, and Progress: Early Legitimating Narratives, 1950s–1970s

Resolved to substitute for historic rivalries a fusion of their essential interests, to establish, by creating an economic community, the foundations of a broader and deeper community among people long divided by bloody conflicts and to lay the bases of institutions capable of guiding their common destiny. (Treaty Constituting the European Coal and Steel Community, Preamble)

The foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 and, in 1957, of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) was by no means uncontroversial. The eventual institutional solutions negotiated were highly contingent, and in no way the only possible outcome (e.g. Gillingham 1991, see Gilbert 2008). In the early years of the European Communities, the challenge was hence to justify them in their existence, as well as in the particular form they were given. According to the standard narrative in the literature, this was done with reasonable success as far as public opinion was concerned; the first few decades of integration, it says, were marked by a popular ‘permissive consensus’, which enabled elites to go about establishing the integration project undisturbed. This, the story goes, lasted until the late 1980s or early 1990s, when it was replaced by a ‘constraining dissensus’ (Hooghe and Marks 2009). Most academic accounts either refer explicitly to this permissive consensus or take it for granted. Yet the public opinion data on which Lindberg and Scheingold built their seminal permissive-consensus thesis gave ‘no clues at as to what it [was] about the system that [was] attractive or why’ (1970:39).

This chapter addresses the puzzle of how a narrative that European integration’s being essentially uncontroversial and uncontested could be built and upheld at the time. It explores the meanings and (implicit or explicit) understandings embedding the attitudes measurable in public opinion surveys, and the discursive offer available to citizens. On what grounds were integration and its institutions established as legitimate, desirable, and necessary? Which key arguments, images, and storylines underpinned the supposed permissive consensus, and in which broader intellectual backgrounds and beliefs and ideas were they embedded? The next chapter, in turn, will explore the critical counter-discourses they were up against. These two chapters form a unit with a view to the logic of the book as a whole. They give an overview of central legitimacy-related arguments and storylines of the early years of integration, from the foundation of the Communities up until the late 1970s. Chapter 1 concentrates on discourses aimed at establishing that European integration, and European integration as it was happening, were desirable and justifiable. I suggest that, contrary to a dominant view in political science, there were normative justifications at work in the post-war integration project. Chapter 2 plays such legitimation patterns off against important critical counter-discourses about why the project was not what was needed and was not legitimate, and about how it could be more legitimate. It underlines the fact that, whether or not a permissive consensus prevailed overall, it was not unanimous. Dissenting and critical voices formed part of the public, political, and official debates.

Many of the discursive patterns central to early justifications or critiques of integration and its legitimacy continue to structure the ways in which it is plausible to talk about the EU and its legitimacy today. In this sense, the purpose of these opening chapters in the context of the entire book is to erect a scaffold against which the subsequent case studies assess later discursive shifts. To this end, they exceptionally cover both top-down official and national public sphere levels (whereas the rest of my chapters focus more clearly on either one or the other). The sources I draw on in both chapters include official statements, such as speeches and interviews by representatives of the member-state governments and of the Commission or the European Parliament, official reports, and treaty preambles, as well as newspaper articles, in particular, from Der Spiegel, Die Zeit (DZ), and Le Monde, with a focus on periods around key events in integration history such as the signature or ratification of the treaties, the empty chair crisis, important intergovernmental conferences and summits, and so on.

Early discursive constructions of legitimacy for the emerging new European order clustered around the techniques of laying emphasis on common grounds, and glossing over controversial issues to the greatest extent possible. This chapter is organised around a number of discourses or discursive patterns that contributed to de-politicising the stakes of integration politics.¹ First, I discuss the discourse that integration was indispensable to safeguarding peace and prosperity. Second, I examine the related claim that there was such a thing as a common European good or common interest, to be furthered by European integration. In a third step, I interpret the discourse of hope, progress, and rising above circumstance through enlightened planning and expert knowledge. Finally, I reflect on efforts to appeal to legality and constitutionalism as a source of legitimacy for the Communities. All these de-politicisation tendencies were challenged by discourses and developments that underlined the essentially controversial and contested nature of what the Communities were doing, and how. I turn to these in the next chapter.

Indispensability

Peace and prosperity were the central promises of those trying to gather support for the emerging European Communities. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union in 2012 commemorated the centrality of effective peace-making in driving as well as in justifications of early integration. The memory and threat of war was fresh and present in everyone’s mind in the 1950s. Jean Monnet reminisces in his memoirs that an anxiety ‘weighed on Europe five years after the war: the fear that if we did nothing we should soon face war again’ (1978:289). Security concerns were indeed a principal motivation behind the foundation of all three of the European Communities, and those advocating, celebrating, or trying to justify them did not tire of repeating that peace was what European integration was all about. The preamble to the EEC Treaty declared the signatories’ resolve ‘to preserve and strengthen peace and liberty’ by pooling their resources. The ECSC Treaty Preamble pledged to lay the foundations of a ‘broader and deeper community between peoples long divided by bloody conflicts’.² Overall, the key discourse about why the ECSC, the EEC, and the Euratom were legitimate was that they were necessary because they were indispensable for safeguarding peace across Europe.

This indispensability-to-peace discourse rested on four interrelated pillars. First and most importantly, the project was almost ritually cast against the ‘bloodshed of two world wars’ (e.g. Marjolin 1958:5). For instance, all the foreign ministers (and the German chancellor) speaking on the occasion of the signature of the Rome Treaties referred prominently to Europe’s history of centuries of war, conflict, and rivalry (see www.cvce.eu). The prospective horrors of this alternative framed European integration – by virtue of it being indispensable to achieving peace – as indispensable as such (see e.g. Monnet 1962). This discourse had integration as a matter of survival: a ‘necessary effort to secure the future of our peoples’ (Martino 1957). The necessity to ‘unite in order to survive’ was a recurring motif (e.g. Marjolin 1958:5). A closely related second reason given for why the European Communities were necessary was the containment of Germany. The 1950 Schuman Declaration canvassed pooling the coal and steel industries on the grounds that this would make ‘any war between France and Germany [ ... ] not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible’ – and that only the ‘elimination’ of their ‘age-old opposition’ would enable the nations of Europe to come together, preserve peace between them, and work towards safeguarding world peace. A third supporting pillar of the indispensability-to-peace discourse was rooted in the broader context of the Cold War. Walter Hallstein (President of the Commission from 1958 to 1967 and at the time German Permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs), for example, conjured up the spectre of Soviet intervention in a radio address: ‘As long as this [united] Europe does not exist, Europe’s disunity bears a constant incentive for the Eastern powers to strive, not for a peaceful coexistence, but the control of Europe and the continuation of the world revolution’ (Hallstein 1955, see also 1959a:2). French philosopher-sociologist Raymond Aron agreed in Le Figaro: ‘Perhaps the Soviet bear is less famished in 1955 than it was in 1945. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that, if given the opportunity, it would hold back swallowing another piece of Europe’ (31/08/1955, see 02/08/1955, and de Lapparent 2010:51). A Member of the Bundestag and the European Parliament, Joachim Schöne (SPD), conjectured in a Spiegel interview: ‘If one considers the situation of the countries of the Eastern block and the concentrated political power radiating from the Eastern block, one does ask oneself if we can afford to leave the Occident divided up into individual sovereign states with their own little back yard and church tower – politically as well as economically’ (10/07/1957:32). A final, and again directly related pattern in legitimating discourses, was to link references to the task of protecting peace with the task of strengthening ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’, as the EEC Treaty Preamble cited earlier did. This was to be done both within the member-states and beyond their borders. In this image, Europe emerged as a ‘force for freedom and peace’, contributing ‘not only to the strength of the Free World but also to the furtherance of the peace and well-being of all mankind’ (Marjolin 1958:5, 11; see Hallstein 1960a:13, Hallstein 1959c:1).

In addition to peace, moreover, the legitimating argument that European integration was necessary had a further basis: its indispensability to achieving prosperity in Europe. If peace was necessary for survival in post-war Europe, it was not sufficient in itself. Economic recovery, a better material life, or even economic miracles, were what the people desired once the conditions for mere survival seemed provided for. Discourses legitimating the Communities fully tapped into these needs. They centrally pointed to the ‘new prospects of progress and prosperity for the peoples of the six States’ opened up, and made attainable, by the creation of the EEC (CEC 1958:9). Advocates of the European Communities conjured up tangible promises of the Common Market and presumed policies of economic integration from the macroeconomic as well as the individual perspectives, and bundled them in the emblem of a ‘higher standard of living’ or ‘improved living conditions’. This emblem remained a key theme in pro-Community discourses throughout the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. Messina Declaration 1955, Marjolin 1958:4, Armand 1958, van der Stoel 1976). Der Spiegel commented ironically: ‘It says in all preambles that a thriving economy, cheaper consumption, and a higher standard of living is expected from this endeavour’ (10/07/1957:32). Indeed, the EEC Treaty vowed to bring about ‘economic and social progress’ as well as the ‘constant improvement of the living and working conditions’ (preamble), and the ECSC Treaty, too, declared its aim to contribute, through the common market for coal and steel, to economic expansion, growth of employment, and a rising standard of living (Art. 2; on the label and promise of ‘social progress’ through integration, see further CEC 1960a:22, Spaak 1957). Commission Vice-President Sicco Mansholt summed up the EEC’s policy objectives at a GATT session: ‘an expansive economy, industrialisation, and an increase in the standard of living – this will be our policy’ (1958a:2). Besides better living conditions, the expected benefits from European integration that Commission representatives, Europhile parliamentarians (national and European), and supporters across the member-states enumerated, included greater markets and a European-wide division of labour resulting in economies of scale, rationalisation effects, and mass production leading in turn to increased productivity and production, economic growth and lower unemployment.³

The Europeans’ quest for economic recovery was often framed as a matter of catching-up with more fortunate nations, above all the United States of America. In 1951, Hallstein, for instance, presented the whole integration project as prompted by the resolution to ‘rectify’ a constantly growing European economic ‘performance deficit’, whereby Europe and its basic industries ‘have lost ground in relation to the overall development process at world level’ in terms of ‘total industrial output and also for output per capita, the consequence being lower real wages and a lower standard of living’ (Hallstein 1951:3, see equally 1955). Schöne (SPD) in the mentioned interview, for example, made the promise of better living conditions tangible by referring to the number of cars per head in the USA as opposed to in Europe, and to income per head as indicators (Spiegel 10/07/1957:27–8). A German parliamentarian, too, connected the catching-up with the improved-standard-of-living themes in plenary debate: ‘Does it have to be [ ... ] that the current average standard of living in the European countries which want to sign up to the Coal and Steel Community amounts to exactly 33 per cent of the average American, of the average American worker? No!’ Abandoning economic boundaries in a common market, he argued, offered a way out (Viktor-Emanuel Preusker, FDP, quoted after Hörber 2006:216, my translation). However, not only the USA, but also the Soviet Union and China gave Europe (as well as North America) reasons to shape up and ‘develop its production and productivity with a compelling sense of urgency if we are to meet the common menace of Communism’ (Hallstein 1959c:4). For example, even an otherwise cautious article about the Common Market’s effects on the French economy conceded that ‘[i]n a world of industrial and nuclear colossi, where the United States and the USSR dominate the world’s other countries with all their power, it is essential Europe gets organised in order to gain on their level’ (L’Aurore 04/04/1957:1–2).

This quote further exemplifies another argument that often underpinned the indispensability discourse with regard to the world stage; namely that jointly the member-states would have greater economic weight, leverage, and influence internationally, including in trade negotiations (e.g. CEC 1960a:11). Only united could Europe ‘preserve the standing which she has in the world’ (Messina Declaration, 1955). Moreover, especially in the early years, leaders of the Six and of the Commission furthermore carefully repeated that the Community was ‘directed against no one’ (Adenauer 1957), that it was not intended to ‘isolate [the member-states] from the rest of the world and build up insurmountable barriers around them’ (Pineau 1957), but rather to be ‘a contribution to the safety, the pacification, the progress and the economic wellbeing of the entire world’ (Hallstein 1951:3). The common refutations of the accusation of protectionism (e.g. Hallstein 1959b:2, Marjolin 1958:6, Pineau 1957), of course, may be read as an indication that the criticism of ‘protectionist customs and tariff walls’ around the Community’s external borders was a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary debate (e.g. Spiegel 27/03/1957:8).

Even if possible criticisms of European economic integration were acknowledged in such ways, the indispensability storyline framed it as a matter of no alternative. Accordingly, integration was an absolute necessity on account of a fact taken for granted as externally given the growing interdependence of the world, which was ‘forcing us to come together’ (Mansholt 1958a). This interdependence discourse was crucial in discourses legitimating European integration in its foundational years (and has been since, as I discuss in Chapters 4, 5 and 6). It went as follows: the ‘re-organisation of our continent’ had been ‘made inevitable by the rapid progress of modern technology and by the added political and economic global developments’ (Luns 1957). As a result of these developments, many problems had ‘become insoluble within the frontiers of a single state’, and it was ‘only in a wider setting than that of national frontiers that a solution [could] be found’ (Mansholt 1962). And therefore, the participating governments declared in signing the Paris Treaty, ‘the countries of free Europe are interdependent and share a common destiny’ (The Governments of Belgium et al. 1951, see ECSC Treaty, preamble). Another expression of the interdependence discourse was the storyline that the West European countries formed a ‘community of fate’ (e.g. Monnet 1962; the German debate showed itself particularly responsive to this motif, see Spiegel 10/07/1957:26).

More specifically, the interdependence discourse referenced technological, economic, as well as political aspects. Technology was often attributed almost magical powers to change the preconditions of modern governance. The German daily Die Welt, for example, identified a trend in Europe towards ‘technological unions’, which was ‘taking effect as a matter of course, simply because technological change in recent decades has overrun our little continent and swept aside the barriers that separated nations in the pre-technological age. In other words, we are experiencing the unifying power of technology’ (07/06/1955). Commission Vice-President Robert Marjolin remarked that ‘in a world of mass production’ and the ‘imperatives of modern industrialism’, small national markets had become an ‘anachronistic form of economic organization’ (Marjolin 1958:4). Economically, the interdependence argument was additionally grounded in the argument that the European nation-states carried greater economic weight as one larger unit. Politically, the Cold War situation made West European integration obligatory given ‘the political dangers of a fragmented or “Balkanized” Europe at a time when the centre of gravity was shifting away from the old world and becoming more polarized in East and West’ (Hallstein 1959a:2). The Suez 1956 crisis was, according to some, the latest, unmistakeable reminder that the fates of the West European nations were inextricably entwined (e.g. Spiegel 10/07/1957:26; see Monnet 1962).

This interweaving of technological, economic, and political dimensions in the interdependence discourse tied up with another link that characterised many of the early legitimation discourses: the association they typically made between the indispensability-to-peace and the indispensability-to-prosperity storylines. ‘Peace and prosperity’ were so often mentioned as an item that they became firmly associated with each other, indicating how it was silently taken for granted that to achieve one aim meant achieving the other (e.g. Adenauer 1957, van der Stoel 1976). Prosperity was not to be had without peace, and peace was no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Approaching Legitimacy through Discursive Meanings
• 1 Peace, Prosperity, and Progress: Early Legitimating Narratives, 1950s1970s
• 2 Democracy and Other Challenges: Early Counter-Discourses, 1950s1970s
• 3 A Europe Closer to its Citizens: The Peoples Europe Project of the 1980s
• 4 Maastricht in the French and German Debates: Crumbling Promises and the Question of Who Might Rule
• 5 Discursive Crisis Management: Stressing and Stretching Democracy, 1990s2000s
• 6 A Constitutional Moment? The Constitution in the French and German Debates
• 7 The Story and the Literature: Democracy, Efficiency, and the Contested Game of EU Politics
• Conclusion: EU Legitimacy as a Sisyphean Aspiration?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index