European Economic Policies 1. THE MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF AN ENLARGED EUROPE 1.1 THE HISTORICAL DIMENSION
Many unprecedented achievements characterize the Europe we see today; for the first time since Charlemagneʼs Holy Roman Empire in the 9th century in the ninth century, most of the European continent (400 million citizens) is again united and in peace. For the first time (at least since the last century) a set of countries have autonomously decided to relinquish to a supranational authority the control of one of the key symbols of a nation, its currency, without renouncing their identity or independence (along with numerous innovations). All this in less than 60 years. Historically, a period of war in Europe has ended with one or more treaty (e.g. 30 years war → Westfalia, Napoleonic war → Vienna Congress, WW1 → Versailles) The end of WW2 produced a series of treaties which, among other things (UN), laid down the founding pillars of the modern European Union The First 40 years (1950 – 89) Its acknowledged that the start of the European integration can be identified in the “Schuman declaration” a speech by French foreign minister in 1950. He proposed that France and Germany and other nations wishing to join, pool their coal and steel resources. It was an opening of credit to Germany (only 5 years after the first tank left Paris) and it implicitly recognized the new world order with france and germany allied with the US. It was also a security measure for France with respect to Germany (the historical enemy) as coal and steel are the vital war resources and now were under independent common control. The opening of the programme to other European states was perfectly consistent with the evolution of European relations with respect to the US under the NATO treaty. France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed the Paris treaty and the European Coal