and from that point to the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties of today. THE EUROPEAN Union today is the result of a process of European integration which has gone through several distinct stages of development.
This process was a product of first of cold war politics and then of world economic developments in the 1980s and 1990s - principally increasing competition between tne main world power blocks of Japan, the USA and Europe itself.
Several factors shaped the thinking of key European governments in the immediate post war years. France, in particular, wanted to enmesh a weakened and divided Germany into any post-war European set-up in order to avoid another war.
West Germany was willing to follow that path if for no other reason than that its postwar leadership wanted to demonstrate a break with the past. They also perceived this as the best prospect for reunification on offer at that At the same time, the USA wanted a bulwark in Europe against the East, particularly. after Stalin developed the bomb and Churchill launched the cold war. An integrated Europe, with West Germany as part of it, was the best solution.
These factors created a powerful pressure towards some form of European integration which would supplement NATO, which had been formed in 1947 as a military alliance.
There were serious divisions from the outset - divisions which are still reverberating today - particularly in the British Tory Party. De Gaulle saw European integration as a means of countering US domination, not increasing it, and was suspicious of Britain's links with the US. He had already rejected NATO on that basis, and was developing an independent military capability. It was a potentially dangerous division, but for the USA at that time the needs of the cold war were Paramouill.
It was against this background that the first building blocks of European integration were put into place. The Iron and Steel Community was formed in 1951, then the Treaty of Rome, which formed the much wider Common Market, or European Economic Community (EEC), was signed in 1957.
The EEC was principally an economic block, a common customs union. Britain did not initially join, and in 1962 De Gaulle vetoed Britain's application, seeing Britain as potentially a Trojan Horse for the US.
In 1978 French and German pressure created the European Monetary System (EMS) as a counter to the destabilising effects of the collapse of the Bretton Woods arrangements, which had linked the dollar to gold after the war. It was, in effect, an early step towards a single European currency, although of course it was not presented as such at the time.
French A-bomb
By the end of the 1970s France, still outside of NATO, had developed its own military capability and now had the bomb. It had It's not super for us! Euromarchers in Amsterdam last summer. avoided, for the time being, the domination of either West Germany or the USA. Britain had now joined the EEC which diluted the weight of Germany for a time.
By the 1980s, however, the attempt to contain West Germany by institutionalisation was increasingly at odds with the strength of the German economy and the Deutschmark, which by then was the strongest currency within the BEC.
Cold war
The US meanwhile was becoming less enthusiastic as it saw the EEC as a potential rival power block in newly developing world economic conditions, but it remained the best option given the continuation of the cold war.
By now the EEC was becoming more than a customs union. Substantial supranational structures were already in place. There was an elected European parliament - though with limited powers.
There was also the Council of Ministers, the real power house of the whole thing; a European Commission, with its own President and with extensive executive powers; a High Court with jurisdiction within the member states; and the power to levy financial contributions on the member states. The structures of a superstate were evolving.
This evolving structure was driven by the changes taking place in the world as a whole. Егоре по had to fight its corner with Japan and the 'SA in an increasingly global marker. It had to do this under conditions of international recession.
The Single European Act of 1985, signed by the Thatcher government, was a further response to these developments. It was the biggest development since the Treaty of Rome towards deeper levels of integration, and changed the project from predominantly economic to predominantly a political one.
It developed the structures of the EEC by introducing qualified majority voting within the Council of Ministers.
The next major step was the Maastricht Treaty, signed on January 1 1994. The name of the project even changed from the EEC to the European Union.
Maastricht set out the biggest steps yet towards the structures of a super state - a single European currency. This would be controlled by a European central bank and accompanied by the development of common social, deBy this time Germany was poised to establish continental hegemony. Not only did she have the strongest economy and currency but unification gave her a population of over 80 The collapse of the USSR also altered political relationships within the EU. The possession of the bomb by France and Britain no longer gave them diplomatic weight against Many of the Eastern European ex-Stalinist countries, along with ex-Soviet republics, were beginning to clamour for entry in order to complete the process of capitalist restoratentially double the number of states within the EU and create huge structural problems.
The immediate and central issue, however, was EMU. This will take fiscal policy away from the member states and hand it over to the central bank. It is tied to stringent criteria for entry - the convergence criteria and the stability pact - which are precipitating huge attacks on the welfare system right across the continent.
Without exchange rates fluctuation, only wage cuts and job losses can act as regulators. With already 20 million unemployed in the EU, this would further institutionalise unemployment in Europe and create huge depressed regions.
The EU of the late 1990s, with its 15 member states, represents the biggest single unit in the world economy. It has a combined GNP of about US $6 trillion against $5 trillion for the USA and $3 trillion for Japan. It has a total populațion of about that of the US and Japan combined.
The EU at its present stage of development, prior to the full implementation of the logic of the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties, is a common market with important features of a super state.
The battle of the power blocks is therefore still not a battle of equals. The USA and Japan have political advantages which the EU cannot match. It is the resolution of this problem which lies behind the project of the 1980s and 1990s to transform the Common Market of the 1960s and 1970s into the super state of the next century.
The aim is not a replication of the USA or of any existing capitalist state. This will be a new type of state structure - which will not replicate all the functions of the nation state, but will be a state structure just the same.
Europe has a problem in competing with America and the Pacific rim, because of the high level of welfare here. Cutting this is the strategic objective of the convergence criteria and the Stability Pact. This coincides with a worldwide neo-liberal offensive which is attacking welfare - even in areas where there is The advent of the single currency, more than any other individual factor, is posing a challenge to the post war consensus across Europe. That consensus was committed to welfare provision and at least the ideal of full employment as a guarantee of social peace.
Now this is being ripped up before our eyes - and the most of the traditional leaderships of the working class are responding by calling for further integration.
New leaderships will be forged through mobilisations such as the struggle of the Renault workers and the magnificent actions of the unemployed in France.
The European marches have played their part in beginning to pose an alternative - a truly social and internationalist Europe. The massive mobilisation in Amsterdam last June Under the British Presidency, we must wort to ensure that the demonstrotion in Car. diff in June 1998 will also be one to be remem-
Or EUROPEiSK MARCESEUR HARSEN 99l MARSCHA GIROPILMAS