The European Idea

Dr Adrian-Gabriel Corpdean
Faculty of European Studies
Babe-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca

The term Europe

Europe a term of indefinite etymology

(Greek, Celtic, Semitic)

Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician
princess
8th century BC Hesiod uses the term
4th century BC Aristotle (peoples of Europe)
2nd century AD Strabo and Ptolemy
(geographically)

Unification attempts:
Short history of Europe
The Roman Empire (27 BC 476 AD / 1453 AD)
Charlemagne (768-814)
Empire vs. Papacy (Concordat of Worms, 1122)
The Crusades (1095-1291 / 1456)
The fall of Constantinople (1453) The Byzantine

Empire
Discovery of the New World (1492, Columbus)
Humanism and Renaissance (14th-17th centuries)
The 100 Years War (1337-1453)
The Protestant Reformation and Religious Wars
(1517-1648)

Short history of Europe

The Glorious Revolution (1688, William of

Orange)
The Age of Enlightenment (18th century)
The French Revolution (1789)
Napoleonic Wars (1804-1815)
Italian Unification - Risorgimento (1861)
German Unification (1871)
World War One (1914-1918)
World War Two (1939-1945)
The Cold War (1947-1991)
The fall of Communism (1989)
German Reunification (1990)

Unification projects: by
force
Charlemagne (800)
Emperor Charles V of Habsburg (1519-1556)
Napoleon Bonaparte (1804-1815)
Adolf Hitler Nazism (1933-1945)
Mein Kampf
The Nazi ideology
From Chancellor to Fhrer
The Third Reich
Anschluss
World War Two: the Axis
The Holocaust

Unification projects: by
diplomacy
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) balance of

powers
Henry IV of France (1589-1610) The Grand
Design
Amos Comenius (1592-1670) The Universal
Awakening a global federation
Labe de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743) Project for
Perpetual Peace in Europe a union of European
states with common institutions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788) a
confederation of peoples in Europe
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) a federal State of

Unification projects: by
diplomacy
Giuseppe Mazzini (1807-1872) the universal

brotherhood
Woodrow Wilson (1918) The 14 Points the
creation of the League of Nations (1919-1946)
Permanent Secretariat (civil service)
Assembly (Geneva)
Council (executive body)
Permanent Court of International Justice
International mandates
FAILURES:
Hitler elected Chancellor of Germany (1933)
Mussolini invades Abyssinia (1935)
Japan invades Manchuria (1937)
Anschluss (1938)
Hitler annexes the Sudetenland (1938)

Unification projects: by
diplomacy
Locarno Treaties (1925)
Briand-Kellog Pact (1928)
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894-1972)
Austrian descent
Pan-Europa (1923)
Criticism of the League of Nations
Opposition to Soviet Russia
Economic unification before political one
Common bodies:
The Pan-European Bureau
The Pan-European Customs Union
The Pan-European Constitution
A bicameral Parliament
Supporters: Freud, Einstein, Briand, Streseman

Unification projects: by
diplomacy
Aristide Briand (1862-1932)
Foreign and Prime Minister of France
President of the Pan-European Movement
The Memorandum for a European Federation
(1929)
Political unification takes precedence over economic one
A federal bond among member states within the League
of Nations
A European Conference, Permanent Political Committee
and Secretariat
A common market
National sovereignty is maintained

Failures:

Opposition from extremist movements and parties

Death of Streseman leads to insufficient German support

Other unification projects

The English Federalist School (the US of Europe)
Churchill (1940) the British-French Federation
The Socialist view:
Leon Trotsky the Socialist US of Europe - general
revolution
Lenin self-determination of peoples
Stalin consolidation of the Soviet Union - general
revolution
The Nazi view:
Grossrume, Reiche, Nationen
Union through aggression and conquest

After WW II
Context
The defeat of Nazi Germany and Trials at Nrnberg
(1945-46)
Churchills speech at Fulton The Iron Curtain (1946)
The Berlin Blockade (1948-49)
The Council of Europe (1949)
NATO (1949)
East and West Germany (1949)
The Schuman Declaration (9 May 1950)
French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman (1886-1963)
Prepared by Jean Monnet (1888-1979)
The supranational community