Development of the processes of economic and political integration in Western Europe after the end of the Second World War

After the end of World War II, Western European countries had to revive their economies from devastation, regain political influence in the world, and ensure that the devastating war in Europe would never happen again [1]. The first European politician who could correctly understand how to solve these problems was the retired British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. On September 19, 1946, speaking in Zurich, he said: "We must create something like the United States of Europe. What I am about to tell you will surprise you. The first step towards creating a European family should be a partnership between France and Germany. Only in this way can France achieve moral leadership in Europe. There can be no rebirth of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. The structure of the United States of Europe, if properly established, must be such that material strength of each individual country does not matter. However, I must warn you. The time, perhaps, is too short. Now we have a break. The weapons are silent. The fighting stopped, but the danger did not disappear. So that we can create the United States of Europe, or whatever you call it, we must start today" [2, pp. 761-766].

II.    METHODOLOGY

Starting from general scientific methods, the article uses a systematic approach that allows a holistic view of the research topic. The use of this approach allows an exhaustive analysis of the reasons for the formation and development of economic and political integration processes in Western Europe in the 40-50s of the 20th century.

The historical approach allows us to study the genesis of the processes of European integration after the end of the Second World War.

III.    DISCUSSION

After W. Churchill's Zurich speech, many different public organizations appeared in European countries, declaring their goal of achieving the political and cultural unity of European countries. On the basis of these organizations, the International Committee of Movements for European Unity was created. The first great success of the supporters of a united Europe was the organization of the Congress of The Hague, known as the "Congress of Europe", on May 7, 1948.

The Hague congress was attended by more than a thousand delegates representing twenty European countries. Among the participants in the congress were well-known politicians, religious leaders, scientists, writers and journalists. The main objective of the Hague Congress was to demonstrate to the world the joint efforts of the European peoples to create a future united Europe and to determine the new measures that should be taken to create a political and economic union of European states. The Congress adopted a series of important decisions that had a great impact on the further development of integration processes in Europe. In the future, it was decided to create an economic and political union aimed at guaranteeing the security, economic independence and social progress of its member states, creating a consultative assembly, which should include representatives of national parliaments, as well as developing a European Charter of Human Rights and create a European Court of Justice destined to guarantee its application by the member countries of the future Union.

Thus, the project for the creation of the Union of European States, developed by the Congress of The Hague, reflected the main approaches of the future European construction. The Hague Congress also revealed the serious differences that existed between the main European states. France and Belgium supported the creation of a European Federal State, while the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries supported the expansion of intergovernmental cooperation, but opposed the idea of a European Federation.

Parallel to the efforts of public organizations to influence the creation of European integration structures, the governments of several European countries adopted measures. On March 17, 1948, the Brussels Pact was signed by France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In the preamble to this document, the participating countries expressed their determination to "reaffirm their faith in fundamental human rights, the dignity and worth of the human person, as well as in other principles proclaimed by the Charter of the United Nations; to affirm and protect democratic principles and civil and personal liberties that constitute their common heritage "[3]. After the signing of the Brussels Pact, a Franco-Belgian initiative was announced to create the Council of Europe, the first pan-European organization designed to promote democracy and the protection of human rights on the continent. An intergovernmental conference was convened in London with the participation of France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

On May 5, 1949, representatives from Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden signed the Charter of the Council of Europe at St James's Palace in London.

The preamble to the Charter of the Council of Europe refers to the commitment of its member states to "the spiritual and moral values that are the common heritage of their peoples and that serve as fundamental principles of personal freedom, political freedom and the rule of law in which all democracy is based."[4]

Chapter I of the Charter establishes the objectives of this organization, which:

"1) The objective of the Council of Europe is to guarantee a closer union between its members to protect and promote the ideals and principles that constitute their common heritage and to promote their economic and social progress.

• 2)    This objective will be achieved through the Council bodies by examining issues of common interest, the conclusion of agreements, the execution of joint actions in the economic, social, cultural, scientific, legal and administrative fields, as well as through the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms "[4].

Article 3 of the Charter of the Council of Europe establishes that "each member of the Council of Europe recognizes the principle of the rule of law, according to which everyone under its jurisdiction must enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms. It undertakes to cooperate wholeheartedly and actively in pursuit of the goal set out in the first chapter."

Article. 8 of the Charter establish that "serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms are grounds for the suspension of the membership of the State that allows these violations or its exclusion from the Council of Europe" [4].

The main body of the Council of Europe is the Committee of Ministers. Each member state of the Council of Europe is represented on the Committee by a Minister for Foreign Affairs or a permanent representative. The Committee of Ministers prepares and approves the budget of the organization, examines the question of the admission of new members to the Council of Europe and also makes decisions on the main activities of the Organization. The decisions of the Committee of Ministers are adopted in the form of recommendations to the States parties or of conventions and agreements that are binding on the States that have ratified them.

Another body of the Council of Europe is the Parliamentary Assembly. Delegations representing the main political parties in national parliaments attend their meetings to debate various issues. The plenary sessions of the Parliamentary Assembly are held in Strasbourg four times a year. The work of the Parliamentary Assembly is prepared by special commissions, which are the initiators of many decisions of the Council and submit them for debate to the Committee of Ministers. No new member state can be admitted to the Council of Europe without the approval of the Parliamentary Assembly.

The Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly have a Secretariat made up of 1,300 employees representing the majority of European countries. The official languages of the Secretariat are French and English.

The first sessions of the Council of Europe were held in Strasbourg, which later became its permanent headquarters. The main contribution of the Council of Europe in the first years of its work was the elaboration and signing of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms on November 4, 1950 in Rome. On the basis of this convention, the European Court of Human Rights was created, which allows citizens of the member states of the Council of Europe to defend their violated rights and freedoms. The next important step in the development of European integration in this period was the publication of the statement by French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann.

On May 9, 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman issued his famous statement, which marked the beginning of fundamental changes in the development of integration processes on the European continent. In his statement, Robert Schumann proposed the creation of a Franco-German coal and steel association, open to the possible membership of other European countries. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who was a staunch defender of the ideas of European unity, accepted this proposal. The significance of this document was not only that it contributed to the final reconciliation of France and Germany, who were opponents in the two world wars, but also called for the creation of "a common basis for economic development, which will be the first step towards a European federation "[1, p.59].

The Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community was signed in Paris in April 1951 for a period of fifty years. Representatives from six European countries attended the signing of the agreement: Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany and France [5]. After ratification by the national parliaments, the Treaty entered into force in July 1952. The main objective of the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community was the formation of a pan-European market for coal and steel, the modernization and improvement of the efficiency of the coal and metallurgical industries in Western European countries, as well as the improvement of working conditions and the fight against unemployment among workers in these industries. The main objective of the treaty was to strengthen peace among the European peoples and to create the conditions for closer cooperation in the future.

During the meetings of the governing bodies of the European Coal and Steel Community, for the first time, ideas were expressed on the need to create a political and military union of its member countries in the near future. In May 1952, in Paris, the member countries of the European Coal and Steel Community signed an agreement on the creation of a European Defense Community and a European Army. Under these agreements, the members of the European Defense Community would lose the right to dispose of their armed forces, which would be transferred to the control of a single command. In the future, the economic and military integration of the Western European states will have to be complemented by political measures.

In 1952, at the initiative of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Alcide De Gasperi and the famous Italian politician Altiero Spinelli, a project for the creation of a European Political Community was developed in the enlarged Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community. However, the creation of the European Political Community was directly linked to the execution of the European Defense Community project. After the creation of the European Defense Community, its members were to begin to develop a project for the creation of a federal union of European states.

Even before the creation of the European Defense Community in March 1953, in the Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, the participating countries decided to create a European Political Community, which would include bodies such as the Chamber of Peoples, the European Senate, the European Executive Council, the Council of Ministers and the European Court of Justice. Therefore, we were already talking about the creation of a full-fledged European federal state.

However, subsequent events demonstrated that these decisions were well ahead of their time. A significant part of the political elites of Western European countries at that time were not yet prepared for the possibility of losing even a part of their national sovereignty. Therefore, on August 30, 1954, the French National Assembly voted against the ratification of the treaty establishing the European Defense Community. After the failure of the ratification of the Treaty on the European Defense Community, the question of the creation of a European Political Community was closed for a long time. These events showed that attempts to accelerate the political-military integration of Western European countries were well ahead of their time, so that integration processes in Western Europe in the next three decades developed exclusively in the economic sphere [6, p.49].

IV.    RESULTS

On March 25, 1957, the Member States of the European Coal and Steel Community signed in Rome the treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) [7] and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euroatom) [8 ]. Following ratification by the national parliaments of the member states of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Treaties of Rome entered into force on January 1, 1958.

The European Atomic Energy Community has set itself the objective of cooperation between Member States in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy. The initiator of the creation of Euroatom was the Committee for the Struggle for the United States of Europe, a public organization created in 1955 by the famous French politician Jean Monnet, with the aim of uniting the political parties and unions of the countries of Europe Western to create a "United Europe".

The idea of creating a European Atomic Energy Community was widely supported by political elites in Western European countries. During this period, nuclear research, in which Western European countries lagged far behind the USSR and the United States, was the main sphere of scientific research and nuclear energy was associated with plans for economic modernization and development. transition to inexhaustible new sources of energy. At the first meeting of the Committee to Struggle for the United States of Europe, on January 19, 1956, it was declared: "United, our own countries are capable of developing the nuclear industry. They constitute a single region capable of being at the level of the great world powers. However, individually, they are not able to overcome the delay that is a consequence of European fragmentation "[9, p.509].

The original objective of the European Economic Community was to create a customs union and then move to a common market. After the creation of the community, the participating countries planned to abolish customs duties, introduce a single customs tariff and implement a single policy in the field of agriculture and trade. Then it was planned to start coordinating economic policy in other areas at the interstate level. In the second stage of the association's construction, it was supposed to begin to implement the final objective of the agreement - to guarantee the four most important economic freedoms - the movement of goods, people, services and capital [10].

V.    CONCLUSION

The adoption of the Treaties of Rome created the system of the European Communities. Its main objective was to create a customs union and overcome trade barriers between the States participating in the integration processes, as well as to apply a common economic policy and gradually equalize the level of economic development of the countries belonging to the Community. In 1967, the executive bodies of the three European Communities were unified into a single management structure. As a result of the unification process, a management structure was created for the regional integration process, which still exists in its main characteristics.

There is no doubt that the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 marked a turning point in the history of European integration and laid the foundations for its further development in the following decades.