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About the EU's five fathers

The story of how five politically very different, but convinced and stubborn elites laid the foundations for the supranational European cooperation.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Victoria Martin de la Torre: The continent of fear. How Europeans started to trust each other. Naughty Publisher, 2016

 

FearsThe lack of a common European identity has always been one of the main criticisms of EU cooperation: only common conflicts has helped unite Europeans. While Americans and Chinese may point to sizes like George Washington and Mao Zedong, they are European founding fathers known only to European political nerds: Schuman sounds like a composer, and Monnet a painter. But for EU enthusiasts like me, this book is simply magnificent. Finally we get to the individuals who had the vision and gutsone to embark on all-European cooperation. In this sense, author Victoria Martín de la Torre has laid the foundation for a good Oliver Stone film. Upbringing, family life and career; victories and disappointments; sympathies and antipathies. Here we get an insight both into what brought these five men – Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, and mentioned Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman – together, but also who they were, how they thought and what they meant to The the first small steps of the European Union.

Frank Rossavik states in the preface that all five were elitists, which cannot be contradicted. But no one would think of accusing Winston Churchill of being an elitist! – the man who saved Europe from Nazism, joined Roosevelt in the war and created the alliance with Stalin. Churchill is more than anything else a war hero, even though he was a classic aristocrat with upper-class upbringing and a way of life – just like Washington and Mao. Also: Martín de la Torre shows that the five that made the EU possible were, first and foremost, idealists – obsessed with the goal of bringing about a collaboration that would end the long series of meaningless conflicts traditionally borne by European countries. shows us how pragmatic, but steadfast these five EU founders were, and how well they complemented each other, despite strong political contradictions and conflicts.

Martín de la Torre has done something so bold, yes, on the verge of the cheeky, as constructing situations where we formally see the actors in front of us and can listen to their conversations. She has turned the story of the creation of the EU into a story about people, and not about paragraphs in one treaty or another. This testifies to a solid research work, and becomes a fascinating read for those who want to familiarize themselves with the spirit of the time, the circumstances and the mentality. Her stories make ordinary textbooks fade.

The question is whether the style lasts throughout the book. At times, it gets a little boring to hear about children and wives (even if that belongs in a Hollywood movie). The author also skips over important historical events that helped motivate politicians to the daring piece of the EU initiative. After giving his famous May 9 speech, Schuman told reporters that "yes, that's it – a leap into the unknown." Prior to the speech, Europe had experienced the coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade and Soviet Finnishisation. Stalin's groundbreaking demonstrations of power shook Europe and injected a good deal of stimulus to the courage to stand together against a common enemy. That Martín de la Torre avoids including this is a shame, also because it could have introduced some much-needed doses of drama to the sides of the not always equally captivating depictions of childhood.

The EU project was a struggle of five individuals who trumped the widespread desire for revenge on Germany and the inability to learn from the past.

Rossavik is right that what he calls the "elite project" gets a problem when it does not result in good results – and that it is too easy to criticize when there are no positive effects. If things go badly, as they do today, whether it is the euro, migration or the economy, everyone is pointing to the Brussels elite. But if euro cooperation is to work, participants must follow a responsible economic policy, just like Norway. The crisis in Greece was primarily due to a dysfunctional Greek economy and the authorities lying about the situation, so that foreign banks continued to lend money to the country. This could have happened with or without euros. And the migration crisis would not have been better without the union. What Rossavik does not mention is that the EU has to meet people's expectations, whether it is about peace, hope or money. If EU co-operation does not do that, it is far too easy to designate the union as a scapegoat.

Two themes stand out in the book: First, the chaos that reigned in the time after World War II – a form of global anarchy, with widespread hunger and distress in our own continent. But also a widespread confusion about how the countries should get up economically and cooperate, and Germany is handled. Martín de la Torres' description of the United States can be discussed; The Americans were probably far more enthusiastic and persistent than what appears in the book.

Theme two, and what the author succeeds in dealing with best, is the extent to which the collaboration started due to the persistent efforts of individuals. There was no question of large bureaucracies or prominent heads of state – on the contrary. This was the struggle of individuals who trumped the widespread desire for revenge on Germany, and the inability to learn from the past. These men were able to think new, and dared to promote innovative and long-term forms of cooperation. If one were to leave European peace and reconciliation work to "most people", little would have happened. As the author writes: "World peace can only be maintained through creative work as great as the dangers that threaten it."

The European Movement and Fritt Ord have supported the publication of The continent of fear – and their members and supporters will probably like the book well. But the absence of Nordic actors will probably support the thesis that the EU is a continental project based on ideas and needs from the major countries (although Belgium and Luxembourg are also given a lot of attention). The book thus appears as a brutal witness to the lack of literature and historiography of our own European political history. In my research for the book Towards Europe - the story of a hesitant Norway, the Armed Forces Research Institute was by far the best source of information on our European approach among a handful of very uninspiring books written by academics who viewed the EU as a transient hostile resurrection. This cannot be the case, no matter how much we want to be part of Europe.



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Paal Frisvold
Paal Frisvold
Writer for MODERN TIMES on Europe issues.

See the editor's blog on twitter/X

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