Robert Schuman: And the Pro-European Political Generation of 1950

Abstract

Between the end of the Second World War and the key moment of Robert Schuman’s “Declaration” of 9 May 1950, a number of decisive years elapsed in which a series of events took place that were fundamental to the future of the Europeanist project. Historians of European integration highlight four important milestones. First, there is Winston Churchill’s lecture at the University of Zurich on 19 September 1946. In a second stage, the European Recovery Program—the Marshall Plan—was proposed by the United States of America. To manage and administer the Plan, the United States promoted the formula of cooperation among the recipient countries themselves: on 16 April 1948, all the Western European states that were members of the Conference for European Economic Co-operation, plus West Germany, the United States and Canada, launched the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). At the same time as cooperation began among Western Europeans through the Marshall Plan, the various pro-European movements succeeded in launching the Hague Congress, the third key moment in the European project. Held in the Dutch capital from 7 to 10 May 1948, it earned the moniker the “Congress of Europe” due to its pro-European significance. Among the practical results of the congress was the agreement, signed in London a year later, to create the Council of Europe, a pro-European—albeit non-European Community—organisation intended to serve as a guardian of the democratic essences of the Old Continent and a promoter of human rights. The fourth significant episode on the road to the Schuman Declaration came from the brilliant philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: his lecture De Europa meditatio quaedam (Meditation on Europe), delivered on 7 September 1949 at the Free University of Berlin on the occasion of Goethe’s bicentenary. Today, Ortega y Gasset’s Europeanist teachings are fully accepted by all. True to himself—for he considered himself “the doyen of the idea of Europe”—when faced with Europe’s second raging war, he persevered in his attempt to bring about a new common project for the Old Continent: the unity of Europe, imbued with its secular civilisation. That was the mission Ortega y Gasset undertook in De Europa meditatio quaedam: to announce, at the dawn of the new decade, a hopeful and committed message for Europe (Martín de la Guardia & Pérez Sánchez, 2001).

In this way, there will be realised simply and speedily that fusion of interest which is indispensable to the establishment of a common economic system; it may be the leaven from which may grow a wider and deeper community between countries long opposed to one another by sanguinary divisions (…) Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.

Robert Schuman, “Declaration” of 9 May 1950