The future of the European security order requires “courageous political decisions,” wrote German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Foreign Affairs earlier this year. His call for common European defense capabilities has, however, produced few tangible results. There have been efforts to ramp up European ammunition procurement and, more recently, a proposal to introduce Qualified Majority Voting in foreign and security matters. Yet none of this lives up to what French President Emmanuel Macron has been proposing for years or to what experts recommend.
The Idea of a Common European Army
Seventy years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War, a group of European politicians launched a campaign for a common European army that became known as the European Defense Community (EDC). This supranational army was supposed to be governed by a set of institutions that included a directly elected parliament and common budget. Famously, the EDC failed when, in 1954, the French vetoed it for a mix of reasons, including Gaullist nationalism, fear of resurging German militarism, and Communist hopes for friendly relations with the Soviet Union. It was a “staggering blow to the most promising Western enterprise of the post-war era,” the New York Times wrote. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer called it the “darkest day of his political life.”
Shortly thereafter, in 1955, Germany joined NATO, a defense alliance that was, ironically, far less transparent than the EDC. In fact, NATO was so secret that the French were not invited to its initial meetings in March 1948 despite France being a founding member. Still, the transatlantic alliance soon flourished and, over the following decades, it solved the European security problem – keeping the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. There was neither the need nor the political will for a European army. Common foreign policy was effectively shelved until 1970 when the European Political Cooperation was created. After the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, it evolved into the Common Foreign and Security Policy and, in the late 1990s, was supplemented by the Common Security and Defense Policy.
Lessons Learned from the European Defense Community’s Failure
There are several striking parallels between the Europe of the early 1950s and today – the threat from Moscow, wavering American commitment to Europe (or fear thereof), and power shifts in Central and Eastern Europe. Then as now, the crucial question is how to organize security to satisfy the complex web of interests in that region. Like in the 1950s, Franco-German relations play a key role, and London has decided to withdraw from the continent. What is more, both periods saw major technological transformations – nuclear weapons then, artificial intelligence today.
Looking at the experiments of the 1950s also offers specific policy concepts to address current problems. First and most importantly, the EDC was complemented by plans for a European Political Community (EPC) in 1953 that ensured parliamentary control at the European level. Some even floated the idea of a common defense minister. Members of the European assembly would be directly elected. They would be able to initiate and pass laws – including foreign and security policy – by simple majority voting. Anticipating the European External Action Service by decades, they would negotiate international treaties and accredit foreign representatives. It is worth noting that the draft treaty for the EPC was negotiated by members of parliaments from France, Italy, Germany, and the Benelux countries rather than by government envoys.
Second, common security policy served as a blueprint for other policy areas and, crucially, promoted the idea of a common budget. In fact, the EDC was the first venue in which European leaders discussed the idea of a common budget. The Italians, for example, were ready to benefit from the financial advantages that military cooperation would provide. Adenauer, too, agreed that it was impossible to maintain a common army without a common budget. Not unlike today, integrating European security was seen as an elegant way to reconcile military needs with financial interests.
Finally, the innovative developments in 1950s Europe created new spaces for discourse in political institutions and, more broadly, civil society. National parliamentarians flocked to Strasbourg. Journalists reported from the EDC and EPC proceedings. Transnational pressure groups – including, most notably, the Union of European Federalists led by Henri Frenay and the European Movement led by Paul-Henri Spaak – were thriving. Then as now, European security had become a primary public concern. Germans had taken less than two years to go from opposing rearmament of any kind to, by January 1952, favoring a European army that included German troops.
Implications for Today’s European Security Order
If Europe’s current leaders are to make the courageous political decisions that Chancellor Scholz is asking for, they could look to the 1950s for inspiration. Not because these old concepts provide easy answers – the EDC was, of course, far from perfect and left significant loopholes. But because its protagonists came up with genuinely novel ideas and were ready to take gutsy steps. For example, the delegates of the EPC’s preparatory assembly were the first to sit in political groups rather than national blocs, a practice taken up by the European Parliament.
There are several lessons to be learned from the history of common defense policy:
- First, powerful governance structures are key to driving the integration process. Currently, defense questions in the European Parliament are left to the Subcommittee on Security and Defense (SEDE). Intergovernmental decision-making is cumbersome and slow.
- Second, common defense policy requires solid financial footing and the willingness to extend European solidarity to military security.
- Third, defense integration requires an open-minded discourse on the potentials and limitations of European defense. For example, the extent to which a stronger European alliance would be compatible with NATO is rarely explored. In the 1950s, these two were not mutually exclusive. In fact, the Americans loved the idea of European defense integration.
For Paul-Henri Spaak, one of the architects of early European integration, the plans of the 1950s were an experiment in parliamentary democracy to solve the problem of security in Europe. Today, European political experiments have become somewhat timid and uninspired. Looking back to the early postwar years might serve as inspiration for advancing the European security order in the years to come.
This memo is based on the research article “International Security and Parliamentary Democracy in Early European Integration” that draws on archival records in Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy: https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2021.1958763
