Major Nation-States
in the European Union
© 2005
J. Richard Piper
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Chapter 1
THE MAJOR NATION-STATES
IN THE EUROPEAN UNION:
AN INTRODUCTION
“We need to build a union of hearts and minds, a shared sense of common destiny, of European citizenship.”
—Romano Prodi, President of the Commission of the European Union, 2000,
New York Times, January 29, 2000, A17.
D
ally joined the United States and Britain but
offered only qualified support. At the same time,
France and Germany, long the leading nationstates in the EU, vehemently opposed American-British plans and actions and sought to rally
both European and world opinion against them.
Because the European nation-states possess distinctive cultures, languages, and histories that
make them much more different from one
another than are the fifty states of the United
States of America, it is not surprising to find
that these nation-states have often proved reluctant to surrender some of their sovereignty and
have often found it impossible to develop common policies, as the Iraq case demonstrates.
However, a common desire to achieve
peace among nation-states that had formerly
fought increasingly terrible wars with one
another and to achieve prosperity comparable
to that in the United States of America have
spawned the numerous supranational, and partially supranational, features of the contemporary EU. These features are quite evident even
in the face of the policy divergences within the
EU over the Iraq War. The member states of
the EU have ceded far more authority to EU
espite some superficial resemblance to the
United States of America (USA), the
European Union (EU) is not a United
States of Europe equivalent to the USA. It is
also unlikely to become such an entity in the
near future. The European Union is unique in
its combination of features that enable it to
make some decisions at an institutional level
“above” its member states (supranational)
while at the same time operating in many
respects as an intergovernmental organization
of highly distinctive nation-states that retain
their own national identity and supreme power
(known as sovereignty) over a particular territory and population in many domains. The
futile efforts by European Union leaders to
forge a common EU response to the United
States of America’s policies on Iraq in
2002–2003 illustrate clearly the distinction
between the EU and the United States. While
the Bush administration prepared to attack the
regime of Saddam Hussein, the United Kingdom (Britain) provided staunch support and
urged similar backing from the European
Union, of which Britain is a prominent member. Spain and Italy, also EU members, eventu1
2
PART ONE: THE EUROPEAN UNION
institutions than the United States, Canada, and
Mexico have ever considered giving up to such
institutions through the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA). As a result, Europe
has moved much further toward supranational
institutions than any other region of the world,
whether it be North America, South America,
Africa, or Asia. The European Parliament, for
example, stands as the globe’s only supranational
representative body to which citizens of the
member nation-states elect representatives
through competitive elections and direct popular vote. On many public policy matters, including agricultural, trade, business competition,
and environmental policies, the European
Union has demonstrated impressive unity and a
consistent ability to develop coherent common
actions that are often quite distinctive from
those of the United States.
The EU is important due to its size and
impact on global politics and economics, as well
as because of its unique combination of supranational and intergovernmental features. For
example, multinational business corporations
based in the United States have sometimes
found their planned activities thwarted by the
European Union if they wish to operate within
its borders (as almost all do, because of the size
and wealth of the EU). In July 2001, the EU
blocked a proposed merger between General
Electric and Honeywell corporations on
grounds that it violated EU competition rules,
even though the United States Department of
Justice had approved the merger of these two
American-based corporations. Increasingly,
American business executives must be closely
attuned to the European Union, because in
many ways it can affect their operations. With
the establishment of a European Central Bank
(ECB) and the adoption of the euro as the common currency of twelve EU members, the
European Union’s collective impact on the
global political economy is almost certain to rise
above its already significant level. Already, the
euro is beginning to challenge the supremacy of
the American dollar as the prime currency of
international exchange. Moreover, there are
signs that the European Union is about to
enhance its global political-military influence,
too, as it moves toward developing a European
Security and Defense Identity (ESDI).
During their rich histories, the major component nation-states of the contemporary EU
have shaped many features of our modern
world; and they continue to exert significant
independent influence. For example, English
conceptions of liberty grounded in such historic
documents as the Magna Carta of 1215, in
which the English nobles compelled King John
to give formal recognition to a number of individual rights, have profoundly shaped American
and global political thought. French Revolutionary ideas about national citizenship from the
late 1780s and the 1790s have significantly
changed global conceptions of nationalism and
the nation-state. A resurgence of ideas stressing
free-market economics became evident in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in the late 1970s, presaging an ideological wave that would sweep
across most of the world in the next two
decades. As a negative model, Adolf Hitler’s
Nazi regime in Germany has left an indelible
record of gruesome inhumanity, from which
most people around the world continue to recoil
in horror. Therefore, not only the European
Union but also its major nation-states merit the
attention of every serious student of politics and
economics.
INTERGOVERNMENTAL AND
SUPRANATIONAL ASPECTS
OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
“Europe will be stronger precisely because it has
France in as France, Spain in as Spain, Britain
in as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions, and identity,” British Prime Minister
CHAPTER 1: The Major Nation-States in the European Union: An Introduction
Margaret Thatcher declared in 1988 as she
fiercely resisted what she feared were trends
toward too much supranationalism in Europe.1
Previously, in 1962, then President Charles de
Gaulle of France had phrased his intergovernmental vision in even stronger terms: “There is
and can be no Europe other than a Europe of
the States—except, of course, for myths, fictions, and pageants.”2 Despite the strong views
and strenuous efforts of such leaders as President Charles de Gaulle of France and Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, both of
whom strongly favored an intergovernmental
approach that would leave almost all power in
the hands of such member state governments as
France and Britain, the European Union has
become in some respects a supranational organization (often described as federal, though the
latter term indicates a sharing of powers
between at least two levels of government, in
this case the EU and the nation-state and perhaps the states within the nation-state) that
often impinges on its member states’ policy
preferences and institutions. However, the EU
remains far from the “union of hearts and
minds” aspired to by Romano Prodi, the current
President of the European Commission. A
Eurobarometer public-opinion survey conducted in October and November 2002 in all
member countries of the EU found that 90 percent of the respondents felt very attached to
their own country, while only 45 percent
expressed a similar attachment to the European
Union.3
”Europe will be stronger precisely because it has
France in as France, Spain in as Spain, Britain in
as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions,
and identity.”
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, 1988,
cited by Timothy Bainbridge, The Penguin Companion
to European Union, 1998, 27.
3
“. . . there is and can be no Europe other than a
Europe of the States—except, of course, for
myths, fictions, and pageants.”
French President Charles de Gaulle, 1962, cited by
John Pinder, The European Union, 2001, 13-14.
The reasons for the unique mixture in the
EU lie in the differing perceptions and mixed
motives of Europeans themselves concerning
European integration. Obviously, many have perceived potential benefits, such as peace, trade
expansion, and an enhanced environment, that
may result from pooling sovereignty in European
institutions instead of attempting to tackle all
global problems primarily at the level of mediumsized and small nation-states, as in the past. The
advent of the global preeminence of the United
States of America (and for a time, the Soviet
Union) and the spread of multinational corporations, often based outside of Europe, have been
among the factors fostering such thinking.
Reflection on World Wars I and II, which devastated Europe but grew out of the preexisting
nation-state system, also has contributed, as have
memories of the nationalistic excesses of Hitler
in Germany and Mussolini in Italy.
However, many European governmental
leaders, groups, and individual citizens feel a
deep attachment to their nation-states and/or
advantages that they derive from their nationstates. They may be willing to pool sovereignty
on a limited basis but desire to maintain their
nation-state as an important arena for decisionmaking. President Charles de Gaulle, Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, and others of similar inclination have voiced this intergovernmental approach to European integration. The
Eurobarometer survey of European public
opinion cited previously indicates that national
attachments remain much stronger than European attachments among most contemporary
Europeans.
4
PART ONE: THE EUROPEAN UNION
On the other hand, many other European
officials, groups, and individuals have perceived that extensive pooling of sovereignty,
perhaps a United States of Europe on a federal
model similar to the United States of America,
is desirable. Romano Prodi and many EU officials take this perspective, as do many leaders,
groups, and citizens, particularly in nationstates that are seeking to escape their recent
pasts (such as the Nazi experience in Germany
under Adolf Hitler or the Fascist experience in
Italy under Benito Mussolini) or that are too
small to achieve many objectives on their own
in the contemporary global environment (Luxembourg, for example). They advance the
supranational approach or a modified federal
version of it.
Then there are many Europeans who mix
the supranational and intergovernmental
approaches, depending upon the particular
issue at hand and how they believe that pooling sovereignty or leaving it at the nation-state
level will affect their own interests. For example, even Margaret Thatcher, a committed
devotee of intergovernmental approaches, was
willing to accept some supranationalism (generally in a federal framework) in order to
achieve a European single market that
accorded well with her free-market ideology
and that she perceived to be in the interests of
Britain and especially British business. In
practice, such mixes have been widespread.
One EU commissioner recently summed up
the views of many of his colleagues: “I have
never thought of Europe as an end in itself. I
have always considered Europe to be a means
to achieve certain political ends. . . . Europe is
like a playground of Lego blocks where one
stacks pieces upon one another, and that
makes it possible to build a nice house.”4 The
result has been the complex combination of
supranational and intergovernmental elements
that is evident in the contemporary European
Union.
“I have never thought of Europe as an end in
itself. I have always considered Europe to be a
means to achieve certain political ends. . . .
Europe is like a playground of Lego blocks where
one stacks pieces upon one another, and that
makes it possible to build a nice house.”
EU Commissioner quoted by Liesbet Hooghe,
The European Commission and
the Integration of Europe, 2001, 215.
One prominent comparative politics analyst
has aptly described the European Union as “a
political system but not a state.”5 By this statement, he and similar commentators have meant
that the European Union possesses a stable set
of institutions for collective decision-making.
Moreover, there exists a pattern of inputs, policy outputs, and feedback that Gabriel Almond,
David Easton, and other political scientists have
identified as characteristic of a political system.6
However, they have also meant to indicate that
the European Union’s central institutions for
transforming inputs into outputs lack the
monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion that
has usually been seen as the essential feature of
a state, such as the United States of America,
France, or Germany. There, military and police
powers, backed by a wide sense of belonging to
a “nation” deserving of loyalty and support as
well as acceptance of the constitutional
democratic procedures employed to channel
inputs and produce outputs, combine the force
and legitimacy largely absent in the EU.
Despite proposals to grant such a monopoly in
some spheres to the EU, such a development is
occurring only on a very limited basis, in the
case of the EU rapid reaction force. Because
most member state leaders remain jealous of
their prerogatives over military and police powers, and because public opinion in Europe does
not now sufficiently embrace a union of hearts
and minds (or even accept EU procedures as
democratic), a monopoly for EU governance
CHAPTER 1: The Major Nation-States in the European Union: An Introduction
institutions on the legitimate use of coercion
remains unlikely in the foreseeable future.
In its contemporary form, the European
Union makes many common public policies for
470 million people (380 million before May 1,
2004), compared with 293 million people in the
United States, and generates a gross domestic
product (GDP)—the total value of the goods
and services produced by the economy of an
entity in a year, excluding the income of the residents that is derived from investment abroad—
slightly smaller than the GDP of the United
States. Even in policy domains where the
national governments retain most of the authority, such as social welfare, actions by the EU
often constrain national independence. Italy, for
example, has recently slashed welfare spending
to reduce its governmental debt and deficits
enough to qualify for inclusion in the common
euro currency.
At the same time, however, the European
Union is an intergovernmental organization
retaining the features highlighted by de Gaulle
and Thatcher or evident on the Iraq issue in
2002–2003. The member state governments
retain the legal monopoly on the use of legitimate force with the exception of the 60,000member EU rapid reaction force that is just
taking shape. The nations also possess distinctive political traditions and senses of history,
national political parties and interest groups,
and publics that are generally far more attached
to their national identities and more attentive to
national issues than they are to the EU and
European issues.
THE MAJOR NATION-STATES
IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
Of the 15 member states in the pre-2004 European Union, 5—Germany, France, the United
Kingdom, Italy, and Spain—are significantly
larger than the others in population and gross
5
domestic product. Three—Germany, France,
and the United Kingdom—have far outweighed
the others in power on the global scene and
within Europe. Each of the “big three” has
made unique contributions to the development
of the European Union, and Italy and Spain also
have been significant shapers of the EU of
today. Poland, the largest of the 2004 entrants
(similar to Spain in population but much smaller
in gross domestic product), will bring some distinctive new contributions into the process.
Table 1.1 indicates the contemporary populations of the 15 member states of the pre-2004
European Union. Table 1.2 compares the populations, gross domestic products, and per
capita gross domestic products of the five major
member states in the pre-2004 European Union
with those of Poland, Turkey, and Russia, and
TABLE 1.1
The Nation-States of the
European Union, 2003
Nation-state
Germany
Population estimate (2003)
83,251,851
United Kingdom
59,778,002
France
59,765,983
Italy
57,715,625
Spain
40,077,100
Netherlands
16,067,754
Greece
10,645,343
Belgium
10,274,595
Portugal
10,084,245
Sweden
8,876,744
Austria
8,169,929
Denmark
5,368,854
Finland
5,183,545
Ireland
3,883,159
Luxembourg
EU TOTAL
Source: World Almanac, 2003.
448,569
379,591,298
6
PART ONE: THE EUROPEAN UNION
TABLE 1.2
GDP and Per Capita GDP of the Major Pre-2004 EU Member
States in Comparative Perspective
Major pre-2004 EU nation-states, Poland, Russia, Turkey,
the United States, and the EU
Nation-state/EU
Population (million)
GDP (trillion)*
$1,654
Per capita GDP*
France
60
$27,500
Germany
83
2,271
27,600
Italy
58
1,552
26,800
Spain
40
886
22,000
United Kingdom
60
1,664
27,700
Poland
39
427
11,000
Russia
144
1,287
8,900
Turkey
69
455
6,700
United States
293
10,980
37,800
European Union
380
9,916
26,100
The smaller 10 EU nation-states
Nation-state/EU
Population (million)
GDP (trillion)*
Per capita GDP*
Austria
8
246
30,000
Belgium
10
298
29,000
Denmark
5
168
31,200
Finland
5
142
27,300
Greece
11
212
19,900
Ireland
4
117
29,800
Luxembourg
0.4
25
55,100
Netherlands
16
461
28,600
Portugal
10
182
18,000
Sweden
9
238
26,800
Source: CIA World Fact Book, 2003. EU totals tabulated by author.
*GDP and GDP figures are calculated using the purchasing power parity method, which takes into account the differences in what a dollar
will actually purchase in each country.
those of the United States. Map 1.1 shows the
locations of the pre-2004 EU states, the 2004
entrants, and the four additional states accepted
by the EU as candidates for accession.
France played the biggest role in shaping
the initial proposals for the European Coal and
Steel Community (predecessor of the current
EU), largely because its leaders wished to con-
tain and channel a resurgent Germany that they
had come to believe was inevitably going to
emerge and wanted to use European integration
as a means for Franco-German reconciliation.
Moreover, France, long a major agricultural
exporter but also facing high domestic political
and economic costs in trying to modernize and
bolster its relatively large agricultural sector on
7
CHAPTER 1: The Major Nation-States in the European Union: An Introduction
EUROPE
0
0
500
500
1000 mi
1000 km
ICELAND
SWEDEN
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
FINLAND
NORWAY
ESTONIA
NORTH SEA
IRELAND
DENMARK
B
A
LT
IC
S
E
A
LATVIA
RUSSIA
LITHUANIA
RUSSIA
UNITED NETHERLANDS
KINGDOM
GERMANY
BELGIUM
N
Byelarus
POLAND
UKRAINE
LUXEMBOURG
CZECH
SLOVAKIA
MOLDOVA
AUSTRIA
FRANCE
HUNGARY
SWITZERLAND
ITALY
PORTUGAL
SPAIN
G
ROMANIA
SLOVENIA
CROATIA
BLACK SEA
BOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA YUGOSLAVIA
BULGARIA
MONTENEGRO
MACEDONIA
ALBANIA
TURKEY
GREECE
SYRIA
CYPRUS
MOROCCO
ALGERIA
TUNISIA
EU member states before May 1, 2004
States joining the EU May 1, 2004
Accession states likely to join the EU 2007–09
Accession state with indefinite entry date
LEBANON
MALTA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
ISRAEL
JORDAN
LIBYA
EGYPT
MAP 1.1 Europe, The European Union Nation-States, and Nation-States Named
as Accession Candidates indefinite
8
PART ONE: THE EUROPEAN UNION
its own, has heavily influenced and protected
the most expensive public policy of the EU, the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Farming
has been more than an economic pursuit for
France, however. It has been an integral part of
a French heritage that emphasizes distinctive
wines and cheeses and well-preserved medieval
farming villages. Proud of its status for centuries
as a global Great Power and facing a world in
which factors beyond its leaders’ control were
operating to diminish that status, France has
often viewed European integration as a vehicle
for the French to provide political leadership,
increasingly in conjunction with Germany.
Germany has usually served as the primary
economic motor for the EU, reflecting the fact
that it has had the largest gross domestic product of any member state since it underwent an
economic miracle in the 1950s and 1960s.
Because it has had economic clout and has also
adhered to a long-term policy of low inflation
that others have increasingly sought to emulate,
Germany has played a particularly large role in
influencing first the European Monetary System (EMS) and then the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Germany has also led or at
least supported most of the drives toward European supranational or federal development. Initially hesitant to assert political leadership due
to concerns that such assertion would revive its
neighbors’ bitter memories of past German
aggression, German leaders have seen supranational development of European institutions as
a means of “escaping into Europe” while
obtaining many German goals through collective action.
The United Kingdom has proved more
aloof than France or Germany, largely because
of its island location off the shores of the continent of Europe; its economic, cultural, and
political ties to the United States and its Commonwealth (former Empire); and its long history of independence from long-term alliances.
However, global trader Britain, which reembraced its own traditions of free markets and
private enterprise with particular vigor after
1979, has successfully pushed the EU in the
direction of freer trade and more business competition, albeit aided by United States encouragement and economic globalization pressures.
Despite its equivalence in size to France
and the United Kingdom, Italy has generally
enjoyed less influence in the EU than has Germany, France, or Britain. However, at least in
the rhetoric of its leaders, it has been unusually
consistent in pushing for further European
integration since the early 1950s, even if it has
often lagged in implementing supranational
endeavors.
As for Spain, a relative latecomer to the EU
(in 1986), it has played a leading role in shaping
European regional and cohesion policies and
has often forcefully spoken on behalf of other
member states having lower per capita wealth
than the founders of the European Communities. It has also proved a useful bridge between
the European Union and Latin America.
Among the new entrants, Poland dwarfs all
of the others in population and gross domestic
product, though in the latter respect it remains
far behind the five largest countries of the pre2004 EU. While its impact on the EU remains
to be seen, it is likely to bolster British efforts to
promote transatlantic ties to the United States;
and its large agricultural sector is likely to be a
factor nudging the EU toward further modifications of its Common Agricultural Policy, if
only to keep expenditures from soaring.
While each major member state has influenced the contemporary European Union, each
also has found its own governmental institutions
and political processes increasingly altered by
the Europe beyond its own national boundaries—sometimes in unforeseen ways. For
example, the European Court of Justice has not
only impacted national laws and legal processes.
It has also encouraged the development of
judicial review (the power of courts to overrule
or uphold the constitutionality of legislation or
executive actions) in member states previously
CHAPTER 1: The Major Nation-States in the European Union: An Introduction
lacking such a tradition, including the United
Kingdom, which has a largely unwritten constitution that assigned very limited political roles
to its courts prior to British entry into the European Community.
National chief executives and cabinet ministers have become mediators between European Union institutions and various national
political actors, sometimes enhancing the executives’ powers (especially at the expense of
national parliaments) but at other times causing
them massive political headaches, as British
prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John
Major (see Chapter Twelve) discovered. In
Thatcher’s case, her alienation of European
leaders became an issue that her rivals inside her
party employed to remove her as prime minister. In Major’s case, European issues virtually
destroyed his ability to govern by dividing his
party between supporters and opponents of the
treaty establishing the European Union.
Political issues pertaining to the EU have
often been at the center of national partisan
conflicts and have sometimes split major
national parties. The British Conservative party
of Major and Thatcher, referred to above, is but
one example of a split within a major national
party over European issues. The French
Gaullist party has in recent years suffered a
somewhat similar division, as has the British
Labour party in the past. As for splits between
parties or clusters of parties, Italy was one of
several countries that witnessed a sharp division
in the late 1940s and the 1950s between the parties of the government and the opposition
Socialist and Communist parties over European
integration issues.
EU initiatives have spawned new interest
groups. For instance, a variety of new anti-integration groups emerged in both France and
Britain in the early 1990s to mobilize popular
opposition to the treaty establishing the EU.
Moreover, because multinational corporations
are by their very nature better positioned than
labor unions or most voluntary citizen interest
9
groups to operate on a transnational basis,
and because they also possess vast economic
resources and the talented lawyers and other
advisers to master the intricacies of European
Union decision-making processes, many analysts believe that European integration has often
benefited large corporate interests over those of
other groups.
THE AIMS AND STRUCTURE
OF THIS BOOK
This book is about the European Union and its
five major member nation-states. It aims to be
concise but clear enough to introduce the subject to an American student audience. Key
terms with which many students may be unfamiliar are highlighted in bold print and are
defined in a glossary at the end of the text. This
book will consider the European Union as the
supranational organization that it has partially
become, albeit one with multiple tiers of government and one less closely knit than a federal
nation-state, such as the United States or
Canada. However, this book will also consider
the EU in terms of the intergovernmental
organization composed of separate nationstates that it partially remains and is likely to be
for some time to come.
Chapters Two through Four offer an
overview of the European Union, examining its
development in the broad context of modern
European history, its major institutions, and its
major public policies. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks widely employed in political science and related disciplines, Chapter Two sets
the stage for examination of contemporary institutions in Chapter Three and public policies in
Chapter Four.
Chapters Five through Fourteen examine
each of the five major nation-states in the current European Union. The lead chapter on
France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom,
and Spain in each pair of two chapters features
10
PART ONE: THE EUROPEAN UNION
discussion of the political development of the
nation-state in question, its governmental institutions, and its political processes. In analyzing
political development, it focuses on the historical “crises” of development outlined by Gabriel
Almond and G. Bingham Powell: nation-building and state building, participation (development of modern constitutional democratic
processes), and distribution (evolution of modern economies and responses to globalization).7
Each lead chapter also analyzes contemporary
governmental institutions (executive leaders and
bureaucracies, legislatures, judiciaries, and subnational governments) and the political
processes involving political parties, interest
groups, and elections that at least purport to link
a democratic citizenry to their governments.
The second chapter on each major nationstate emphasizes that country’s relations with
the European Union. In each case, it examines
the historical development of the relationship,
assesses the most distinctive long-term features of that nation-state’s approaches to the
Union (as well as features that have shifted
significantly), evaluates the impact of that
country on the European Union, and draws
conclusions about the effects of EU membership on the government and politics of the
nation-state.
Following a chapter that compares and
contrasts the other ten pre-2004 nation-states
of the EU with the five major members and
illustrates general patterns, the final chapter of
the book deals with the issues raised by the
expansion of the EU, focuses on Poland as the
major nation-state that has just joined the EU,
discusses why Turkey (despite being officially
accepted in 1999 by the EU as an “accession
candidate”) and Russia are unlikely to join
Poland in the near future, and suggests general
conclusions about the European Union and its
major nation-states.
Taken as a whole, this book provides a solid
foundation of knowledge for students who wish
to understand the significance of the forces that
have been reshaping Europe for the past onehalf century and that promise to continue building a “new Europe” in the years to come. Far
more than most texts on the subject, it integrates analysis of the European Union with a
focus on the major nation-state components of
the EU, in the belief that one cannot really
understand contemporary Europe without considering it as a whole. Supranational development in Europe has been remarkable but
remains constrained by deep-rooted national
differences. Through its emphasis on both the
European Union and the major nation-states
that comprise it, this text highlights the continuing intergovernmental aspects of the EU while
also demonstrating how the Europeanizing
forces generated by the supranational institutions and public policies of the EU have substantially affected its member states. The
overriding aim of this text is to equip its readers
to be effective citizens of the world in the
twenty-first century. The European Union and
its major member states are simply too important to ignore.
SUMMARY
■
■
■
■
The European Union is unique among
international organizations in its mixture of
supranational and intergovernmental features.
Widespread European desires to achieve
prosperity and peace after the Great
Depression of the 1930s and World War II
(1939–1945) stimulated the movement
toward European integration that has led to
the European Union of today.
European nation-states in the EU retain
many distinctive political and cultural characteristics and continue to make unique
contributions.
Such national leaders as Charles de Gaulle
of France and Margaret Thatcher of the
United Kingdom have represented impor-
CHAPTER 1: The Major Nation-States in the European Union: An Introduction
■
■
■
■
■
■
tant voices in defense of national sovereignty in Europe.
France has usually viewed European integration as a vehicle for France to provide
leadership (often in conjunction with Germany), and it has played the largest role in
shaping and maintaining the EC/EU’s
Common Agricultural Policy.
Germany has sought to “escape into
Europe” after a nineteenth- and twentiethcentury history of assertive German nationalism and has spurred most drives toward
further European supranational development.
The United Kingdom initially resisted
European integration and has remained the
most aloof member of the EU and the
member most closely associated with the
United States.
Italy has generally enjoyed less influence in
the EU than member states of similar size;
although it has usually urged supranational
development, its record of implementing
EC/EU actions has been spotty.
Spain, which joined the EC only in 1986,
has played a leading role in shaping European regional and cohesion policies and
relations with Latin America.
Poland, by far the largest of the 2004 EU
entrants, poses special challenges to the EU
because of its large agricultural sector, rel-
■
11
atively undeveloped economy, fears of Russia, and close ties to the United States.
The European Union influences the internal political institutions, processes, and
policies of its member states and at the
same time is shaped by the distinctive
inputs of its member states.
ENDNOTES
1. Cited by Timothy Bainbridge, The Penguin
Companion to European Union, 2nd ed. (London:
Penguin, 1998), 27.
2. Cited by John Pinder, The European Union: A
Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 13–14.
3. Eurobarometer, field work conducted Oct.–
Nov. 2002.
4. Quoted by Liesbet Hooghe, The European Commission and the Integration of Europe: Images of
Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 215.
5. Simon Hix, The Political System of the European
Union (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 2.
6. Gabriel A. Almond, “Comparing Political Systems,” Journal of Politics 18, 2 (1956), 391–409;
David Easton, “An Approach to the Study of
Political Systems,” World Politics 9, 5 (1957),
383–400, and A Framework for Political Analysis
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965).
7. Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell,
Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), 34–41.