One of the most defining of the five main themes Tony Judt identifies in his introduction to Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 is that of the “European model”, which refers to the “distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations”. (7) Through their efforts to establish peaceful political relations on the continent, the conceptual founders of an integrated “European Union”, namely, Monet, Schumann, Adenauer, and De Gasperi, devised a mechanism for expanding economic inter-dependency between six Western European nations, the European Coal and Steel Community. (157-158) However, as Judt observes, the ECSC was “a political vehicle in economic disguise,” (158) and so the implication of this primarily economic union was the possibility of imposing constraints on political autonomy by placing limitations on sovereignty in the management of economies.
However, Judt clearly opposes the historical fallacy of a “post-national” Europe, (5) and it is thus no surprise to find the “supranational” orientation of European history continuously challenged. While the historic vision of the early theorists as well as the persistence of several successors, such as Helmut Schmitt, Valéry Giscard-D’Estaing, and Jacques Delors (excluding many others of course), has indisputably led to significant European integration, both political and economic, the tension inherent in the original formula, that which pits national sovereignty against peace and prosperity, continues to impede the efforts of the EU’s political elites to reform the federation’s increasingly outdated institutions.
Despite the current problem of legitimacy facing the EU (stemming from issues ranging from excessive enlargement to that of the “democratic deficit”), as well as that of forging a consensus on how to reform the Union, perhaps the mere condition of being forced to interact in an institutional framework has cleared the path for a common European political culture. In describing key aspects of democratic systems, Schmitter and Karl suggest, in “What Democracy is…and is Not”, that “they [contingent consent and bounded uncertainty] can emerge from the interaction between antagonistic and mutually suspicious actors and that the far more benevolent and ingrained norms of civic culture are better thought of as a product and not a producer of democracy.” (252 in O'Neil and Rogowski) Judt suggests that a similar transitional process has been underway in Europe when he asserts that “the European Community (later Union) did not lay the basis for an economically integrated Europe; rather, it represented an institutional expression of a process already under way. (326)
All of this seems to suggest that, although the European Union has encountered yet another political impasse in the forces opposed to the Lisbon Treaty, the institutional essence of the EU will not allow the present federation, now underpinned by a common currency and a host of normative standards in business and politics, to disintegrate significantly.
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