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In Zurich in 1946, Winston Churchill called for a united Europe.[1] Since that moment, the project of European integration, which started as a response to the problems of post-war reconstruction, became a process of responding to the evolution of the international system. In 1951, six European states signed the Treaty of Paris to form the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), beginning the process of European integration. Then the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 by the governments of France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg began the process formally.[2] This process has meant that the economies and polities of participating states have been increasingly managed in common. Decisions previously made by nation states alone are now taken together with other member states and European institutions. Governments in Western Europe began to surrender their national sovereignty in some specific policy areas.

Now, a complex set of political and economic arrangements have been made by the EU member states to accelerate the pace of European integration. European integration is considered to be an indispensable part of globalisation. However, what is the aim of this action by the EU member states? In what direction will the EU integrate to cater for the interests of its member states? As our understanding of the world is guided by our particular conceptual lenses or theoretical models, it is important for us to find the right way to analyse the nature of European integration.

Treaties are the milestones of European integration. The most important treaty – the Maastricht Treaty (TEU), which was ratified in 1992 and implemented in 1993 – set three pillars for further European integration: the European Communities; a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP); and Cooperation in the Field of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA).[3] All its contents reflected concern over the future of the EU and the problems of conflicts of the interests between the member states and the EU. Thus it is important for us to analyse the macro direction of European integration to evaluate the consequence of this controversial process. Moreover, whether the interests of the EU member states can best be maximised by federation is worth discussing in order to understand the allocation and balance of states’ interest in the process of European integration. I will analyse these problems focusing on two levels (national level and supranational level) while referring to two important EU integration theories: neofunctionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism.

Neofunctionalism versus liberal intergovernmentalism

Developments in the EU over the last two decades have revived debate about the consequence of European integration for the autonomy and authority of the state in Europe. The intergovernmentalist versus neofunctionalist argument was a hugely significant academic debate from the mid-1960s onwards.[4] During the 1950s and early 1960s, neofunctionalists and other theorists sought to explain the process whereby European integration proceeded from modest sectoral beginnings to something broader and more ambitious. From the 1960s until the early 1980s, intergovernmentalists and others sought to explain why the integration process had not proceeded as smoothly as its founders had hoped.

Neofunctionalism was the name given to the first theoretical attempt to understand European integration. Inspired by an American school of liberal pluralist thinking led by Haas, neofunctionalism included conflict in the analysis of the European regional process, as well as forward linkages among different, yet interrelated, policy arenas.[5] Following the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 in the early period of European integration, neofunctionalism seemed to win the theoretical debate. Neofunctionalism tried to explain how and why states voluntarily mix with each other at the cost of losing part of their national sovereignty, while seeking new strategies to ease conflicts between themselves.[6]

The core of neofunctionalism is the use of the concept of “spillover” to explain the motivation of states to cooperate with their neighbours. This explanation was accepted at the early stage of European integration. The process of “spillover” refers to situations when an initial decision by governments to place a certain sector, such as coal and steel, under the authority of central institutions creates pressures to extend the authority of the institutions into neighbouring areas of policy, such as currency exchange rates, taxation, and wages. This core claim meant that European integration is self-sustaining: “spillover” triggers the economic and political dynamics driving further cooperation.

According to the statement above, neofunctionalism stresses that non-state actors are important in international politics and European integration is advanced through “spillover” pressures. It implies that the more you bring new areas of policy action into the common framework, the greater the involvement and, subsequently, the influence of supranational institutions.[7] Although states decide the commencement of integration, the state is no longer the main actor in the process: the effect of “spillover” is an automatic chain within which the member states lose their control over some of their national sovereignty. “Spillover” illustrates that member states are no longer the final director of the process of European integration: the nature and direction of this process are rethought at supranational level. For neofunctionalists, the European Commission was the most important non-state international actor: the Commission was believed to be in a unique position to manipulate both domestic and international pressures on national governments to advance the process of European integration. Therefore, neofunctionalism was used to analyse European integration at supranational level.

Neofunctionalism has its limits: integration has only intermittently spilled over to closely related sectors and the influence of the supranational officials has only increased slowly.[8] It failed to explain the subsequent conflict of interest between the member states and supranational institutions, which sets it against another important theory – liberal intergovernmentalism.

In response to the neofunctionalist analysis of European integration, a counter-argument was put forward by Hoffmann. This argument drew heavily on realist assumptions regarding the role of states. His two main claims were that:

1. national governments were uniquely powerful actors in the process of European integration, guided by their concern to protect and promote the “national interest”

2. the integration process would not spread to areas of “high politics“ such as national security and defence.[9]

This theory implied that the governments of states were uniquely powerful for two reasons. First, they possessed legal sovereignty; and second they had political legitimacy as the only democratically-elected actors in the integration process.[10] In this view, where the power of supranational institutions increased it did so because governments believed it to be in their national interest. Therefore, in Hoffmann’s picture of the process of European integration, governments had much more autonomy than in the view of neofunctionalists.

Intergovernmentalism emphasises the logic of diversity. Hoffmann argued that in areas of key importance to the national interest, nations prefer the certainty, or the self-controlled uncertainty of national self-reliance. In short, where an issue was considered important enough, national governments would be effective gate-keepers, protecting and promoting their policy preferences. This can be best demonstrated by the difficulties of implementing the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the 1990s. This collective action was once hindered by the member states because of the problem of diverse national interests. For instance, the United Kingdom has stayed out of the Euro, concerned with its domestic interests. Along with further integration of the EU, intergovernmentalism needs to be improved to explain systematically this process from the liberal perspective. Thus, intergovernmentalism was revised and presented in the form of liberal intergovernmentalism by Andrew Moravcsik.

Liberal intergovernmental analysis was first applied to explain the negotiation of the Single Market Act. As opposed to neofunctionalism, it centres on explaining the influence of national interests. This theory poses states as the ultimate policy makers, devolving only limited authority to supranational institutions to achieve specific policy goals. Supranational institutions are merely the tool for member states to maximise their national interests. Moravcsik’s approach, like that of Hoffmann, assumed that states were rational actors and, according to him, liberal intergovernmentalism has a “basic tripartite structure” of foreign policy preference formation, inter-state bargaining and institutional delegation. The first part involves a pluralistic domestic process that determines each state’s definition of the national interest and thus the position that governments take with them into the international negotiation. The second part of the analysis is to see how conflicting national interests are reconciled in the negotiating forum of the Council of Ministers. The third part seeks to explain the circumstances under which governments delegate powers to supranational institutions.[11]

Moravcsik claims that the major choice in favour of Europe was a reflection of the preferences of national governments, not of the preferences of supranational organisations. Moravcsik offers a variation model of Putnam’s two-level game to explain European integration as consisting of a liberal theory of national preference formation and an intergovernmentalist account of strategic bargaining between the member states. Furthermore, liberal intergovernmentalists built the State-Centric mode to examine the complicated relationship between national interests and the priority of the supranational institutions.

The core assumption of the State-Centric mode is that European integration does not challenge the autonomy of nation states. This mode contends that states’ sovereignty is preserved or even strengthened through EU membership. Supranational actors exist to aid member states. Member states devolve limited authority to supranational institutions to achieve specific policy goals.[12] Liberal intergovernmentalism stresses the major role of the member states while neofunctionalism focuses on the important role which supranational institutions play. These two distinct theories gave rise to the debate over the nature of European integration.

Nearly every step of the move towards European integration has been less smooth than member states expected. The initial purpose of the member states’ choosing to join the EU was to maximise their national interests through the formation of supranational institutions. However, this kind of joint effort generates a conflict between the national interests and supranational interests. This triggers the debate over the aim of European integration: to what degree should European integration override the national sovereignty in order to strengthen each member states’ national interests through the formation of supranational institutions; and to what degree should supranational institutions try to assist member states in reaching their national goals; or should we consider this process solely at the national level or the supranational level. All these problems raise the question for the future of the EU: do we need a federal Europe?

A European Federation?

Based upon the uncertainties surrounding this process, as mentioned above, people began to question the future of Europe: towards what political shape will European integration take the EU? Will this process lead to a federal Europe? I argue that the EU is unlikely to consume national governments into a new federal state. The notion of a federal Europe is used by both opponents and supporters of a more tightly integrated Europe to symbolise a decline in the influence of national governments.[13] This viewpoint is in line with neofunctionalism, which explains a move towards a federal Europe as the spillover effect of its integration. However, neofunctionalism cannot fully explain the conflict between national interests and the supranational level that develops with European integration. Given this explanatory failing of neofunctionalism and “spillover”, the significant role of supranational institutions does not imply that the future of the EU is simply one of a “European federation“.

I would argue that any federation that may come about in the future along with the deeper integration of the EU will not diminish the influence of member states. According to federalist ideology, federalist countries will support delegation and pooling, particularly on highly symbolic issues. In terms of the unique case of the EU, supranational institutions, such as the Council, the Commission and the European parliament are not simply agents of federalism. While they have an obligation to act on behalf of the EU’s interests, the various supranational institutions at the EU level principally provide the framework for member states to pursue their national interests. Therefore, national influence will not be diminished, while a federal mode may appear in the future to accelerate the pace of European integration and better serve the interests of member states.

References

[13] Alberta M. Sbragia, Euro-Politics: Institutions and Policymaking in the “ New” European Community, ( Washington, D.C. The Brooking Institution, 1992 ), p.259.