EUROPEAN UNION
FROM FUNCTIONALISM TO FEDERALISM

By AYESHA SHAHZAD

INTRODUCTION

The European Union is the most significant project in post 1945 Europe, and the most advanced example of institutional cooperation between countries in the world today. Its scope should not be underestimated, nor should the symbolic power it possesses in a continent whose nations have fought wars for centuries. The EU has developed into much more than a convenient trading arrangement between a set of separate states. Motivated largely by the desire never again to see war in Europe they hoped for a European polity, which cooperated for the greater good above national divisions. Two ideas in particular emerged as possible solutions to the wars that had so long plagued Europe, first, building cooperation among countries through the integration of one or more highly important economic function shared by all of them and secondly, directly establishing a European political federation. Both functionalist and federalist models can be applied on EU.

EU AND FUNCTIONALISM

Functionalism is the idea that cooperation on social and economic issues can improve conditions to the point where the causes of political conflict are eliminated. This concept must be understood in the context of the process of integration among states. This idea has been adapted extensively by Western Europe than anyone else, in part because that part of the world has developed furthest along the path to integration. Its practical example manifested in the form of European Union. The Europeans firstly decided to cooperate in the fields where they have common national interests. Those common interests include elements of human rights, political conditionality, cultural, technical/scientific, and most importantly the economic cooperation. At first, the EU is an economic organization and its most prominent policy goal is the development and maintenance of an effective single market. Since the Treaty of Rome, policies have implemented free trade of goods and services among member states, and continue to do so. It is acting as gatekeeper of the Single Market and regulator of trade relations. It also now aspires to a more offensive role, as opener of overseas market. The EU is also a key contestant in the often conflictual relations between the major blocs in the world economy. They have also taken an initiative of a single currency and made Euro the official currency for more than 317 million Europeans. But the Euro is not used in all of the EU as not all EU members have adopted the currency. But all nations, which have recently joined the EU, are pledged to adopt the Euro in due course. It is likely that the Euro will soon replace the U.S. dollar as the primary world currency. Since there is no single culture or lifestyle common to the entire EU population and attitudes and values of the EU population are very diverse so, the interests of the member states are mainly economic and political in nature.

TOWARDS FEDERALISM

The EU’s shape is becoming increasingly topical because of its policy shift from functionalism to becoming too supranational an organization. Some people envisioned EU as the United States of Europe, a single country with a division of responsibility between a central authority and nation states. The federal vision of the EU has always envisaged a small central authority, controlling a limited number of areas. But its power in those areas would be separate from the nation states, decided not at negotiations between governments but in the EU’s own central institutions. These are most importantly the European Commission and European Parliament. They say, the vision for European unification was a federal one. When Western European efforts at federation failed in the immediate aftermath of Second World War, the federalists were replaced by the so-called functionalists who developed a system of linkage of functions, piece-by-piece, through the establishment by treaty of unifying authorities for specific but limited purposes. It is they who laid the foundation, wittingly or unwittingly, for the new-style confederal arrangements that emerged and the reinvention of confederation, while strenuously denying that they had any federalistic intentions, for strategic reasons. The formalization of change was reflected in the change in name from the European community, a functionalist choice, to the European Union, a name that seemed to promise more than confederal linkage and that could satisfy federalists as well as confederalists.

EUROPEAN UNION AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

The EU has the tendency to be a replica of The Holy Roman Empire. It is a community of states with shared common interests, having a Single Market, Parliament and a European constitution has been accepted by the leadership and there is now more and more clamor about the need for a strong President of the central government who will speak for all of Europe like the Emperor of The Holy Roman Empire. Common to both the Holy Roman Empire and the European Union is that each understood, or understands, itself as a legal community and an all-embracing peaceful order for their territories. The EU also understands itself as a legal order, but as a supranational legal order. The European super state certainly evolving in this era and it is very likely that this same era will see the rising of a new Holy Roman Empire.

CONCLUSION

Arguably the EU is emerging as a great power if not the biggest power in the global political economy. It has set an example for the rest of world to follow. With the passage of time its worth is becoming double and it has become an influential Global Actor in the world of politics. But at the same time it threatens the sovereignty of its member states and a number of states are there that have the fear of a super-state and want to keep the EU’s scope limited. There are some forces, which are impeding the EU of becoming a federation. These include the still intense feeling of nationalism of the states of Western Europe and some of the states that are strong adherents of the Westphalian system. The Union is changing its shape with immense velocity to become a federal union of states but still there are some nations in the Western Europe that are not willing to give up their national identities expressed through states that retain substantial independence even while seeking limited union.

M.A (Previous) First Semester, 2007, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi.

All content (C) Department of International Relations, Karachi University

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