The Testing Ground for Postwar European Integration: the 1950s

Abstract

The European integration process in the 1940s focused on the establishment of the framework upon which postwar European integration was to be built. There were two choices: either to create a pan-European federalist third force independent of the US and the USSR, or to confine the integration process to Western Europe under the limitations imposed by the Cold War policies of the two superpowers. The latter won. Once the framework of postwar European integration as a whole was established, the next phase involved the nature in which the various fields of integration, such as economic, security and political, would proceed. It was a question of whether they would be part of one overarching process of integration, or separate processes in their own right, totally divorced from each other. Just as the 1940s determined the framework for postwar European integration as a whole, the 1950s determined the framework for postwar European security cooperation in particular.