9.10 The European Union

After two world wars that started in Europe, many leaders believed national rivalry, especially between France and Germany, had to be tamed. The French planner Jean Monnet and foreign minister Robert Schuman proposed starting small and practical: put the coal and steel industries, the raw materials of war, under a shared authority. In Schuman's words in 1950, this would make war between France and Germany materially impossible. Integration also promised bigger markets, and a united Western Europe would be stronger in the Cold War.

The EU is a transnational union: member states share some powers through common institutions while remaining independent countries. The European Commission proposes laws and enforces the rules, the Council brings together ministers from national governments, the European Parliament has been directly elected by citizens since 1979, and the European Court of Justice settles disputes over EU law.

The single market allows goods, services, money and people to move freely among members. EU citizens can live, work and study in other member countries. Not every member uses the euro; Denmark and Sweden, for example, kept their own currencies, and Britain never adopted it. The EU has also tried to build a shared European identity, with a common flag and anthem, EU citizenship and the Erasmus program (1987), which lets students study in other member countries.

National sovereignty is a state's authority to govern itself without outside control. Every step of integration has raised the question of how much of it to share. Supporters argue that pooling sovereignty has kept peace among members, raised living standards, helped former dictatorships and communist states become stable democracies, and given Europe a stronger voice in a globalized world. Skeptics, often called Euroskeptics, argue that unelected officials in Brussels make too many decisions, that EU rules override national parliaments, and that free movement and a shared currency limit a country's control over its borders and economy.

These debates sharpened after the 2008 financial crisis, when Greece and other eurozone members needed bailouts tied to deep spending cuts, and during the large refugee arrivals of 2015 (9.11). In Britain's 2016 referendum, about 52 percent voted to leave. Britain left on January 31, 2020, the first member state to do so.