History
In the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1818, Tsar Alexander, as the most advanced internationalist of the day, suggested a kind of permanent European union and even proposed the maintenance of international military forces to provide recognized states with support against changes by violence.
A Paneuropean movement gained some momentum from the 1920s with the creation of the Paneuropean Union, based on Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi's 1923 manifesto Paneuropa, which presented the idea of a unified European State. The movement, led by Coudenhove-Kalergi and subsequently by Otto von Habsburg, is the oldest European unification movement. His ideas influenced Aristide Briand, who gave a speech in favor of a European Union in the League of Nations on 8 September 1929, and in 1930, who wrote his "Memorandum on the Organization of a Regime of European Federal Union" for the Government of France.
We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only, will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living.
Winston ChurchillAt the end of World War II, the political climate favoured unity in Western Europe, seen by many as an escape from the extreme forms of nationalism which had devastated the continent. In a speech delivered on 9 September 1946 at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, Winston Churchill postulated a United States of Europe.
One of the first practical and successful proposals for European cooperation came in 1951 with the European Coal and Steel Community. Since then, the European Community has gradually evolved to Union in which a whole range of policy areas where its member states hope to benefit from working together.
The process of intergovernmentally pooling powers, harmonising national policies and creating and enforcing supranational institutions, is called European integration. Other than the vague aim of "ever closer union" in the 1983 Solemn Declaration on European Union, the Union (meaning its member governments) has no current policy to create either a federation or a confederation.
Debate on European unity is often vague as to the boundaries of 'Europe'. The word 'Europe' is widely used as a synonym for the European Union, although some of the European continent is still not in the EU.
Read more about this topic: Federal Europe
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)