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The European Union:

The Power of the Supranationalism.

Susana Hiplan Esteffan

English IV CP

Professor Sarah Young

December 2010
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Many are the natures of the human being, but just a few are as powerful as the bellicose

one, that in a beginning was necessary for the survival of the race, but while more

advance and sophisticated the civilization become, more unnecessary and avoidable it is

getting, every time worst with the invention and progress of the weapons.

It is normal to have disagreements and opposite points of view, but huge conflicts, with

multiple participants, reasons, and results are the biggest expression of that nature. The

scientific knowledge and all the progress the civilization has been capable of developing

hasn’t been enough to stop the armed conflicts, but of increase them.

Most part of the time, wars are a product of political and territorial disagreements, reason

for which they involve heavy amounts of human beings.

Recent centuries have host the most deadliest conflicts in human history. World War II is

the only event in which every described aspect of wars meet. More than fifty years after,

its magnitude is still tragically unfathomable. This direct product of irrational

nationalisms ( the last global armed conflict) is still in the survivor’s and world’s eyes. It

taught modern world the meaning of the word “devastation”.

After WWII different organisms were created in order to prevent future conflicts and

promote an international fraternity which should inhibit a World War III. There also was

the big challenge of rebuilt Europe, job in extreme harder, almost impossible without a

unify purpose.

Under these contexts, what we now know as “European Union” was created.

The European Union (EU) is a supranational organism that operates in 27 European

countries, which influence has an extension capable of affect most part of the internal

decisions of its members, or even, the politics of government which are not part of this
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partnership, without talk about the place that use in the international scale.

How does it operates and what do we really know about its purposes?.

Besides the attempts of some emperors to extend their empires in the past, there was not a

real attempt to create a supranational organism, or a partnership among european

countries before World War II. The post-war period revealed the magnitude of the

conflict, showing the importance of the prevention of a new one. The nineteenth of

September of 1946, Winston Churchill gave a speech in which he calls for a "kind of

United States of Europe”1 doing evident the need of an association. Although, he did not

believe in a supranational organism, reason for which the United Europe Movement is

created under his will, promoting an intergovernmental cooperation.

At the same time, multiple European Movements were born in different sources of

thinking, like “The Socialist United States of Europe Movement” (Later known as

European Left) in 1947, or “The French council for a United Europe”, just citing some of

them. The Marshall plan for the economic revival of Europe was setting up in this time

too, in a climate of new desire for international cooperation that was growing fast in the

old continent. The “European Coal and Steel Community” (ECSC) was the predecessor

of the European Union, the ECSC was also the first organism operating in Europe under

supranational precepts. The ECSC is founded as the elemental part of the Schuman plan,

a set of ideas developed by Robert Schuman ( a french politician ) to get a lasting peace

in Europe. The main idea of the plan was to prevent a new war between France and

Germany. A shared control of the two fuels of war made materially impossible a new

attemp of war.

The succeeded of the European Coal and Steel community, opened the doors to multiple
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pro-cooperation treaties among european countries, now not just to prevent war, but to

get a better continental economy ( European Economic Community) and improvement in

security, standard of life, and in all general aspects in which cooperation would make a

positive difference.

The “Maastricht Treaty” (1993) changed the name of the European Economic

Community to just “European Union” and expanded the areas in which the partnership

operates to defense, and “justice and home affairs”, that with the economy, are the three

main pillars of the European Union today.

Nowadays the European Union count twenty seven members, a reflection of its explosive

development in comparison to the initial amount of six founder states that formed the

european communities ( The European Coal and Steel Community and the European

Atomic Energy Community) , this twenty seven members are: Austria, Belgium,

Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,

Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland,

Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the

United Kingdom.