Christian Democracy and the Birth of the European Union

Abstract

Christian Democracy and the Birth of the European Union Bryan Fanning In the aftermath of the Second World War Christian Democracy quickly became a prominent political force in several European countries, though not in Scandinavia or Great Britain. It became influential in countries with large Catholic populations, other than Spain and Portugal where totalitarian regimes remained in control. By 1948, Christian Democrat political parties had become dominant or politically prominent in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and, following its establishment in 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany. It filled a political vacuum left by the defeat of totalitarianism. In the immediate post World War Two era Christian Democrats in Germany and elsewhere could present themselves as harbingers of a new democratic era and, with the onset of the Cold War, as enemies of communism.The post-war Christian Democratic project was one that supported religious pluralism and Western democratic values. It looked West in opposition to the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc. The mostly-Christian democratic political and technocratic architects of what would become the European Union perhaps shared what has been called l’esprit européen.1 However, the main impetus was the need to recover from the war and to prevent the re-emergence of subsequent conflicts. The Christian Democratic architects of European integration variously blamed the war on modern nationalism, the rise of authoritarian fascism and the decline of Christian values. As put by Rosario Forlenza: ‘In the narrative of Christian Democracy, the order of European history and civilisation had been destroyed by modern nationalism and then by its association with the authoritarian political theologies of fascism and Nazism. Furthermore, political Catholicism had long experienced the nation state as a homogenising force threatening communities, from the churches to families. Taming nationalisms and nations, healing the European civil war and overcoming the past through close cooperation beyond the borders of nation states were explicit goals of the Europeanism of Christian Democracy.’2 Studies • volume 110 • number 437 52 Champions of Christian Democracy and of what became the European Union like Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) combined Catholic ideas with liberal economics to create a distinct Christian Democratic antidote to what were perceived as the causes of totalitarianism. In the immediate aftermath of the war Christian Democratic parties co-operated across borders. By 1950 these formed national governments or were the largest party in coalition governments in the six countries that became founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), established in 1951–52, and of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957–8.3 Adenauer, who served as the West German Chancellor from 1949 to 1963, was born in the Rhineland where he became a member of Zentrum, the German Catholic political party, in 1906 and mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933. He came into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy when he advocated extending membership of Zentrum to Protestants, thereby diminishing its role as a Catholic confessional party. Adenauer lived in seclusion for much of the Nazi period, although he was imprisoned briefly in 1934 and was sent to a labour camp for some months in 1944, following the assassination attempt on Hitler. After the war he was reinstated by the Allied occupation forces as Mayor of Cologne and in 1946 he became a founding member of the Christlich-Demokratische Union (Christian Democrat Union).4 The CDU, in alliance with the smaller, more conservative Christlich-Soziale Union (Christian Social Union), dominated the West German Federal Republic from its establishment in 1949 to 1963.5 It was built on the foundations of Zentrum and several pre-Nazi era conservative and moderate parties supported by Protestants as well as Catholics.6 What brought these disparate elements together and what defined the CDU for its members was its selfimage as a Christian party.7 Its main post-war rival was the reconstituted Social Democratic Party (SPD), which did not win power until 1969. In France, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) was founded in November 1944 under the chairmanship of Robert Schuman (1886–1963), who became one of the most significant political architects of what became the European Union. Schuman, the French foreign minister, was the leader of the...