European Union Peace Project

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at how the integration experiment of the European Union has given Europeans a greater sense of community throughout the continent and greater opportunities for the future and how war between European States currently seems inconceivable. It discusses the efforts over the past 50 years to prevent further war such as the Treaty of Rome and contends that the European integration project is a model of peace for the rest of the world and that hopefully the future years of the EU will prove just as peaceful as the last fifty.

From the Paper:

"When the European Coal and Steel Community was established in 1951, its aim was to ensure that neither France or Germany could again wage war against each other, by keeping the raw materials of war under shared control. This arrangement, which eventually evolved into what we know today as the European Union, must maintain this goal. The last war in Europe cost the world over 50 million lives and devastated Europe's cities, its economy and its people. One irony of the Second World War was that it followed the "war to end all wars," and a phase when, rather than striving for cooperation, the victors of the war punished the perceived German perpetrator with the Treaty of Versailles, leading Germany to further isolation from and resentment towards the rest of Europe."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Blair, Alasdair, The European Union since 1945, London, Pearson Education Limited, 1995.
• Bulmer, Simon and Lequesne, Christian, The Member States of the European Union, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Cameron, Fraser, The Future of Europe: Integration and Enlargement, London, Routledge, 2004.
• Habermas, Jurgen, 'Why Europe Needs a Constitution,' New Left Review, no. 11 (2001): 5-26, http://webct.latrobe.edu.au/webct/urw/lc9140001.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct, accessed 4 May 2007.
• McCormick, John, Understanding the European Union: Second Edition, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.

More papers on European Union Peace Project:

• Research Paper # 99724 : "On the Rocks: European-Israeli Relations"
• Essay # 85817 : "European Union"
• Essay # 69414 : "Turkey and the European Union"

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