Expertise and the Creation of a Constitutional Order for Core Europe: Transatlantic Policy Networks in the Schuman Plan Negotiations

The Struggle for EU Legitimacy

“…In short, resonances can be traced between EU-official and national political or public discourses and academic discourses (for research exploring the actual exercise of mutual influence, see e.g. White 2003, Leucht 2010.…”

Bringing History Back In To the Study of Transnational Networks in European Integration

“…For a long time diplomatic and economic historians conceived of western European integration after 1945 as not much more than a process of multi-lateral bargaining of ‘national interests’ (Kaiser 2006; Gilbert 2008). More recently, however, a new generation of contemporary historians have re-conceptualised early European integration as the slow formation of an incipient ‘trans- and supranational polity’ (Kaiser, Leucht and Rasmussen 2009) and some have explicitly utilized the network approach as a heuristic device (Kaiser and Leucht 2008), for example for reconstructing the crucial role of Christian democratic party networks in ‘core Europe’ integration (Kaiser 2007) or the impact of transatlantic expert networks on the anti-trust and institutional provisions of the treaty that created the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951–52 (Leucht 2008; 2006). Other scholars have analysed important dimensions of supranational politics and policy-making which are highly relevant to understanding the role of network-type relations for ECSC/EEC politics, such as the role of supranational institutions like the Commission (Ludlow 2006) or of interest groups (Knudsen 2009a) in shaping new supranational policies.…”

“…Similar path dependencies appear to have governed policy networks and their role in the formation of early Community policies such as competition policy. Thus, many core features of EEC competition policy originated in the anti-trust provisions of the ECSC treaty which were shaped to a large degree by transatlantic expert networks (Leucht 2008; Leucht and Seidel 2008). Similarly, as Ramirez (2009) has shown, the network that eventually created the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) in 1983, actually formed in the early 1970s as a result of contacts forged between European car manufacturers and some Commissioners and leading officials like Robert Toulemon, to prevent the adoption of costly US car safety regulations and to promote a Community structural policy.…”

“…Thirdly, historical research on networks in EU governance also suggests the need to ‘bring people back’ into the study of networks (Kaiser 2009, see also Rhodes 2002). While older personalized Whig histories of European integration, which ascribed Jean Monnet a decisive role as ‘founding father’ of the ECSC, have been refuted, the leading French official and first president of the ECSC High Authority did play a crucial role in networks of officials, businessmen and legal experts, and in bringing these networks together at the Schuman Plan conference to guarantee a successful outcome of the inter-state negotiations (Leucht 2008). Similarly, Commissioners Mansholt and von der Groeben invested substantial personal resources in building and sustaining transnational networks in the policy fields for which they were responsible from 1958.…”

Regulating Competition

“…Second, French companies sought access to German coal at the same price as their German counterparts. Last, the transatlantic networks that linked the Americans, Jean Monnet and German ordoliberals (despite differences in economic doctrine) wanted to use competition policy as a tool to establish a modernised Europe, that was more economically and politically efficient than in the pre-war period (Leucht 2010). 3 As a result, the Treaty of Paris creating the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) included antitrust provisions that had no real precedents in Europe.…”