Unresolved Sovereignty: The Origins of European Union Crisis, 1950 – 1953

Abstract

The dissertation identifies and analyses the origins of the present crises afflicting the European Union. It examines the Schuman Plan Conference of 1950-51 and the European Coal and Steel Community that provided the blueprint for today’s supranational structure. The core argument - the unresolved sovereignty thesis – reveals that preconditions for future crises were embedded in the original institutional design. The unresolved sovereignty thesis establishes the following: (i) ‘Popular sovereignty’ was not a feature of Conference deliberations. The institutions were therefore designed without a mechanism connecting them to the people of Europe, creating a subsequent ‘democratic deficit’; (ii) The status of nation-state sovereignty was set aside during the Conference, resulting in new institutions that were inconsistent with sovereignty understandings across the member-states; (iii) European sovereignty was not adequately theorised during the Conference. As a result, the supranational institutions provoked immediate political conflict, leading to a subsequent ‘legitimacy gap’; and (iv) Creating European-level institutions without resolving questions