Abstract
This chapter sets the scene for the remainder of the book (which seeks to put flesh on the bones of the argument outlined at the end of Chap. 1). Therefore, it looks back at the origins and development of the European integration project arguing that parties of the left were never its main protagonists but rather adjusted themselves to it before later becoming its more or less enthusiastic supporters when in the 1990s, it appeared to offer an alternative to national Keynesianism as a road to the achievement of social democratic ambitions. These developments, however, made it increasingly difficult for parties of the left to distinguish themselves from their opponents on the right, thus adding to the other factors involved in their long-term electoral decline, explored in Chap. 3.
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Notes
- 1.
The position is one with deep roots on the left. In 1949, Italian Communist Party leader, Palmiro Togliatti, for example, had during the course of a parliamentary debate re-affirmed his party’s basic position that only through the socialist transformation of society was the economic and political unification of Europe possible (Laneri 2017). In other words, the European institutions were unavailable as vehicles for a socialist project: they were un-reformable.
- 2.
This position too is one with deep roots. The PCI deputy and former Resistance-fighter, Antonio Giolitti, expressed his party’s opposition to Italy’s involvement in the European Coal and Steel Community with the argument that it would damage the Italian steel industry to the benefit of the French and German industries (Laneri 2017).
- 3.
Judgement of the Court of 15 July 1964. Flaminio Costa v E.N.E.L. Reference for a preliminary ruling: Giudice conciliatore di Milano—Italy. Case 6-64. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A61964 CJ0006
- 4.
- 5.
The term used to refer to a range of civil-society organisations and interest groups that emerged in the late 1940s to advocate European unity.
- 6.
For example, at the eighth PCI Congress in December 1956, ‘Togliatti devoted only one minute of his speech to Europe, almost as if to emphasise how marginal an issue it was’ (Maggiorani 1998: 47).
- 7.
Through the successive rounds of global trade negotiations held under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
- 8.
From James Callaghan’s speech to the Labour Party annual conference, 1976, available at http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=174
- 9.
For example, March (2013: 4) notes that the PES ‘played a critical role in getting the Employment Chapter inserted into the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty and developing the 1999 European Employment Pact’.
- 10.
Only the European parliament is organised along partisan lines and its role in relation to the Commission and the Council is not the same as that of a national parliament in relation to its executive branch. Meanwhile, the Council provides a forum for intergovernmental bargaining in which interest inevitably trumps ideology. ‘Calls by Belgian and French socialists during the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations, for example, to provide protection for public services (state-run public utilities) from the vagaries of the EU’s competition policy have little relevance in states where these services are now in the private sector (the UK) or have been for generations (the Netherlands). Thus trying to mobilize sister parties around an issue that is clearly leftist—at least to Belgian and French socialists—found only minimal support’ (Ladrech 2000: 9–10).
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Newell, J.L. (2022). European Integration as a Social Democratic Project. In: European Integration and the Crisis of Social Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08822-3_2
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