European Unification

Report Outline
United States Unification of Europe
Pending Plans for Functional Integration
Council of Europe and Political Federation

United States Unification of Europe

Unification and Future Support for Aid to Europe

Common economic troubles and common external threats have forced the nations of Western Europe to resort increasingly since the war to joint measures for the well-being and protection of one another. In the process new vitality has been given to the long-standing movement for European union, but progress toward the goal, now necessarily of less than continental proportions, still is hindered by the difficulties that prevented its attainment in the past. Currently, however, two special factors are building up pressure for greater accomplishment: (1) The requirements of North Atlantic defense and (2) growing resistance in Congress to making large foreign aid appropriations without evidence that the recipients are doing their utmost to reduce the need for assistance.

Gen. Eisenhower declared last July that establishment of “a workable European federation” would be “the greatest possible boon to the functioning and objectives of the Atlantic Pact”. An American congressional delegation, which conferred at Strasbourg in November with representatives of the Council of Europe, voiced “deep regret” at the lack of “realistic progress” and warned that failure to take substantial steps toward unification would endanger support for future United States assistance.

Members of the congressional group reinforced their pleas for practical action by asserting that the docility of American taxpayers was reaching a breaking point, that backers of foreign aid in Congress must have the help of Europeans, that failure of Western Europe to take expeditious steps toward unification might bring a reversion to isolationism on the part of the United States. Such plain speaking apparently was not resented. Britain's Lord Layton told the Council's Consultative Assembly, Nov. 27, that the Americans were “right to be impatient” and that “The fresh breeze from the West which blew through this hall last week should stimulate us to fresh efforts”.