Transnational infrastructures and the origins of European integration

Ideas for integrating energy and transport infrastructures were intensively discussed in the post-Second World War era, and such discussions eventually led to the establishment of the European Union’s predecessors: the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC). In the 1960s and 1970s, however, integration in these sectors was widely seen as a huge failure, and as a consequence general European integration histories often ignore both sectors. This chapter will do exactly the opposite. It will delve into this past to explain why the European Economic Community was unsuccessful in taking up infrastructural integration in transport and energy, and explore the implications of this explanation for the history of European integration. The argument is based on both a theoretical and an empirical exploration. My theoretical exploration takes its cue from the neo-functionalist interpretation of the origins of European integration, in particular the work of Ernst Haas. Neo-functionalism is a good point of departure, not only because it is treated in many textbooks and theoretical overviews as the starting point for integration theory, but also because, contrary to other theories, it puts infrastructural integration at the centre of its theoretical analysis. Although neo-functionalists did not use the notion of infrastructure but instead talked about sectors such as transport, energy or communication, their notion of ‘sector’ essentially equals the notion of infrastructure used in this chapter. © Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers 2010.