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Francesco Petrini

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY ON INDUSTRIAL MILIEUX AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION.BRINGING THE SOCIAL CONFLICT BACK IN

The historical reflection on European integration moved its first steps thanks to the contribution of two his-toriographical schools, very distant from each other1. On the one hand, in the field of the history of international relations, the study of European integration began in the 1980s to amend itself form an almost exclusive dependence on the interpretative schemes of the historiography on the Cold War and the bipolar conflict. In the wake of a research project on the decline of the European powers, which had involved an international group of scholars, European inte-gration began to be considered not only as a side product of the hegemonic action of the American superpower and of the demands of the dawning confrontation with the Soviet Union, but rather as an autonomous initiative by a Continent trying to respond to its own decline2.

1 For a recent, synthetic, critical overview of the historiographical characters on European integration, cf.: M. Gilbert, Narrating the Proc-ess. Questioning the Progressive Story of European Integration, in «Journal of Common Market Studies», n. 3, 2008, pp. 641-662. For a broad review of the development and the various historiographical tendencies on European integration, see the essays in W. Kaiser, A. Varsori (eds), European Union History. Themes and Debates, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; in particular, on the genesis of European integration history as an autono-mous field of research see the contribution by A. Varsori, From Normative Impetus to Professionalization: Origins and Operation of Research Networks, in ibidem, pp. 6-25.

2 This research project originated numerous volumes, among which: J. Becker, F. Knipping (eds), Power in Europe? Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany in Post-War World (1945-1950), Berlin-New York, De Gruyter, 1986; E. Di Nolfo (ed.), Power in Europe? Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany and the Origins of the EEC 1952-1957, Berlin-New York, De Gruyter, 1992.

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On the other hand, some scholars, pushed by a strong ideal and political commitment towards the promotion of Europe’s unity, started to reconstruct the origins and the first steps of European integration stressing the action of individuals and groups of federalist orientation3.

Both these perspectives contained the potentiality to develop in depth the study of the role played by the business circles in European integration. On the one hand, amongst the historians of international relations, particularly those more influenced by the Annales school and its emphasis on the «forces profondes» 4, soon became evident the necessity to go beyond traditional analyses of the diplomatic game – insufficient to explain such a complex phenomenon as the integration of Western Europe – and to take into account the interaction between economic, social and demographic structures and eventually to consider the interest groups acting inside the nation State and their influence on inter-national politics. On the other hand, federalist scholars’ approach, with their attention on the influence of pres-sure groups that today would be defined as «transnational», albeit of a particular kind like the federalist ones5, repre-sented a welcome counterweight to the State-centric preju-dice of international relations history.

However, the uneasy evolution of the two points of view and the lack of dialogue between them did not permit to fully develop their potentialities. Even if the international historians have been able, in a few cases, to free themselves

3 See, for ex.: W. Lipgens, Die Anfänge der europäischen Einigungspo-litik: 1945-1950, Stuttgart, Klett, 1977; L. Levi, L’unificazione europea. Trent’anni di storia, Torino, SEI, 1983. For a general overview cf. D. Pas-quinucci, Between Political Commitment and Academic Research: Federalist Perspectives, in W. Kaiser, A. Varsori (eds), European Union History, cit., pp. 66-84.

4 In particular it is worth citing René Girault’s work. On his conception of the International relations historian’s «craft», see R. Girault, Être histo-rien des relations internationales, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998.

5 W. Lipgens, W. Loth (eds), Documents on the History of European Inte-gration, vol. 4, Transnational Organizations of Political Parties and Pressure Groups in Western European Countries 1945-1950, Berlin-New York, De Gruyter, 1991.

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from the traditional framework emphasizing the political and institutional aspects, this has often been done, as we shall see below, in a perspective that has transported in the new fields the hoary methodological assumptions of dip-lomatic history, i.e. the centrality of the nation State and the assumption of the primacy of foreign politics. On the federalist side, the normative stance, that has traditionally characterised this approach and its teleological interpreta-tion of the integration process as a winding but unrelenting path towards the United States of Europe, has prevented the broadening of its research borders beyond the narrow limits of the federalist circles, whose effective influence on the mechanisms of integration has never been clearly dem-onstrated6, and by consequence have blocked the develop-ment of the innovation potential they contained.

These missed developments did not totally prevent the growth of an historical literature on the business circles and the European construction, but it has for sure blocked its full development and the elaboration of complete and original interpretative hypotheses.

1. Studying the 1940s and the 1950s: the years of concerted integration

Despite these weaknesses, the study of the relation between industrial milieux and European integration has produced a consistent body of work regarding the 1940s and the 1950s, the starting period of the European Com-munities, in which it is possible to enucleate some common lines of interpretation. The analysis has developed by intertwining two lines of inquiry: on the one hand, it has attempted to investigate the influence of the employers’ groups on governments’ action, especially in the case of the negotiations for the different Communities starting (or

6 W. Kaiser, From State to Society? The Historiography of European Inte-gration, in M. Cini, A. K. Bourne (eds), Palgrave Advances in European union Studies, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 190-208.

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failing) in this period. On the other hand, some scholars have tried to understand if, and on what bases, it was pos-sible to identify, amongst the European economic circles, a common identity.

Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the first historical studies on industrialists and integration began to appear, mainly by the Francophone school of international relations history7. In 1989, the dis-tinguished Sorbonne historian René Girault’s launched a large research project on European identity aiming to identify and define the characteristics of such an identity in a long term perspective, with the purpose of overcom-ing the chronological and methodological limitations that, until that moment, had characterised the history of Euro-pean integration8. In this context, the studies on the patro-nat found a wide space: in 1993 there was the first edited volume dedicated to economic circles’ views on European integration9. Introducing the book, Girault pointed out the core issues to be investigated:

Trois principales questions peuvent être posées sur le plan théo-rique: 1°) Les patrons européens ont-ils joué un rôle dans l’élabora-tion des Constructions européennes, telles que la CECA, la CEE, l’Euratom, l’OCDE avant leur constitution effective? 2°) Une fois ces constructions créées ces patrons ont-ils vraiment participé à la vie propre de ces entreprises, c’est-à-dire à leur gestion, ce qui diffère de la simple adaptation aux nouvelles créations ? 3°) Quelle fut l’ad-

7 Obviously there had been earlier studies on European integration, written by sociologists, political scientists or journalists, in which some attention was paid to business’ positions representing a current useful source of data and facts. Cf. R. J. Lieber, British Politics and European Unity: Parties, Elites and Pressure Groups, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1970; F. Roy Willis, Italy Chooses Europe, New York, Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1971.

8 R. Girault (dir.), Identité et conscience européenne au XXe siècle, Paris, Hachette, 1994.

9 M. Dumoulin, R. Girault, G. Trausch (dir.), L’Europe du Patronat. De la guerre froide aux années soixante, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 1993. The volume presented the proceedings of a conference held at Louvain-la-Neuve in May 1990.

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hésion des patrons européens aux principes, aux effets des construc-tions européennes, c’est-à-dire leur adhésion (ou refus) à certains principes précis, comme les lois anti-trusts, la supra-nationalité, la fixation des prix, l’abaissement des cadres douaniers, etc10.

This research programme was carried on by a series of works finding a synthesis in a volume edited by Michel Dumoulin and Eric Bussière and published in 199811. As Bussière pointed out, it was time to overcome the institu-tional approach («dépasser l’approche institutionnelle»12) largely prevailing in the study of European integration, both of its diplomatic aspects and of the economic ones, with the goal of investigating if and in what forms it was possible to talk about a common identity of the economic elites of the Old Continent.

Actually, the research for a European identity of the business groups did not bring forth any clear and defini-tive answer. Ruggero Ranieri, introducing the section of the 1998 volume dedicated to industrial companies, aptly synthesized the results achieved by the research:

Neither of the two opposing ends of a potential spectrum of «Europeanness» can be said to apply to the industries in question and to their leaders. In other words neither was a strong feeling of a common European identity, which led to a common set of values and strategies, nor on the other hand were there irrecon-cilable differences and contrasts which inhibited common actions and the development of closer ties. The pendulum seemed to fall

10 R. Girault, Europe du patronat ou patrons européens?, in M. Dumou-lin, R. Girault, G. Trausch (dir.), L’Europe du Patronat, cit., pp. 11-15 (quotation p. 11).

11 E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin (dir.), Milieux économiques et intégration européenne en Europe occidentale au XXe siècle, Arras, Artois Presses Univer-sité, 1998.

12 E. Bussière, Les milieux économiques face à l’Europe au XXième siècle, in «Journal of European Integration History», n. 2, 1997, pp. 5-21 (quota-tion p. 5).

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somewhere in the middle, often in an indecisive, muddled and uncertain way13.

However, the research widening and refining produced some substantial historiographical progresses. The main achievement of the studies, conducted in the context of the identity project, is having placed at the centre of the stage a long term reading of the Europe integration, emphasi-zing the continuity factors with the period preceding the Second World War, going back to the 1890s, when with the first wave of globalization emerged some of the issues, the integration of the second half of the XX century attem-pted to respond. In Eric Bussière’s words, a scholar whose contribution has been fundamental in this respect:

L’un des résultats des travaux des dernières années a été de mon-trer que loin d’être simplement déterminées par le seul contexte institutionnel, la réflexion et la stratégie des acteurs s’ancrent dans un temps plus long que la seule seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Une approche spécifique et consciente des réalités européennes émerge en fait à la fin du XIXe siècle dès lors que la concurrence d’autres centres s’impose aux acteurs européens14.

13 R. Ranieri, Introduction, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin (dir.), Milieux économiques, cit., pp. 163-166 (quotation p. 164).

14 E. Bussière, L’intégration économique de l’Europe au XXe siècle: processus et acteurs, «Entreprises et Histoire», n. 2, 2003, pp. 12-24 (quotation p. 13). See also : E. Bussière, Les milieux économiques français et la question de l’unité économique de l’Europe des années vingt aux années cinquante, in A. Ciampani (a cura di), L’altra via per l’Europa: forze sociali e organizzazione degli interessi nell’integrazione europea 1947-1957, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 1995, pp 53-65; M. Dumoulin (dir.), Plans de temps de guerre pour l’Europe d’après-guerre 1940-1947, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1995. As for the sectoral studies the search of continuities has been developed mainly with regard to the steel sector. The more recent general overview of the ECSC experi-ence which underscores its traits of continuity with the interwar period is: J. Gillingham, Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955. The Ger-mans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. As far as the industrial milieux are spe-cifically concerned, see the pioneering H. Rieben, Des ententes des maîtres de forges au plan Schuman, Lausanne, Centre de recherches europeennes, 1954. For more recent developments cf. the contributions by Françoise Berger, for instance: F. Berger, Les patrons de l’acier en France et Allemagne

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In short, at the roots of this continuity, there were essentially two phenomena. On the one hand, the need to overcome the division of the Old Continent in order to respond to the challenges coming form outside Europe, first form the United States then, in the last quarter of the XX century, from Asia, thus trying to chase off the decline spectre of a civilization.

Depuis les origines la prise de conscience de l’Europe économique peut être assimilée à la prise de conscience d’un double défi. Défi interne dans la mesure où il s’est d’abord agi pour le continent de surmonter ses propres divisions, défi externe pour une Europe confrontée à de nouvelles concurrences, d’abord les Etats-Unis d’Amérique, plus récemment le Japon, et affectée par l’angoisse collective de son propre déclin15.

If, in this perspective, the thrust towards the creation of a great European market has been interpreted as a defen-sive reaction to foreign competition, from another point of view, it has been emphasized it was mainly an internal logic pushing the industrial capitalism to accept economic integration. Thus, in the case of West German industry, Werner Bührer’s work has stressed that, at the roots of its favourable positions towards the Rome treaties, there was the perspective of exploiting the Common Market to deploy the renewed German economic power16. In a simi-

face à l’Europe (1930-1960), in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin (dir.), Milieux économiques, cit., pp. 179-195. See also: C. Barthel, Les maîtres de forges luxembourgeois et la renaissance des ententes sidérurgiques internationales au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale, in G. Trausch et al., Le Luxem-bourg face à la construction européenne, Luxembourg, Centre d’études et de recherches européennes Robert Schuman, 1996, pp. 175-201.

15 E. Bussière, Les milieux économiques face à l’Europe, cit., p. 5.16 W. Bührer, The Federation of German Industry and European Inte-

gration, 1949-1960, in M. Dumoulin, R. Girault, G. Trausch (dir.), L’Europe du Patronat, cit., pp. 17-28. For a more recent analysis: Id., Le «Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie», le ministère fédéral de l´Économie et l´intégration européenne, 1958-1972, in Le rôle des ministères des Finan-ces et de l´Économie dans la construction européenne, Paris, Comité pour l´Histoire Économique et Financière de la France, 2002, pp. 53-69. On West German industry positions see also T. Rhenisch, Europäische Integra-

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lar vein, Ruggero Ranieri, in the wake of Alan Milward’s observation on the German economy centrality in the modernization process of Western European industry17, has emphasized the importance of the expansion perspec-tives on the German market, and on the French too, in determining the positive attitude of Italian industrialists in the second half of the 1950s18. Furthermore, some authors have pointed out the importance of the microeconomic dynamics too, stressing the need to create an economic space fit for the adoption of the American system of pro-duction and the exploitation of economies of scale as one of the main reason underlying the choice for integration by many entrepreneurs19.

tion und industrielles Interesse: die Deutsche Industrie und die Gründung der Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 1999.

17 See A.S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 134-167. Milward wrote: «It was German industry which re-equipped Western European industry from 1949 onwards. But German manufactured exports grew in a modernizing symbiosis with the exports of other Western European economies to Germany; the German market was as important to modernization as German supply» (p. 154).

18 R. Ranieri, L’integrazione europea e gli ambienti economici italiani, in R.H. Rainero (a cura di), Storia dell’integrazione europea, vol. I: L’in-tegrazione europea dalle origini alla nascita della Cee, Milano, Marzorati, 1997, pp. 285-329. Id., Italian industry and the EEC, in A. Deighton, A.S. Milward (eds.), Widening, Deepening and Acceleration: the European Eco-nomic Community 1957-1963, Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlag, 1999, pp. 185-198. See also: F. Fauri, Italy’s Industrial Forces and European Economic Integration (1950s-1960s), in R. Perron (ed.), The Stability of Europe. The Common Market: Towards European Integration of Industrial and Finan-cial Markets? (1958-1968), Paris, Presse Universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 2004, pp. 63-77. For an analysis stressing the positive expectations towards the creation of the Common Market of large parts of the Italian indus-trial sector cf. P. Tedeschi, Les industriels lombards et les nouvelles règles du Marché Commun dans les années ‘50: risques et opportunités, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (eds.), Europe des marchés libres ou Europe du libre échange? Fin XIXe siècle – Années 1960, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 107-147.

19 J.-C. Defraigne, L’intégration européenne et la dynamique technologi-que des grands entreprises, in M. Moguen-Toursel (dir.), Stratégie d’entre-prise et action publique dans l’Europe intégrée (1950-1980). Affrontement et apprentissage des acteurs, Bruxelles, PIE-Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 47-86.

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The second factor of continuity laid in the idea, widely shared by a large portion of the top European executives, of an economic integration hinging upon the building of a continent-wide network of cartels and market ententes. Such an idea plunged its roots into the debates started up at the end of the XIX century20, and it was concretely imple-mented in the interwar period with a series of industrial agreements aiming to regulate concurrence and sharing markets21 which, on the national plan, was accompanied by a corporatist system of collaboration between employ-ers and governments with, in some cases (Germany and Great Britain), the involvement of the trade unions. In this frame, the preference of business went to a particular kind of integration which ought to be concerted through direct dealings between producers, and the complete rejection of the supranational dirigisme, seen as an undue interference by the public authorities into the preserve of market and private initiative, a position expressing itself more vigor-ously during the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) negotiations and in the period immediately before them22.

The diffusion amongst the employers of this particu-lar attitude towards the problems posed by the manage-ment of the economic interdependence is attested by the few existing comparative studies regarding the first decade of European integration, such as Andreas Wilkens’ work

20 S.A. Marin, Zollverein, cartels ou coalition? Réflexions allemandes sur l’organisation des marchés européens (1880-1914), in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), Europe organisée, Europe du libre-échange? Fin XIXe siècle – Années 1960, Bruxelles, PIE-Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 13-45.

21 Cf. the sources quoted in the footnotes 34-35.22. As Philippe Mioche states on the positions defended by Pierre Ricard,

vice President of the French Conseil national du patronat français, at the 1949 European Economic Conference, held at Westminster: «Le CNPF n’est pas contre l’Europe, il est pour l’Europe faite par les industriels» (P. Mioche, Le patronat français et les projets d’intégration économique euro-péenne dans les années Cinquante, in G. Trausch (hrsg.), Der Europäische integration vom Schuman-Plan bis zu den verträgen von Rom, Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlag, 1993, pp. 241-257 (quotation p. 242).

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on employers’ positions in the FRG and France23, and the wider investigation that was later carried out by Marine Moguen-Toursel on the same subject24. However, the cen-trality of this model on concerted integration emerges even from the analyses carried out in a national sphere, such as, for example, Philippe Mioche’s inquiry on the French iron and steel industry25, Ruggero Ranieri on the British one26, Francesco Petrini on the Italian Confindustria (the main Italian employers’ association)27. Sigfrido Ramirez has showed this model was still alive at the beginning of the 1960s in the debate on the definition of the Com-munity’s competition policy, when the representatives of the French automotive sector and the Italian Fiat tried to impose a technocratic solution «pas influencée par le pouvoir politique»28. As for the 1970s, Ramirez has once again emphasized the main European auto makers, com-bined in the Committee of Common Market Automobile Constructors, born in 1972, sponsored, with the support of part of the Commission, a neo-corporatist project of

23 A. Wilkens, L’Europe des ententes ou l’Europe de l’intégration? Les industries française et allemande et les débuts de la construction européenne (1948-1952), in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin (dir.), Milieux économiques, cit., pp. 267-283.

24 M. Moguen-Toursel, L’ouverture des frontières européennes dans les années 50. Fruit d’une concertation avec les industriels?, Bruxelles, PIE-Peter Lang, 2002.

25 P. Mioche, L’adaptation du patronat de la sidérurgie française à l’inté-gration européenne, in M. Dumoulin, R. Girault, G. Trausch (dir.), L’Eu-rope du Patronat, cit., pp. 63-75.

26 R. Ranieri, L’industria siderurgica britannica e l’integrazione europea (1930-1954), in A. Ciampani (a cura di), L’altra via per l’Europa, cit., pp. 82-97. Ranieri argues that at the core of the hostility of the British steel industry towards the ECSC there was essentially the fear of a European intervention in the cartelized system of production set up in the 1930s.

27 F. Petrini, Il liberismo a una dimensione. La Confindustria e l’integra-zione europea 1947-1957, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2005.

28 S.M. Ramirez Perez, Antitrust ou anti US? L’industrie automobile européenne et les origines de la politique de la concurrence de la CEE, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), Europe organisée, cit., pp. 203-228 (quotation p. 225).

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industrial policy which could be seen, under many aspects, in continuity with the ideas on concerted integration29.

However, these aspects of continuity have to be tem-pered by introducing two caveats. First, the existence of a common position regarding a particular problem (as in the case of the birth of the ECSC) did not imply the oblitera-tion of the several fracture lines characterising the employ-ers’ world, divided between public and private, big and small, along production lines, or following national bor-ders, etc... As Matthias Kipping has written on the ECSC debate:

les entreprises, prises individuellement, défendent parfois des positions clairement divergentes. Donc, au moins entre les bran-ches industrielles concernées, et même au sein d’une seule et même branche, il peut exister des points de vue différents, voire opposés, sur les meilleures mesures à prendre30.

Secondly, the emergence of a common stance inside different national employers circles does not imply by itself the necessity to adopt a transnational analysis system in order to understand their attitudes in the 1940s and the 1950s. In this period, the regulation and intervention capacities by the nation State attained their apogee; for this reason, the national plan remained the privileged horizon of the action of the lobbies representing the employers’ interests31. As Wolfram Kaiser has pointed out, the transna-tional forces, contributing to shape European integration during these starting decades, were not the socio-economic

29 Id., Transnational business networks propagating EC industrial policy. The role of the Committee of Common Market Automobile Constructors, in W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, M. Rasmussen (ed.), The History of the European Union. Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity 1950-72, New York, Routledge, 2009, pp. 74-92.

30 M. Kipping, La France et les origines de l’Union européenne. Intégration économique et compétitivité internationale, Paris, CHEF, 2002, p. 21.

31 For a concrete example of the divisions between national industrial interests, see the analyses of the debate inside the UNICE during the EEC negotiations in F. Petrini, Il liberismo a una dimensione, cit., pp. 280-283. See also below in this article.

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interest groups, that kept on acting on the national plan and were too divided to manage a working compromise: «European integration was definitely an anti-communist project, but this does not automatically make it a ‘capital-ist’ project controlled by a relatively cohesive ‘transnational class’»32.

2. Europe du marché, Europe organisée: an attempt to a global synthesis

Moving from the assumption that there were strong elements of continuity in the conception that the Old Continent economic elites nurtured about the moderniza-tion process and the international division of labour, Eric Bussière has elaborated a general interpretative hypothesis about the relation between economic interests and Euro-pean construction, and more generally about the whole history of the European integration. This hypothesis is focused on the dialectic between two models of integra-tion: on one side, the Europe of the ententes and cartels (Europe organisée) while, on the other one, the Europe of the free market (Europe du marché)33.

As expected, ententes and cartels had not been created with the idea of integration, but rather they were born as a means of defence of national market and as an offen-sive weapon against others’ markets. In the interwar years, through them, there was the attempt to stabilise markets and to prevent the establishing of a ruinous competition form, especially in the more capital intensive sectors of

32 W. Kaiser, Transnational Western Europe since 1945, in W. Kaiser, P. Starie (eds), Transnational European Union. Towards a Common Political Space, New York, Routledge, 2005, pp. 17-35 (quotation p. 20).

33 See E. Bussière, Les milieux économiques face à l’Europe, cit.; Id., Con-clusions, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), Europe organ-isée, cit., pp. 251-254. For an extension of this hypothesis to the whole of the European integration see: E. Bussière, L’intégration économique de l’Europe au XXe siècle, cit.

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the so called «Carolingian» Europe34. As Françoise Berger writes in one of the more exhaustive contribution on the subject: «La période 1933-1939 constitue le véritable âge d’or des ententes, c’est celle du plus haut degré de coopé-ration internationale»35. However, the 1930s did not rep-resent an exception, but rather they adversely continued and deepened a trend already in full motion since the half of the 1920s.

The other pole of Bussière’s dichotomy, the Europe du marché, was born as a counterweight to the idea of Europe organisée, partly influenced by the US model, both by its idea of the creation of a great market and by its antitrust policies.

In synthesis, on the one hand:

méthode contractuelle, fondée sur une logique coopérative impliquant des formes d’intégration positive et la participation active des milieux économiques à la mise en œuvre du projet.

On the other hand:

méthode libérale, accordant la primauté au marché et à des formes d’intégration négative où l’emporte la simple suppression des entraves aux échanges. Dans le premier cas l’intégration se veut maîtrisée, dans l’autre on laisse aux forces du marché le soin de la réaliser plus ou moins spontanément36.

34 The article 299 of the 1919 Versailles Treaty has already authorized the continuation of some the international cartel agreements involving German industries (such as, for instance, the Convention internationale des glaceries) «comme des facteurs de stabilité, de coopération, voire de paix économique». (E. Bussière, Conclusions, cit., p. 251). On this topics, see also E. Bussière, Le convenzioni economiche internazionali e la costru-zione di un’identità economica dell’Europa: 1900-1930, in Grande mercato e diritti sociali nell’Europa del Novecento, monographic issue by B. Curli, «Memoria e Ricerca», n. 14, 2003, pp. 19-34.

35 F. Berger, Les milieux économiques et les États face aux tentatives d’or-ganisation des marchés européens dans les années 1930, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), Europe organisée, cit., pp. 71-105 (quo-tation p. 75).

36 E. Bussière, L’intégration économique de l’Europe auXXe siècle, cit., p. 16.

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According to these two models, Bussière writes: «L’ori-ginalité de la démarche européenne consiste probablement dans la tentative de synthèse entre Europe organisée et Europe du marché même si les conflits furent permanents et les arbitrages difficiles entre les deux»37.

Though attractive but maybe marred by a degree of Franco-centrism38, Bussière’s hypothesis, while probably useful to describe the poles of the debate on international interdependence during the 1920s, does not permit to grasp exactly the dynamics of the years after 1945.

Firstly, in the 1940s-1960s the dialectic was not so much between liberalism and market organization, but rather, and above all, between two different forms of market organization, one essentially entrusted to the action of the State, the other one to the action of private interests. As Bussière himself has evidenced, after the Second World War, the Europe des cartels returned to incarnate the refer-ence model of the private industrial capitalism, which – as we have seen – viewed in a form of international economic integration, not directly managed by the private interests, a double risk both of a renewed Great Depression caused by unregulated competition and of an increased State inter-vention in the economic domain. It is not by chance that in Bussière’s scheme the Europe du marché is much more vaguely defined than its counterpart, because of the dif-ficulty to grasp the promethean character of the liberal ideology reflecting, in its turn, the many transformations underwent by Capitalism in the XXth century. In the open-ing decade of European integration, on the table, there

37 E. Bussière, Conclusions, cit., p. 252.38 At this regard, it comes to mind what Frances M. B. Lynch wrote

in a collective review essay on some books on France and European inte-gration, where she indentified: «a long tradition of writing about France which focuses exclusively on the debate between the State and the Market, between dirigisme and liberalism, between autarchy and free trade. How to fit European integration into that debate is a critical issue for those writing about postwar France». F.M.B. Lynch, France and European Integration: From the Schuman Plan to Economic and Monetary Union, in «Contempo-rary European History», n. 1, 2004, pp. 117–121 (quotation p. 121).

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was not a purely liberal hypothesis, directly inspired by the Manchester school or à la Hayek. In Germany too, whence came the more convinced support for a more liberal ori-ented European Community, the reference model was the ordo-liberal stance born during the Weimar Republic, very different from the classic liberal view. Indeed, there was a profound conflict between:

«l’ordo-libéralisme» allemand et le néo-libéralisme radical, entre l’acceptation de l’interventionnisme étatique et son rejet, entre les partisans d’une politique libérale volontariste et les nostalgiques du laissez faire (…). Quant à la doctrine des ordo-libéraux allemands, elle réhabilite l’action étatique sous la forme d’un intervention-nisme juridique et d’une politique de la concurrence39.

This marginalization of classic liberalism travelled on the long wave of Karl Polanyi’s «Great Transformation», «the transformation of a whole civilization in the thirties»40. In this context, the appeal to liberalism was often launched by economic circles, as the private industrialists, preoc-cupied by the interference of the State power into their affairs, while at the same time supporting and putting into practice ententes and very discordant with the preached laisser faire verb41.

39 F. Denord, Néo-libéralisme et «économie sociale de marché»: les origi-nes intellectuelles de la politique européenne de la concurrence (1930-1950), in «Histoire, économie et société», n. 1, 2008, pp. 23-33 (quotation pp. 26-27). On West German industry’s positions regarding the British pro-posal for the creation of a Free Trade Zone, see M. Schulte, Challenging the Common Market Project: German Industry, Britain and Europe, 1957-1963, in A. Deighton, A. S. Milward (eds), Widening, Deepening and Accelera-tion, cit., pp. 167-183. Schulte argues that, while the Bundesverband des Deutschen Industrie was officially in favour of the British project, «a good number of important industrial sectors had serious concerns about the FTA and British accession» (quotation p. 182).

40 K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Ori-gins of Our Time, Boston, Beacon Press, 2001, p. 21.

41 For instance, with regard to the positions of the leading group of the Italian Confindustria, a staunch defender of Free Market, it has been coined the term «privatismo», rather than liberalism, that is a form of ide-ology excluding the intervention of the State power into the functioning

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Furthermore, the other pole of the proposed dichotomy, i.e. the one represented by the Organised Europe, does not seem adequately explained. Within it, one can distinguish at least two different models of market organisation, in deep conflict between each other: on the one hand, the schemes of an integration guided by the business milieux; on the other one, the project of intervention by public authori-ties in the market mechanism42. The very fact, according to which the thesis and the antithesis are so difficult to be identified, casts a shadow on the actual consistency of the European synthesis Bussière speaks about. A shadow dark-ened by the difficulty to see that synthesis in operation after the European integration relaunch in the second half of the 1980s. In this case, it is possible to observe the persistence on the opinion according to which the supposed virtues of the European synthesis would not allow to see the actual rupture happened in this phase, with the gradual marginali-zation of the model of the Europe organiseé and the full affir-mation of the self-regulating market where the European Union has become one of the main bearers43.

3. The Great Market years: the importance of transnational networks

In the early phase of the historical study on European integration prevailed the research of answers to the more

of markets, but at the same time was ready to accept the intervention when it equated to a safeguard and a defence of the structures and interests of the private Capital. Cf. M. Legnani, L’«utopia grande borghese». L’associa-zionismo padronale tra ricostruzione e repubblica, in AAVV, Gli anni della Costituente. Strategie dei governi e delle classi sociali, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1983, p. 180.

42 Cf. S.M. Ramirez Perez, Antitrust ou anti US?, cit., which in the conclusion suggests that it is time to overcome the traditional dichotomy between liberalism and dirigisme and proposes six alternative models.

43 For a confutation of the presumed European alterity in relation to the US model, see P. Anderson, Depicting Europe, in «London Review of Books», n. 18, 2007, pp. 13-21.

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elementary, but even more urgent question: were the indus-trialists for or against integration? Sometimes, even with a normative approach, directed more than to understand, to acquit or condemn, in the implicit assumption, that inte-gration was good. The bulk of the studies concerned the attitude of the single national industrial confederation. The few sectoral studies concentrated, for obvious reasons, on the steel and the coal industries, maintaining in most of the cases a national perspective. In the subsequent wave of studies, starting to shift the focus of research towards the period after the signing of the Rome treaties, gradu-ally emerged a different perspective, aiming to investigate the dialectic between the mechanisms of integration and single industrial sectors or even individual firms, both in an ascending way (i.e. the influence of these subjects on Community’s institutions and community law), and in a descending way. Therefore, there has been a shift of the analysis level from the interplay of national industrial sys-tems and governments to the investigation of the inter-action among companies, as well as between them and the new Community, a move dictated by the necessity of understanding how the coming into operation of the new Community concretely influenced the daily working of the European economy. Furthermore, there has been a ten-dency to pass from studies focused predominantly on the action of national industrial confederations to the inves-tigation of particular sectors and often of single compa-nies, in the conviction this was a necessary step to grasp the full complexity of the producing world. Consequently, the sectoral investigation widened beyond the traditional precinct of coal and steel, to include other key manufac-turing branches, in primis the automotive one. At the same time, such a shift in the analysis level was accompanied by a widening of the inquiry field, from an almost exclusive emphasis on the industry’s response to the removal of trade barriers, i.e. the dominant feature of the first phase of inte-gration, to the impact on industry of the different Com-munity policies (competition policy, fiscal policy, product standardization, etc.). It was not by chance that the field,

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which had first seen a predominance of international his-torians, came to see an increasing number of business his-torians involved in it.

It was just one of them, Neil Rollings, through a study on the attitude of British business circles regarding Euro-pean integration in the thirty years from the end of the Second World War to the entry of Great Britain into the EEC, who indicated how one can innovate the study of a national case in some fundamental methodological aspects44. First of all, according to the basis of the empirical observation of the extremely fragmented nature belonging to economic interests, Rollings affirms the necessity to go beyond the analysis of peak organization of business rep-resentation, adopting a line of inquiry as encompassing as possible: «from the firm to the peak level»45. Furthermore, as far as the relation between governments and economic interests, Rollings asserts the necessity to overcome the traditional interpretation of policy-making, dominating in studies inspired by diplomatic history, considering the government as a unitary actor, well distinct from society, and tending to relegate to the second place the other actors’ role. Instead, Rollings proposes to use the models based on the notion of Governance, according to which the assump-tion of the unity of the central government is abandoned and the borders between it and society are considered per-meable by policy networks:

A governance approach seems more helpful given the way in which business played a role in policy-making. This was not just in times of uncertainty but reflected the strength of the network that business had on the continent and which allowed business organi-zations access to information unavailable to government46.

44 N. Rollings, British Business in the Formative Years of European Inte-gration, 1945-1973, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

45 Ibidem, p. 262.46 Ibidem, pp. 262-263. The question on the complexity of the deci-

sion-making process is posed also by M. Kipping, La France et les origines de l’Unione européenne, cit., pp. 19-21 and pp. 350-354.

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Finally, Rolling’s volume widens the field of inquiry to include other issues beyond the traditional ones of trade and duties, investigating business’ positions on the Com-munity’s competition and fiscal policies or company law.

On a quite similar line of inquiry places, another volume appeared in 2007, edited by Marine Moguen-Toursel47. In it, to cite only the contributions directly addressing to the action of industrial enterprises, the reactions to the entry into operation of the Common Market in a time frame between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, of the automotive sector are studied, with the case of Saviem48, a trucks producing firm belonging to the Renault group, the Fiat case49, the ones belonging to French and German automakers50, as well as the response of the business world to the Community’s attempts in regulating some key-domains such as fiscal harmonisation51 or the setting up of a European company statute52. The picture portrayed is a gradual setting up of a coordinating mechanism among companies to face the challenges posed by integration as well as, at the same time, continuing difficulty on behalf of European institutions to respond to the demands posed by these companies.

The multinationals’ response to European integration represents, according to the very nature of these enter-prises, a privileged domain of inquiry for those aiming to overcome a purely national approach and adopt a transna-

47 M. Moguen-Toursel (dir.), Stratégie d’entreprise et action publique dans l’Europe intégrée, cit.

48 J.-F. Grevet, La coopération européenne, la meilleure solution face au Marché commun? La stratégie de la SAVIEM, constructeur français de poids lourds et filiale Renault (1958-1973), in ibidem, pp. 193-232.

49 G. Maielli, Tariff Removal and Output-Mix Optimisation. The case of Fiat (1960s-1970s), in ibidem, pp. 143-162.

50 M. Moguen-Toursel, Lobbying, compromis, rapprochements transver-saux. Les manœuvres autour de la définition d’un nouveau code européen pour le transport routier (1950-1980), in ibidem, pp. 165-192.

51 N. Rollings, Purchase Tax or Value-Added Tax. British Industry, Indirect Taxation and European Integration in the 1960s, in ibidem, pp. 127-142.

52 F. Mertens de Wilmars, La société européenne. Les raisons d’un blocage, in ibidem, pp. 105-124.

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tional and comparative point of view. In this perspective, amongst the most significant contributions is certainly to be included Geoffrey Jones and Peter Miskell’s study on Unilever, the big Anglo-Dutch company, «one of the world’s most international businesses»53. Though Unilever was, since the 1950s, overtly in favour of European inte-gration – since «It was uniquely positioned to benefit from European integration» –, the study shows the multinational was not able to forge, for more than a decade, a coherent European strategy such as to take advantage of the grow-ing market integration, because of a mechanism of path dependency:

for companies with operations long embedded in national markets across Europe, the cost of restructuring on a Europe-wide scale may have seemed greater than they appeared for new entrants to the European market54.

Summing up the two authors’ state: «it was one thing for legislators to reduce trade barriers, and another for firms to restructure to make European integration a reality at firm and industry level»55.

Thierry Grosbois’ analysis, on the reaction of some mul-tinationals to the creation of the common market, seems to reach the same conclusion:

Il ne faut pas surestimer l’impact de la naissance du Marché Commun de 1957 sur la stratégie des multinationales. La crise

53 G. Jones, P. Miskell, European integration and corporate restructuring: the strategy of Unilever, c.1957–c.1990, in «Economic History Review», n. 1, 2005, pp. 113–139.

54 Ibidem, p. 115. In this sense the essay puts in question even the degree of Americanisation of the European capitalism: «US management practices were at best only partially transferred to Europe. Appropriately, one recent study dated Unilever’s ‘fulfilment’ of the ‘Chandlerian ideal’ to the 1990s» (p. 123). The abovementioned study is R. Whittington, M. Mayer, The European corporation: strategy, structure and social science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 181.

55 G. Jones, P. Miskell, European integration and corporate restructuring, cit., p. 137.

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pétrolière de 1973 eut des conséquences restructurant nettement plus fondamentales sur les activités des multinationales actives en Europe que la mise en œuvre d’une CEE limitée à six Etats mem-bres56.

As a reaction to the State-centric bias of most of the literature on the history of European integration and under the influence of new Political Science paradigms, such as Constructivism and the Governance Studies, in the last decade, there has been a renewed interest on the part of historians for the influence of ideas, values, ideologies, as opposed to the traditional centrality of objectively defined interests. In this context, a new emphasis was placed on transnational networks as a medium of information exchange and socialization57. The change in perspective, implied by this new approach, has been aptly summed up by Michel Dumoulin:

56 T. Grosbois, La stratégie de quelques multinationales à l’égard des Trai-tés de Rome et du Marché Commun 1957-1972, in A. Varsori (ed.), Inside the European Community. Actors and policies in the European Integration 1957-1972, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2006, pp. 227-254 (quotation p. 254). See also: C. Chanier, Entreprise et intégration européenne: le cas de la multi-nationale Philips, in M. Dumoulin, R. Girault, G. Trausch (dir.), L’Europe du Patronat, cit., pp. 101-110, confirming, as for the 1950s and 1960s, the limited impact of the European Community on the working modes of the single firm.

57 On the recent development in European integration history, see M. Gilbert, A Polity Constructed: New Explorations in European Integration History, in «Contemporary European History», n. 2, 2010, pp. 169-179; N. Piers Ludlow, History Aplenty: But Still Too Isolated, in M. Egan, N. Nugent, W. Paterson (eds), Research Agendas in EU Studies. Stalking the Elephant, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 14-36, whose first paragraph carries the telling title «From ideas to states and institutions and back again?». On the utility for integration history of the adoption of the interpretative schemes of transnational networks studies, cf. W. Kaiser, Transnational Networks in European Governance, in W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, M. Rasmussen (ed.), The History of the European Union, cit., pp. 12-33 and the volume: W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, M. Gehler (eds), Transnational Networks in Regional Integration. Governing Europe 1945-83, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

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Le questionnement n’implique donc plus, comme l’a fait et continue de le faire une certaine historiographie, les gouvernements, les diplomaties, les partis politiques, les fédérations patronales ou les syndicats mais bien des ensembles de relations plus complexes, de maillages des espaces sociaux, idéologiques ou culturels entendant influencer une décision, une attitude, une orientation concernant la gestion de la Cité européenne58.

In the context of the studies on industrial milieux and European integration, a transnational stance had been present since the early phases, even though in a rather marginal position with regard to the mainstream litera-ture focusing on – as we have seen – national associations and on the vertical relations between them and the gov-ernments. Michel Dumoulin and Anne-Myriam Dutrieue were the first ones to take such a new way with some stud-ies dedicated to the Ligue européenne de coopération économique (LECE) and to the Comité européen pour le progrès économique et social (CEPES), which, they con-cluded, exercised an «importante mais discrète» influence on European questions, especially through their liaison role between American and European business circles59. In more recent years, Neil Rollings and Matthias Kipping have investigated the action of the Council of European Industrial Federations (CEIF) and of the more loosely organized Council of the Directors of European Industrial Federations (CDEIF) during the decade immediately fol-lowing the end of the Second World War, pointing out the intertwining of relation network among industrial inter-ests, such as to configure a system of private transnational

58 M. Dumoulin, Avant-propos, in Id. (dir.), Réseaux économiques et construction européenne, Bruxelles, PIE-Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 17-18 (quo-tation p. 18).

59 M. Dumoulin, A.-M. Dutrieu (dir.), La Ligue européenne de coopé-ration économique (1946-1981), Berne, Peter Lang, Euroclio, 1993; M. Dumoulin, La Ligue européenne de coopération économique (1946-1954), in M. Dumoulin, R. Girault, G. Trausch (dir.), L’Europe du Patronat, cit., pp. 207-211; A.-M. Dutrieue, Le CEPES, un mouvement patronal européen? (1952-1967), in ibidem, pp. 213-230.

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governance, is not an entirely new phenomenon, attribut-able to the ascent of globalization in the last quarter of the XX century, but rather it had older roots in the dense transatlantic web of contacts among industrialists created after the Second World War which exercised its influence not only on economic and trade questions, but even in more political matters, playing «an important role in the European integration process (even if they did not always achieve their aims in the negotiations with the other actors involved)»60. However, this kind of interpretation tends to an excess of historical continuum, emphasizing aspects remaining secondary in a world characterised, as far as the viewpoint of the economic circles is concerned, by the prevalence of the national reference frame. In such a world, it was not an easy task for the different national interests to find a convergence point, as it has been pointed out by Luciano Segreto’s work on UNICE, the Union des indus-tries de la Communauté européenne, whose activity in the first years of existence61 showed «les grandes differences d’appréciation dans le monde economique par rapport aux processus de libéralisation économique et commerciale»62.

60 N. Rollings, M. Kipping, Private transnational governance in the heyday of the nation-state: the Council of European Industrial Federations (CEIF), in «Economic History Review», n. 2, 2008, pp. 409-431 (quota-tion p. 411).

61 The UNICE was born in 1952 inside the CEIF, with the name Union des industriels des pays de la Communauté Européenne, as a coordinating institution of the industrial associations of the six ECSC countries and the United Kingdom. After a profound crisis, caused by the contrasts over the British proposal for a free trade area, the organisation was refunded in 1958, now renamed Union des industries de la Communauté européenne, outside the CEIF framework, with a membership limited to the industrial confederations of the six EEC countries.

62 L. Segreto, L’UNICE et la construction européenne (1947-1969), in A. Varsori (ed.), Inside the European Community, cit., pp. 195-208 (quotation p. 199). The existence during the 1950s of a profound split inside the business world in matters regarding the economic integration is confirmed by the study of the coal sector, cf. R. Perron, Divergences, front uni: l’Orga-nisation européenne des producteurs de charbon (le CEPCEO) face à la Haute Autorité de la CECA de 1952 à 1958, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin (dir.), Milieux économiques, cit., pp. 245-261.

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In a similar way, Paolo Tedeschi has shed light on the frag-mented nature of the LECE in the 1950s, showing the existence of divergent viewpoints between the Central Committee of the organisation and the Italian section63. Moguen-Toursel stresses the «dynamisme extraordinaire du processus de multiplication des contacts et de création de structures automobiles» during the 1960s and 1970s, but at the same time she warns that «les stratégies des membres de ces nouvelles structures sont souvent divergentes»64.

Even the investigation of what appears, at least till the end of the 1970s, the pressure group par excellence of the Transatlantic business world, the Bilderberg group, comes to the conclusion that as for the European integration its importance resided more in representing a discussion forum than a real promoter of a political action: «Bilderberg reste donc un cadre généraliste, dont le but est de rendre acces-sibles des problèmes complexes, non de proposer des plans précis»65.

Thus, the more recent contributions on the transna-tional networks during the first two decades of integra-tion seem to suggest their role was more than a way of «socialization» to the European issues, as a multilateral arena for the exchange of information and experience and, ultimately – as pointed out by Kipping and Rollings – as a crucial means to reduce uncertainty in post-war Europe, rather than a channel with effective influence and political

63 P. Tedeschi, Une nouvelle Europe à construire. La section italienne de la LECE de 1948 à la création du Marché Commun, in «Journal of European Integration History», n. 1, 2006, pp. 87-104.

64 M. Moguen-Toursel, Structures de représentation de l’industrie auto-mobile en Europe. Un foisonnement de réseaux aux stratégie multiples?, in M. Dumoulin (dir.), Réseaux économiques, cit., pp. 235-251, p. 251. On the same subject cf. S.M. Ramirez Perez, Transnational business networks propa-gating EC industrial policy, cit., which underscores the role of the Comité des constructeurs d’automobiles du Marché commun as a precursor of the European Round Table of industrialists.

65 V. Aubourg, Le groupe de Bilderberg et l’intégration européenne jusqu’au milieu des années 1960. Une influence complexe, in M. Dumoulin (dir.), Réseaux économiques, cit., pp. 411-429 (quotation p. 428).

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co-ordination of the interest groups in their relations with State authorities.

This picture has been slightly modified by the works on the following periods. The Europeanization of some key political areas, such as for example the competition pol-icy66, represented a decisive stimulus for the interest groups to develop their own action at the supranational level and to coordinate at a transnational level67. The historical stud-ies on the European «relaunch» of the second half of the 1980s, though largely still in an embryonic phase, have evidenced a quantum leap in the action of the business groups. The watershed role played by the 1980s is con-firmed, for instance, by Sophie Chauveau’s research on the pharmaceutical industry that in this decade, responding to the challenge posed by the globalization of markets and by the rise of new health threats, started the construction of a common European market for medicines, after a decade long delay68. At a more general level, Jean-Christophe Defraigne argues the adoption of the post-fordist produc-tion model by the big European companies has been one of the key-reason of the strategy abandonment of the national champions and of the push towards the creation of the single European market69.

66 On the positions of the French patronat on this subject cf. L. War-louzet, La France et la mise en place de la politique de la concurrence commu-nautaire (1957-1964), in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), Europe organisée, cit., pp. 175-201 and 187-190, showing the CNPF, trying to influence the fledgling Community competition policy, followed not only the traditional lobbying on the national government, but inau-gurated even «une voie nouvelle, communautaire, par l’intermédiaire de l’UNICE». For a study on the influence of the European auto-makers on the definition of the European competition policy, cf.: S.M. Ramirez Perez, Antitrust ou anti US?, cit.

67 W. Kaiser, Transnational Networks, cit., p. 24.68 S. Chauveau, L’Europe de l’industrie pharmaceutique. Entreprises, mar-

chés et institutions, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), La relance des années quatre-vingt (1979-1992), cit., pp. 297-314.

69 J.-C. Defraigne, De l’abandon progressif de la stratégie des champions nationaux à la vague de fusions de 1986-2001: l’origine du changement de stratégie des entreprises européennes vis-à-vis de la construction européenne

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The 1980s turn, seems to elicit different conclusions about the political effectiveness of business groups action. The studies on the beginning of the single market program, through which we enter a ground still frequented mainly by political scientists, have particularly stressed the politi-cal role played by transnational groups70, first of all the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), the busi-ness co-ordinating group born in 1983, on the initiative of Volvo president Pehr Gyllenhammar and of the Com-mission vice-president Etienne Davignon, reuniting the leading executives of some of the more relevant European companies. As Maria Green Cowles shows, the ERT played a key-role in establishing the contents and the mode of application of the 1986 Single European Act71. The ERT objective was not – according to Cowles – to support «a Thatctherite deregulatory programme», but rather to pro-mote «a recalibration of the social and political relations to create a unified market that would be conducive to ‘the reindustrialization of Europe»72.

dans les années 1980, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), La relance des années quatre-vingt (1979-1992), cit., pp. 277-296.

70 By the way, even the conclusion of the essay on the Bilderberg group pointed out: «Une piste de recherche intéressante consisterait, bien sûr, à analyser l’évolution de Bilderberg dans les décennies suivantes [after the 1960s] à propos de la construction de l’Europe» (V. Aubourg, Le groupe de Bilderberg, cit., p. 429).

71 M.G. Cowles, Setting the Agenda for a new Europe: the ERT and EC 1992, in «Journal of Common Market Studies», n. 4, 1995, pp. 501-526; Idem, L’ERT (European Round Table of Industrialists). Les grands industriels et la promotion du grand marché européen, in E. Bussière, M. Dumoulin, S. Schirmann (dir.), Milieux économiques et intégration européenne aux XXe siècle. La relance des années quatre-vingt (1979-1992), Paris, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2007, pp. 233-240. For an opposing viewpoint, that stresses the centrality of national govern-ments, cf. A. Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998, pp. 314-378.

72 M.G. Cowles, Setting the Agenda for a new Europe, cit., p. 503. For a different point of view, cf. B. van Apeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism and the Struggle over European Integration, London, Routledge, 2002, in particular on the genesis and the action of the ERT, see the chapters 3 and

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In general, it seems to me that this recent transna-tional turn, while it is to be welcomed as a much needed correction of some important shortcomings of the earlier research, is however not entirely satisfying. In my opinion, there are two more problematic areas. The first one has to do with an insufficient appreciation of the prime causes of the rise of the transnational networks and of the disconti-nuities by which this story is marked. In order to under-stand this point, we should look at the change occurred in the European societies since the end of the 1960s when the tripartite social compact between the State, business and the Unions that had governed at the national level the growth during the so called Golden Age of Western Capitalism, broke down73. The increasingly unsatisfactory character, from the employers’ point of view, of the social framework of post-war growth74, induced Capital to accen-tuate its transnational character, trying to find a new equi-librium in the place of the older one75.

In the second place, the particular focus of such an analysis often leads up to an accentuation of the individu-als’ role and their networks of relationships76, at the expense of social structures, both of material and of immaterial nature, and to a disregard of the asymmetries in power and influence between the different social groups. At this regard, one cannot help but recall the criticisms Thomas J.

4; B. Balanyá et al., Europe Inc. Regional and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power, London, Pluto Press, 2003, chapter 3.

73 For an interpretation of the Golden Age crisis insisting more on the endogenous causes, inherent to the development model of the advanced capitalist countries, rather than on the exogenous factors such as the energy crisis, cf. P. Armstrong, A. Glyn, J. Harrison, Capitalism Since 1945, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991, in particular the chapters 11-13.

74 See further reasons of the Capital’s unsatisfactoriness in the Conclu-sion.

75 G. Arrighi, A Crisis of Hegemony, in S. Amin, G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank, I. Wallerstein, Dynamics of Global Crisis, London, MacMillan, 1982, pp. 55-108.

76 See T. Grosbois, Le rôle de quelques réseaux dans la stratégie européenne des multinationales, in M. Dumoulin (dir.), Réseaux économiques, cit., pp. 351-370.

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McCormick levelled against the model of American plural-ism he labelled an «American Dream» paradigm, inasmuch as it was characterised by «the view that decision-making is the end product of numerous private, voluntary, dem-ocratic groups competing with each other in a relatively coequal way in an open society»77. What a large part of the research on business groups and European integration seems intent on doing, almost thirty years after McCor-mick’s admonition, is applying such a muted vision to its field of inquiry, thus producing watered-down analyses according to which, to make just one example, representa-tive of a more general trend:

la création de l’euro doit beaucoup aux efforts cohérents et continus d’une cinquantaine de patrons d’entreprise, Européens convaincus, pour influencer les décideurs politiques dans le sens de l’intérêt général des Européens78.

Do we really have to consider the «general interest of the Europeans», provided that such a concept could be defined in any meaningful way, as overlapping with the interests of the leading executives of the bunch of large companies like Philips, Fiat, Total, etc., which gave birth to the Associa-tion pour l’Union monétaire de l’Europe? Or instead, as Peter Gourevitch affirms, is it correct to assume there is not only one objectively determined solution to an economic crisis, but rather a range of policies to choose among, and this choice will be the end result of a political fight?79 If this is true, it would not be preferable to better contextualize

77 T.J. McCormick, Drift or Mastery? A Corporatist Synthesis for Ameri-can Diplomatic History, in «Reviews in American History», n. 4, 1982, pp. 318-330 (quotation p. 321).

78 L. Moulin, L’Association pour l’Union monétaire de l’Europe: un groupe d’entrepreneurs contribue à la création de l’Euro, in E. Bussière, M. Dumou-lin, S. Schirmann (dir.), La relance des années quatre-vingt (1979-1992), cit., pp. 241-255(quotation p. 255). For a critical position on the role of the AUME see B. Balanyá et al., Europe Inc., cit., chapter 6.

79 P. A. Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times. Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1986.

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the topics under investigation, wondering where some pro-posals, ideas, conceptions come from, which interests they are representing, bearing in mind that in the analysis of any society we are facing a conflictual reality in which very seldom something like a general interest actually exists, but as an ideological fiction serving to legitimize the objectives of a particular group or class? In other words, it seems to me necessary to engage «certain hard problems that lie at the core of any effective system for historical analysis. Who exercises power? How? Why?»80. As stated by Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, the Dutch political scientist who has produced some of the more interesting contribution on transnational business, it is important:

(…) not only to establish that the ‘politics of big business matter’ (…), but also to analyse and explain ‘the politics’ or political strategies of big business. If it can be established that ideas promo-ted by an emergent European transnational business elite matter, then it seems pertinent to shift the focus to these ideas themselves analysing and explaining their origins and development81.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion I would like to concentrate on what I think are the most visible deficiencies of historiography on the relation between business circles and European integra-tion. According to my opinion there are two main weak-nesses belonging to such literature, presently obstructing the possibility of opening new investigation perspectives of investigation, as well as deepening and refining the inter-pretative hypotheses on the table.

80 T.J. McCormick, Drift or Mastery?, cit., p. 323.81 B. van Apeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism, cit., p. 5. The reference

contained in the quotation is to M.G. Cowles, Setting the Agenda for a new Europe, cit.. On van Apeldoorn’s positions see also: Id., Transnational Busi-ness: Power Structures in Europe’s Political Economy, in W. Kaiser, P. Starie (eds), Transnational European Union, cit., pp. 83-106.

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First, a striking feature of this literature, especially of the «francophone school» headed by Bussière and Dumou-lin, is the nearly total lack of dialogue with Alan Milward’s theses. This is all the more surprising, if one considers that the British historian has been one of the harshest critics of the narrowness of European integration history – which, he wrote at the beginning of the 1990s, «is to all intents and purposes a history of diplomacy» – and one of the staunchest supporter of the need to enlarge its domain to issues different from the analysis of the foreign policies of the member States: «It is the post-war economic and social forces which have shaped the European State which therefore need to be analysed if the origins and purpose of the Community are to be explained»82. In spite of their weaknesses, pointed out by many83, Milward’s hypotheses remain the only overall historical interpretation of some consistency and strength advanced so far. In my opinion, their weakest point is not, as stated by many84, his exces-sive state-centric bias, but instead his disregard for a pre-cise definition of the identity of the nation State, that is of the subject that would have to be «rescued» by the Euro-pean integration. In other words, which rescue is Milward speaking about? If it is now difficult to accept the idea of an objectively defined national interest, a concept largely criticised in the theoretical debate about International Relations85, the problem is to deconstruct the concept of nation State to identify the concrete political, economic and social structures that have been guaranteed by the inte-

82 A.S. Milward, The European Rescue, cit., p. xi.83 Cf. W. Kaiser, Bringing People and Ideas Back in: Historical Research

on the European Union, in D. Phinnemore, A. Warleigh-Lack (eds), Reflec-tions on European Integration, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 22-39.

84 N. Rollings, British Business, cit., p. 5. It has to be pointed out that Milward himself criticized «the erroneous elitist historiographical tradition that it is states and institutions that mould events» (A.S. Milward, The European Rescue, cit., p. xi).

85 J.N. Rosenau, The Study of World Politics. Vol. 1, Theoretical and Methodological Challenges, New York, Routledge, 2006, pp. 246-254.

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gration. Then, the task is to reflect on how the European Rescue of the Nation State has been articulated in each single national case and in determining the modes of dec-lination of Milward’s idea the business circles have surely played a decisive role86.

Secondly, even more striking and macroscopic, since it is a common trait of practically the whole of the literature we are dealing with here, is the absence of any reference to the conflict between Capital and Labour, as if this was an irrelevant issue in order to understand business’ positions. Once again, this omission derives, at least partially, from the fact that an important part of this literature finds its roots, as we have said at the beginning this article, in the diplo-matic history tradition. Hence, there is an interpretation of business’ motives and actions focused on the rivalries and the dialectic between national, or sometimes continental, industrial system, in a rehash, in a certain sense, of the clas-sic conception of the «primacy of foreign politics». In this perspective, it is correctly assumed the basic motivation of business’ action is to be found in the search for profits, but in this view this search essentially translates into a relentless competition for wider markets, whereas the question of the relation with Labour is considered of secondary relevance and in any case useless to understand the logic of business international relations. Thus the integration is seen exclu-sively as a function of the trade expansion, in the frame of a «mercantilist» point of view, in which the accent is put on the increase of export and on the necessity to respond to external challenges (first, at the end of the XIX century, the US, then, in the second half of the XX century, Japan, the «Asian tigers», globalization). Even the more recent research, which, as we have said, has abandoned the earlier exclusive concentration on trade and tariffs matters, that is the privileged ground of a «diplomatic history» concep-

86 I have tried to develop this idea in F. Petrini, Grande mercato, bassi salari: la Confindustria e l’integrazione europea, 1947-1964, in P. Craveri, A. Varsori (a cura di), L’Italia nella costruzione europea. Un bilancio storico (1957-2007), Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2009, pp. 233-258.

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tion, to expand its investigation to Community policies, has maintained an exclusive attention to the impact of these policies on competition, in the assumption that the object of the game was essentially to create a «level playing field» 87.

However, European integration has not actually been only that; furthermore, it has historically represented an important element of stabilization of the European socie-ties, as well as a containment of the social conflict, first in the framework of the post-war trilateral social compro-mise, trying to create the environment where it would be possible to reconcile the building of national welfare sys-tems with the expansion of international trade (a situation well synthesized by the motto: «Keynes at home, Smith abroad»88), then in the frame of the neo-liberal «counter-revolution» of the end of the century, when it became the major promoter of an increasingly pervasive deploy-ment of market forces. The European construction has been directly or indirectly invested in all these passages, by the conflict between Labour and Capital, and used as an instrument to its solution. Therefore, the social conflict issues cannot be expunged from the analysis of the busi-ness circles’ action, all the more if one considers, as Michał Kalecki wrote in 1943 in a famous essay on the political aspects of full employment: «‘discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ are more appreciated than profits by business leaders»89. In concrete terms, to take the case where the heuristic consequences of such an exclusion are more evident, we cannot understand the motives of the action of the industrial capitalism after the beginning crisis of the Golden Age if we fail to take into consideration the social conflict. As it has been noted, at the roots of the second wave of globalization, set in motion at the end of

87 N. Rollings, British Business, cit., p. 261.88 R. Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations, Princeton,

Princeton University Press, 1987, p. 355.89 M. Kalecki, Political Aspects of Full Employment, in «Political Quar-

terly», n. 4, 1943, pp. 322-331 (quotation p. 326).

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the 1970s, there was even – above all in some scholars’ opinion– the Capital’s response to a crisis of profitabil-ity determined by a profit squeeze induced by the rise in workers’ contractual power, in its turn consequent to the attainment of a regime of full employment in the Capital-ist world’s core countries90. The answer to this was mani-fold, but in the production realm it assumed mainly three aspects: a restructuration towards the overcoming of the Fordist model taking place in the countries of older indus-trialization; furthermore, such a restructuration assumed the form of a delocalization of industrial production from the centre to the semi-periphery of the system in search of a more docile and cheaper manpower91; in parallel went on a massive shift of investments from manufacturing pro-duction to financial markets92. These are developments the European construction was fully invested by, not only as a passive bystander, as it is assumed in much of the literature we reviewed here, but as an active promoter, through the program for the Single Market and the enlargement of the geographical borders of the European Union. Therefore, it is clear, that, for those wanting to really delve into the dialectic between industrial milieux and European integra-tion, there is here a vast ground which cannot be ignored.

90 P. S. Jha, The Twilight of the Nation State: Globalisation, Chaos and War, London, Pluto Press, 2006. On the profit squeeze hypothesis, the seminal text is A. Glyn, B. Sutcliffe, British capitalism, workers and the profits squeeze, London, Penguin, 1972. For an overall analysis of the 1970s stressing the social conflict as one of the main originating factors of the systemic crisis, cf. G. Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing. Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London, Verso, 2007, chapters 4 and 5.

91 Cf. B.J. Silver, Forces of Labor. Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

92 For a general interpretation of the meaning and logics of the financial expansions, see G. Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times, London, Verso, 1994.