Between European Community and Atlantic Partnership

11From a chronological point of view, the ERC was the first of the three entities to be created, in 1957. In March, Monnet told Stone he wanted the Ford Foundation to support an initiative by the University of Lausanne, which had just created a “chair of European integration”. He proposed they do so by funding Henri Rieben, who was appointed to the chair in April, and with whom Monnet planned to create a “European research center”. [21] In July, the rector of the University of Lausanne, Edmond Grin, made an official request. [22] By 30 August, the Foundation had awarded the ERC a 25,000 dollar grant as part of its IA program, for a period of “approximately” two years, to carry out “research relating to practical problems of European integration”, and to “facilitate the research activities” of Rieben, who wanted to answer “those concrete efforts of these pioneers of a united Europe”. [23] The expectations behind this decision were simple:

12

There will be a wide need in Europe over the coming decade (a) for research into economic, social, constitutional and political aspects of integration, and (b) for men trained to staff the new organizations. In particular, Jean Monnet, who has played a prominent role in European unification, is working out plans for the establishment of new institutes in various European countries to carry out necessary research and training. [24]

13The ERC was founded a year later, in July 1958. In his speech, Rieben celebrated the fact that the Association des Instituts d’Études Européennes (Association of Institutes for European Studies, AIEE), created in 1951 and headed by Dusan Sidjanski, and the Association des Universitaires d’Europe (Association of European Academics, AUE), created in 1955, could now use Lausanne as an example when they called for the “immediate creation of chairs of European integration”. [25] But while the Ford Foundation’s goal was to “assist and encourage European integration by supporting a research institution” that seemed “promising”, the initial results were concerning. [26] The ERC’s first activity report in October 1958 emphasized other objectives and achievements. Its main aim was to “create a team of researchers capable of scientifically studying the concrete problems posed by European integration (a) to Switzerland and its cantons, (b) to the Swiss economy as a whole, (c) to the main sectors of this economy, and (d) to the different categories of the Swiss population”. [27] The list of published or forthcoming publications attached to this was largely devoted to Switzerland. (One study, for instance, was titled “Swiss Watchmaking in a Time of European Integration”.) Rieben tried unsuccessfully to renew the funding at the end of this first period of financial support. [28] The whole experiment could have been short-lived.

14In fact, the ERC was kind of a local branch of a much larger project that formed in 1957. In March, ACUSE set up its Documentation Center (DC). This was physically located at ACUSE’s headquarters in Paris, on Avenue Foch, but as a separate entity, a non-profit association located in Lausanne, in the canton of Vaud, under Swiss law. [29] In July, Monnet explained to Stone that he was pursuing the project of a real university alongside Kohnstamm and Jacques Van Helmont, ACUSE’s secretary general, on secondment from the HA. But this faced difficulties in the short term (“it is going to take more time before we have a complete plan worked out in such a form that it can be submitted to your friends”). In the meantime, he wanted the Ford Foundation to finance the DC, specifying in a postscript that, “of course”, ACUSE was “exclusively” funded by its members—political parties and trade unions—and that his request “only” concerned the DC. [30] From the Ford Foundation’s point of view, financing the DC would be a first step toward creating a network of “European training and research centers”. [31] Stone encountered a favorable response to the proposal in Europe, particularly from Robert Triffin, whom he met in Paris. Triffin was on sabbatical from Yale, working with the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). He was “mainly interested” in the creation of a “European financial community” (“central bank, one currency”), but nonetheless “enthusiastic about the idea of developing various research centers and training institutions”. A meeting was planned at the end of the month between Monnet, Stone, Triffin, and Robert Marjolin, the OEEC’s former secretary general. The Ford Foundation supported the project from the outset. [32] But it also insisted Monnet bring in private companies and universities. [33] In any case, certain academics—those already in contact with the Foundation—should be briefed in greater detail about the project. [34]

15The evaluation report for the Executive Committee meeting of 12 December clearly set this project in a more general context. The report began by recalling that the Rome Treaties would be taking effect two weeks later, and that this would necessarily lead to a new “European integration” initiative; why not a “European Financial Community”? It described these developments as “a challenge to the European universities and institutes, which will be called on to develop basic research into European problems, train young people for European-wide management posts, and stimulate a European rather than a narrowly national approach to common political, economic, social, and cultural problems”. [35] This was all the more important because the Ford Foundation explicitly supported the political project:

16

A strong European Community, closely associated with the United States, is of great importance to American national interest, and support for educational and research activities related to the European Community is a principal element of the Foundation’s European program. [36]

17The DC had already received 35,000 dollars from European industrialists and established cooperative relations with a number of research centers, including the Center for International Affairs run by Robert Bowie at Harvard. It used the Ford grant to disseminate “up-to-date information on European integration problems” and “detailed technical research for precise action proposals” to ACUSE members, bringing in “the services of European and American professors and other experts to conduct research of immediate significance to the European Community”—in sum, professors like Triffin. Above all, this grant would be the foundation stone of a more general enterprise:

18

The present grant is one of a series of major actions which the staff will propose in respect to the European Community. Mr. Monnet, Professor Marjolin, Mr. Kohnstamm, and Professor Walter Hallstein, former rector of Frankfurt University and for many years State Secretary of Foreign Affairs at Bonn, are now developing plans, which will be presented to the Foundation in 1958, for a Central Institute for University Studies of European Integration. A grant of $25,000 made earlier this year to the University of Lausanne for European economic studies is serving as the pilot project for the plans for the Central Institute. The concept is to help the universities of Europe take a broader view of their programs and studies. [37]

19The next day, Stone announced to Monnet that the Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees had approved a 150,000-dollar grant. From that date on, the Foundation financed the DC in 150,000-dollar installments, which went to a Chase Manhattan account. Initially, this was for “approximately” every three years (1958-60 and 1960-62), and then every two years (1963-64 and 1965-66). [38] This increasing rate of funding was spurred by a major development. On 22 December 1962, the Foundation’s board approved an endowment of 3,000,000 dollars for the fiscal year 1963 to strengthen the Atlantic partnership, which Kennedy had made an essential dimension of his presidency. [39] Financing for the DC now came from this budget. From 1963 onward, the DC’s mission was thus to carry out “policy research” on “European unification and the Atlantic partnership”. [40] Its evaluation report emphasized that “in future the Center’s research will to an increasing extent emphasize economic, legal, political, and educational aspects of the Atlantic Partnership”. [41]

20In 1959, in its first activity report, the DC emphasized its “particularly close” collaboration with the ERC and the institutions of the European Communities, as well as its desire to build up “a coherent network of research organisations, in Europe and elsewhere, concerned with the problems of European unity and its impact on world affairs”. [42] As early as 1961, François Duchêne, a former member of the HA who had been running the DC since May 1958, could congratulate himself on having brought together a group of “first-rate experts”, including representatives of Community institutions, governments, and civil services, lawyers and bankers, but also “outstanding professors”, and that this network was gradually expanding. [43]

21

The staff of the Documentation Center has also made a point of keeping in close contact with organizations and research institutes whose expertise may be relevant to European integration proposals. Collaboration has been particularly close in the Common Market area with the Netherlands Economic Institute of Rotterdam (Professor Tinbergen) and the Institute of the European Community for University Studies of Brussels; in Britain, with PEP and the Economist Intelligence Unit, London; in Switzerland, with the Centre de Recherches Européennes of Lausanne; in America, with the Harvard Center for International Affairs and the Twentieth Century Fund; as well as with the FAO, GATT, the OEEC, and of course, the European Community’s institutions. [44]

22In autumn 1967, Monnet thanked the Ford Foundation for its financial support, but informed its secretary, Joseph McDaniel, that the DC’s activities had ceased in December 1966 with the end of the final grant. Henceforth, “the researches and studies conducted by the institutions of the Common Market in Brussels provide all the information wanted”. [45] The third part of the project initiated in 1957, alongside the ERC and ACUSE’s DC, now took precedence. This was the ECIUS.

The European Community Institute for University Studies in the Genesis of European Studies

23The initial inspiration for the ECIUS is lost in the flurry of exchanges within the small Atlantic world: it is difficult even to say whether it was Monnet, Kohnstamm, or Stone himself who first had the idea. At the end of 1957 Kohnstamm sent Stone two notes (“as asked by you”). [46] At the beginning of 1958, Monnet in turn sent two successive memoranda. All of these had the same goal: to mobilize the academic world more actively, not only because of the “constant stimulus which European universities can provide” in discussions about the “manifold problems of European unification”, but also “to explain to their students the working of the Communities”. [47] Several goals were described:

24

There would appear to be four main ways in which European universities can be helped to contribute to the development of European federation: firstly, by increasing the at present very limited number of chairs dealing specifically with problems of European integration; secondly, by reinforcing existing university centers; thirdly, by establishing additional centers; fourthly, by instituting a clearing-house for relevant information and material likely to be of value to universities and lecturers. [48]

25This grant application, for 500,000 dollars over five years, was spread, for the first year, between operating expenses (30,000 dollars), grants to universities to create either “special chairs for European integration” or “centers of European studies” (each 25,000 dollars), and the costs of the “preparation of European University” (20,000 dollars). [49] It was the most ambitious of the three applications submitted by Monnet and his collaborators, and the Ford Foundation saw the project as consistent with the policy it had been developing over recent years.

26

On January 1, 1958 EURATOM and the European Common Market began to function. Together with the Coal and Steel Community these institutions are opening what may become a new era of European history. The development of the European Community has been strongly supported by the United States as essential to the security and interests of this country. One of the major objectives of the Foundation’s International Affairs Program has been to support activities to strengthen the European Atlantic alliance. Toward this objective the Foundation, during recent years, has made grants for research, planning, scientific, and other activities directed toward European integration and the Atlantic alliance. Funds have been made available to: CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research at Geneva); the Center of Documentation of Action Committee of Europe (Monnet Committee); for support of European scientific institutes; American Committee for United Europe—to analyze the problem of European federalism; American Council on NATO; University of Lausanne—for economic studies in European integration; PEP—study of Britain and the Common Market [...]; and the Study Center for International Relations in France. These grants help to make available American experience, participation, and connections which are vital both to Europe and to the United States. [50]

27The Ford Foundation emphasized that European universities had begun financing this project by creating “special chairs for European integration problems” in Lausanne and Rotterdam, and through projects to establish institutes in Leiden, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Nancy, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken, Rome, Brussels, and elsewhere. With the ECIUS, the Foundation saw a chance to support these undertakings—to “strengthen institutes in the six countries of the Community and in other European countries, including the United Kingdom”—aiming “to concentrate on the long-range political, economic, social, and constitutional problems and relationships of the European Community, the proposed Free Trade area, and the United States; and to train the men and women who will assume leading posts in the various European Community institutions”. [51]

28In pursuit of this, the Foundation would undertake a jumble of projects: creating a documentation center for universities (“a central library”); reinforcing “existing centers of European studies, for example by supporting chairs in European-Atlantic problems”; financing the creation of similar centers; commissioning research that would help Community institutions with their “immediate and long-range needs”; contributing to the future establishment of a European University; and, last of all, creating “channels through which the experience of European and American statesmen, political and business leaders will be made available to the European universities and thereby bring Europe’s universities closer to the Community”. [52] The Foundation was quite clear:

29

The European Community Institute will fill an important need. European universities have lagged behind events and have tended to remain provincial in character. It is essential that the national universities of Europe broaden their horizons and their outlook become European-Atlantic so that the future leaders of Europe will be trained to meet the needs of the larger Community. The European Community Institute will be in a central position to aid European universities to overcome parochial interests. The development of a European and Atlantic outlook at the old universities of Europe and the founding of a new university are revolutionary steps in European higher education. [53]

30But doubts arose from within the Foundation. Its executives were skeptical. Thomas Carroll, one of its six vice-presidents, raised questions about the actual relationship between the ECIUS and the national institutes, as well as the feasibility of the Ford Foundation paying American professors through the ECIUS. [54] McDaniel expressed his concerns directly to President Heald: “Is this Institute a going concern or is it something which we will be starting more or less from scratch?” He concluded: “This proposal presents to me a highly confused picture”. [55]

31In spite of this, the ECIUS received its first grant of 500,000 dollars for five years on 31 March 1958. [56] The ECIUS was thus officially created on 26 April 1958, with the same status of an association as the ERC: its legal seat was in the canton of Vaud; it was led by a president, Monnet, a secretary general, Kohnstamm, and an administrative secretary, Rieben; and of course an account was opened at Chase Manhattan. [57] A second grant of 300,000 dollars was awarded for three years on 26 December 1963; a third for 250,000 dollars for two years on 7 February 1968; and a fourth for 50,000 dollars for two years in 1971. In total, the ECIUS received 1,100,000 dollars between 1958 and 1973. [58] This is equivalent to the amount received over a similar period by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris.

32The ECIUS’s activities began in January 1959. It was located on Avenue Foch, like ACUSE’s DC. Its board of directors was chaired by Monnet and made up of representatives of the three “executives”: Louis Armand, president of the Commission of the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC); Paul Finet, president of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC); Walter Hallstein, president of the Commission of the European Economic Community (EEC); and Étienne Hirsch, commissioner-general of the French Plan and, in 1959, Armand’s successor at the EAEC. [59] The Board of Directors soon came to include Pietro Campilli, president of the European Investment Bank (EIB); Andreas Donner, president of the Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC); Paride Formentini, who succeeded Campilli at the EIB in 1959; and Piero Malvestiti, Finet’s successor at the HA. The ECIUS then moved to the premises of the European Commission in Brussels, on the Rue Belliard. In 1969, it moved to the Berlaymont. [60] Most importantly, Kohnstamm, who was initially its executive director, became president.

33The ECIUS’s goals underwent slight shifts across its different requests to the Ford Foundation. The “Atlantic” dimension was already present in 1958, but became far more pronounced in 1963. The purpose was to push “promising and deserving young scholars to study European problems in a wider Atlantic concept” and to support “new university ventures in European and European-Atlantic studies”. These had a certain liberal orientation: “At what stage on the road towards free trade will Atlantic economic institutions become necessary?” [63] Indeed, the decision to renew the grant was motivated to a large degree by this orientation.

34

Notwithstanding the difficulties which have emerged during the past year, there continues to be, on both sides of the Atlantic, a determination to go forward with the European-Atlantic idea. Quite apart from its validity as a balance to the Soviet power idea in the East, the Atlantic concept remains essential if the free world is not to fall back into the nationalistic antagonisms of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. There can be no detour around unity and strength in Europe and the Atlantic as the prerequisite of peaceful arrangements with the Soviet Union. [64]

35The main shift, however, came from the resounding failure to form a genuine European university. The project was rooted in the dynamics of mobilization of the late 1940s, and had been regularly revived by Europeanist groups. Its first legal mooring came from Article 9 of the treaty which established the EAEC. This aimed to create an “institution at university level” in the short term. At the beginning of 1958, Kohnstamm wrote to Stone to express his interest in creating a European university. [65] Several practical considerations explain why there were high expectations attached to this project: it would allow the children of ECSC staff leaving European private schools to continue studying at a European university while still remaining in Luxembourg (the first European baccalaureates were awarded in 1958), or, on the contrary, it would offer the Grand-Duchy an acceptable amount of compensation for moving the ECSC institutions from Luxembourg to Brussels and thereby creating a “single seat”. [66] Hallstein laid out this last consideration to Stone in detail in February 1958, asking, “very confidentially”, for the Ford Foundation’s support:

36

Now such a solution, of course, if it is to succeed, will demand considerable expenditure of money. Of course, the six countries in the Community will have to make large contributions. I believe, however that it would help advance this entire idea if one knew now that the great foundations, with their world-wide activities, would show interest in this problem (the example of the Free University of Berlin shows how successful such activity can be). [67]

37In autumn 1958, a committee chaired by Enrico Medi made a number of proposals for creating this European university. An interim committee chaired by Hirsch did the same in the autumn of 1959. Nor did the ECIUS remain idle. As early as 1959 it began discussing the state of the university system within the six member states of the European Communities. In his first progress report, Kohnstamm reported on the consensus that, he believed, had emerged from Medi’s committee and his own discussions with “representative groups from a number of universities” in Europe and the United States. [68]

38

It is generally felt that the facilities offered by the European universities are insufficient for the modern world and that only a small percentage of talented young people can obtain a university education because of the high costs involved and the limited number of scholarships and grants available. The existence of the European Community is rapidly changing the economic situation of its member-nations, but these very changes will create a need for more and more university graduates. The rapid evolution which is now taking place in Europe would be fundamentally incomplete if it were not accompanied by a thoroughgoing reform of the various European university systems. [69]

39Similar thinking began about scientific research. According to Kohnstamm, it was not “keeping abreast” with its American or Soviet competitors: “No detailed study has ever been undertaken as to the causes of this failure”. [70] The ECIUS therefore established a Commission d’Études Européenne pour le Développement de l’Enseignement et de la Recherche (European Study Commission for the Development of Education and Research, CEEDER). This was briefly chaired by Gaston Berger until his sudden death on 13 November 1960. It was subsequently headed by André Aymard, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences at the University of Paris, and Gerhard Hess, president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. [71] The rapporteur was Raymond Poignant, maître des requêtes to the Conseil d’État on secondment, general rapporteur for school supply problems in the Monnet Plan, and chief of staff of the Minister of Education. To assist him, Arnold Kramish, an American physicist, a specialist in research organization and in Soviet science, had been made available by the Rand Corporation. [72]

40CEEDER’s work was rooted in the conviction that “national educational and research systems” differed so much that it was “hard to establish meaningful comparisons” between them; the only thing they had in common was their collective unsuitability to compete with the two great powers. In this context, “if our Community wants to keep up with the developments elsewhere and especially in the USA and USSR, a much greater educational and research effort will be needed”. This especially involved increasing the number of students, drawn from “all classes of society”, [73] a statement of fact with which the final report closes by emphasizing “just how narrow access to further studies is for those from the working class”. [74]

41These efforts were in vain. In the summer of 1960, de Gaulle torpedoed the flagship project for this sort of European community for higher education and research. He did not want a “single seat”; above all, he did not want a European university. [75] Reservations voiced by Maurice Couve de Murville in the councils of ministers of the EEC and EAEC about the name, funding, and institutional framework of a European university put an end to the project. [76]

42The global dynamic this article is describing was, in a brief period, given a persistent orientation both and at the same time by the Ford Foundation’s major commitment to “European studies”, and by the immediate failure of its ultimate goal, a “European university”. Its ghost, however, remained present everywhere.

The Law Faculty and the Institut d’Études Politiques in the Institutionalization of European Studies

51Expansive as it was, this funding program was not without its difficulties. This was particularly true in France. American foundations were very active there. [97] The Ford Foundation played an important role in the humanities and the social sciences. [98] It gave the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (National Foundation of Political Science, FNSP) a grant of 250,000 dollars in 1958, as well as a further 160,000 dollars in 1964, to finance its Centre d’Études des Relations Internationales (International Relations Study Center, CERI). [99] In 1963—if we focus only on European studies—it paid a 75,000-dollar grant to the Centre International de Formation Européenne (International Center for European Training, CIFE) set up by Alexandre Marc in 1954. [100] As for the ECIUS, it subsidized three organizations: the Centre Européen d’Économie et Sociologie Rurales (European Center for Rural Economy and Sociology, CEESR), the Centre Universitaire d’Études des Communautés Européennes (University Study Center for the European Communities, CUECE) at the University of Paris, and the Commission pour l’Étude des Communautés Européennes (Commission for the Study of European Communities, CEDECE).

52The first grant was made in 1960 to the CEESR, created at this time by the Laboratoire de Sociologie et d’Économie Rurale (Rural Sociology and Economics Research Center) at the Institut National Agronomique (National Agronomic Institute) in Paris and the Station d’Économie Rurale (Rural Economics Center) at the École Nationale d’Agriculture (National School of Agriculture) in Rennes. Its mission was to carry out “a study of the development of agricultural production structures and the possibility of adapting them to European agricultural development”, led by two professors, Michel Cépède (Paris) and Louis Malassis (Rennes). [101] As Kohnstamm pointed out bitterly, however, things were not quite so simple:

53

Many of the most influential professors of the all-powerful University of Paris opposed the Schuman Plan and were deeply hostile to the plans for a European Defense Community. [102] The advent of de Gaulle created other problems, among other things limiting the freedom of action of the European Commission’s Information Service in its attempts to interest French universities in European matters. At the same time, in no European country is the influence of the universities so great as in France, and obtaining their active interest therefore so important. That this, notwithstanding these difficulties, proved possible has largely been the result of the Institute’s work done in close collaboration with François Fontaine and a group of enthusiastic young university lecturers, backed by such outstanding men as Professors Teitgen and Byé. [103]

54The CUECE was headed by Pierre-Henri Teitgen, with Berthold Goldman assisting him with the Law Section and Maurice Byé for the Economics Section. All three were members of the board, which was chaired by Georges Vedel. [104] The Economics Section was founded in January 1963 and the Law Section in October. The CUECE offered a specific diploma, the Certificat d’Études Européennes (European studies certificate), which was awarded at the end of the Licence—then a four-year degree. This certificate was accredited by the national Ministry of Education on 8 July 1964, in record time. [105] In order to allow the law and economics faculties or the various institutes of political studies to receive grants, as stated in the CUECE activity report, “deans, directors, and professors had to create parallel associations to guarantee the granting of expenses”. These associations included for instance the Association pour l’Étude des Communautés Européennes (Association for the Study of European Communities, AECE), created in June 1963 in Brussels with Vedel as its chair, for the purpose of “facilitating the creation and operation” of the CUECE. [106] To this was added the CEDECE, created in September 1964, and aimed at “promoting teaching and research on the law and economics of the European Communities”—but only outside Paris, already covered by the AECE. Jean Boulouis chaired the CEDECE, with a board that included François de Menthon as vice-president, Henri Lesguillons as secretary general, and Teitgen as treasurer. Finally, it seems that another association was created in Paris in July 1965: “Europe Université”, also with Lesguillons as its secretary general. [107] While it is difficult to check the accounts of these nested, overlapping organizations, it seems clear the ECIUS expended a great deal of energy to help departments develop programs of “European studies”, particularly the Law Faculty in Paris.

55Of course, this enterprise triggered a reaction from the Rue Saint-Guillaume. In March 1964, a faculty member appealed to the IEP’s director, Jacques Chapsal, to create a genuine European studies center.

56

In recent years the number of European institutes and university centers specializing in European questions has increased enormously. (The most recent of these is the “Centre d’Étude des Communautés Européennes“ at the Law Faculty of Paris.) These creations demonstrate an increasing interest in European problems, and offer the framework needed for teaching and research to develop fully. (See, in this regard, the report in the Bulletin titled Recherches et études universitaires sur l’intégration européenne, published by the European Community Institute for University Studies in Brussels.) [108]

57Pierre Gerbet had been a research fellow at the CERI since 1958, thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation. He had also been a lecturer at the Humanities Faculty of Paris since 1962, following a visiting fellowship at Columbia’s School of International Affairs in 1961-62. To him, an “important adaptation effort” was underway at the IEP, one that included his own course on European politics, Paul Reuter’s course on European institutions since 1945, as well as their joint seminar on European political problems. [109] But that was not enough.

58

We ought to enhance this effort by adopting a “label“ that attracts attention. Some more or less serious European institutes are held in high regard because of their title—whereas people hardly think of the Institut d’Études Politiques or the Fondation [i.e. the FNSP]. Creating a “Centre d’Études Européennes“ at the Rue Saint-Guillaume would make it possible to take our place alongside European institutes, and to join the Association of Institutes for European Studies (122 Rue de Lausanne, Geneva) and participate in its activities. [110]

59Above all, Gerbet insisted on the disciplinary dimension of this project—that is, “developing European political science research”.

60

It seems normal that the Foundation should do for political science what the Law Faculty has successfully achieved for law and economics. Besides, this could be done in close collaboration between the two institutions, with the Law Faculty continuing to offer the legal and economic courses for its “Certificat d’Études Européennes”, and the Rue Saint-Guillaume covering the political science courses. This activity would largely be based on existing courses and seminars, and naturally fall within the framework of the Centre d’Études Européennes. This problem should require particular attention because the European labor market is important for the students of the Rue Saint-Guillaume. It should not be the case that, once they finish their diploma, they go on specializing at the Law Faculty and break all contact with the Institut d’Études Politiques. The system described above would allow the Institute to complete the training of its students. Finally, it should be noted that the Rue Saint-Guillaume is far better equipped than the Law Faculty to study European problems from the point of view of political science (variety of courses, bulk of documentation). It therefore would seem natural for the Rue Saint-Guillaume to take up this task. [111]

61On 24 March, Jean Touchard, the FNSP’s secretary general, sent a note to Chapsal approving the creation of the center. He also laid out some problems that had to be solved: the patronage committee, which he considered unnecessary; the list of professors who would be responsible for seminars; an assistant, to be “paid by the CERI”; and, of course, a director: “Should I give Gerbet a title? What should it be?” [112] As a matter of fact, Gerbet had neither a doctorate—he only defended his Ph.D. in Humanities much later, in 1977—nor any real status at the IEP, where he was not appointed assistant professor until in 1966. A month later, after an interview with Gerbet, Chapsal answered Touchard: “You and I will have to find him a spot at the CERI”. [113] In the margins of Gerbet’s note, Chapsal had in fact jotted down the idea that the European studies center could be a “section of the CERI”. [114] In spite of this momentum, however, the center never saw the light of day. But in May 1964 an Association pour le Développement de la Science Politique Européenne (Association for the Development of European Political Science, ADSPE) was set up, “with the aim of developing teaching and research about the European Communities, particularly within institutes of political studies and certain specialized institutes”. [115] Chaired by Daniel Pépy, a conseiller d’État, the board was made up of Jean François-Poncet, a councilor at the Quai d’Orsay, and Max Peyrard, an assistant professor at the Law Faculty of Paris.

62Local contingencies, which made some of the initiatives resulting from the global dynamic either fail or succeed, shifted this global dynamic, thereby shaping the “field” of European studies in its paradoxical form, at once transnational and insular, dominated in some places by lawyers, in others by political scientists, and so on. The creation of the European University Institute in Florence nevertheless marked an important stage within this dynamic.

From the European Community Institute for University Studies to the European University Institute

63From the beginning of the 1960s, by means of the funding it offered, the ECIUS had become the nexus of a transnational academic network which offered a major resonance chamber for Community institutions. On 9-10 December 1960, a meeting was for instance organized by Hallstein between Community executives and the directors of the different research centers that the ECIUS funded. Two topics were discussed: competition policy, which was introduced by Samkalden (EI) and Steindorff (GFFGEREW), and the common agricultural policy, introduced by Malassis (CEESR). [116] Donner, Hallstein, and Hirsch were present, as well as Hans Von der Groeben, the Commissioner for Competition, and Sicco Mansholt, the Commissioner for Agriculture. Also present were Michel Gaudet, director general of the Legal Service of the European Communities, and Jacques-René Rabier, director general of the Information Service. This initial network of recurrent interlocutors—three such meetings took place between 1960 and 1962 [117]—gave birth to shared initiatives, like the creation of the Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Europarecht in the spring of 1961. [118] The turbulent political context of the mid-1960s—the Empty Chair Crisis, the French withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military structure, the Prague Spring—was present in every page of the reports Kohnstamm sent to the Ford Foundation. Within this context, however, he made significant efforts to develop this transnational network beyond the Iron Curtain, traveling to Poland in spring 1965 and 1966, to Budapest in autumn 1967, and to Budapest and Prague in spring 1968. [119]

64In parallel, the ECIUS also wanted to participate in the “the development of European studies in American universities”. [120] In the 1950s, the Ford Foundation actively supported “East European studies”, which were most of the time joined to “Soviet studies”. In the mid-1960s, this policy was extended to include “West European studies”. As a result, a 400,000-dollar grant was thus awarded in 1964 to the Foreign Area Fellowship Program—one of the Ford Foundation’s flagship programs, created in 1952 to promote “area studies”, jointly administered by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), amounting to a total of 12,000,000 dollars. [121] In the early 1970s, however, the Ford Foundation observed that “for many years after World War II, European studies were largely neglected while American social scientists directed their attention to more exotic regions”. [122] This statement was reflected in the regular renewal of the specific grant to the SSRC for “West European studies”, and in a series of grants to American universities for thematic research projects. As part of the same movement, at the initiative of Stanley Hoffmann, Ernst Haas, Joseph LaPalombara, and Leon Lindberg, among others, the Ford Foundation decided to fund the creation of a genuine scholarly society for European studies: the Council for European Studies (CES). This was to be based at the University of Pittsburgh, which received a grant of 385,000 dollars in 1970 and a further 260,000 dollars in 1973. [123]

Table 2. The ECIUS’s principal expenditures in contemporary USD (1964-71)

	1964-1965	1965-1966	1966-1967	1967-1968	1968-1969	1970-1971	Total
Report	30/07/1965	25/07/1966	25/07/1967	31/07/1968	09/04/1970	18/06/1971
Year	01/01/1964-01/07/1965	01/07/1965-01/07/1966	01/07/1966-01/07/1967	01/07/1967-30/04/1968	01/01/1969-31/12/1971	01/01/1970-01/06/1971
Grant	300 000	250 000	550 000
Operations	63 150	43 050	48 360	40 296	51 700	66 670	313 226
Bulletin	16 100	7 950	1 720	7 412	28 300	38 830	100 312
Higher education and research reforms	6 500	4 570	6 450	712	10 200	52 000	80 432
Grants	54 500	37 400	18 880	0	26 900	0	137 680
Other	0	0	0	0	11 900	25 090	‰36 990
Total	140 250	92 970	75 410	48 420	129 000	182 590	668 640

Table 2. The ECIUS’s principal expenditures in contemporary USD (1964-71)

Note: RAC, FFR, R, 453, PA 57-351 [124]

65In line with these initiatives, transatlantic academic exchange intensified at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1969, a research seminar for doctoral students was organized by the CCES at the University of Sussex with the ECIUS’s support. This brought together 34 young political scientists and economists for a week, overseen by Leon Lindberg and Jean-Claude Casanova. [125] It was followed in 1970 by a second seminar, organized in a similar way, but this time in Bruges, with 36 young academics, headed by Ronald Inglehart. The theme of this second seminar was promising: “The Decision-Making Process and European Integration”. [126] Starting in 1969, the ECIUS also awarded research scholarships for studies on transatlantic relations. These were granted by a panel which, notably, included Dean Claussen, public affairs officer at the United States Mission to the European Communities, which funded these scholarships. [127] The young Karel Van Miert (Ghent University) was then given the award for a study on “the attitude of the United States government to the Commission of the European Communities”. [128]

66Paradoxically, European studies had by this point acquired such a solid institutional position, thanks to the ECIUS’s structuring efforts, that the ECIUS’s own activity came to seem increasingly redundant, even useless. Kohnstamm could declare himself relatively satisfied at the end of the first grant in 1963.

67

When the European Community Institute for University Studies began its activities, interest in the study of these problems was limited to a few universities. In the years since 1958, interest in these studies has greatly increased and widened in scope. [129]

68For Kohnstamm, “relatively small sums placed in well chosen places have had wide repercussions”—whether founding a research institute, creating a chair which the university committed itself to financing further, or even funding a doctoral thesis. As he noted in summer 1966, the “nationalization” of universities, once European, had not yet given way to the expected “Europeanization”—especially in France, where universities were “the most conservative in Europe”—but still, “it does not seem immodest to claim a very good return on the money which the Ford Foundation has generously put into the Institute!” [130] However, as he pointed out after the second grant in 1967, an important phase of the ECIUS’s work had “clearly” been completed:

69

European studies are now so firmly inplanted [sic] in all the countries of the Common Market and in the United Kingdom and Switzerland that no further outside stimuli are needed. The Institute can regard its task in this field as fulfilled. Of course, this does not mean that the situation is now ideal and that no more money could be usefully spent on new initiatives or on strengthening existing centers for European studies. It simply means that European studies have established themselves as a necessary part of university life and will undoubtedly continue to flourish. [131]

70Kohnstamm wasn’t the only one satisfied by the ECIUS. The Ford Foundation—who praised the Institute’s “energetic director”, whom it considered “an effective leader” [132]—was very happy with its achievements:

71

By all accounts the Institute’s work has been very successful. In 1958 there were only a handful of European study centers in Europe. In 1967 numerous universities have such centers, and most faculties of law, economics, and political science offer courses on European integration and its effects. [133]

72From 1967—and particularly at the end of the third grant, in 1970—Kohnstamm began to signal to the Ford Foundation his ambition to profoundly transform the ECIUS’s activities. [134] The ambition here was to create an Institute for European Policy Planning Studies (IEPPS), which would be a kind of “European Brookings”. [135] In the context of the first enlargement of the European Communities, the IEPPS could be formed from a merger between the ECIUS and the Trans-Europe Policy Studies Association (TEPSA), a network uniting institutes like the British Federal Trust for Education and Research, the French Club Jean-Moulin, and the Italian Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), yet another one of the Ford Foundation’s creations. [136] The IEPPS would offer “an opportunity for experts, now often working in national isolation, to join forces in devising European solutions to European problems”. [137] Unlike the United States, where “independent, non-governmental organizations” actively contribute to public debate, there were “no European-wide non-governmental institutions”. [138] Kohnstamm thus seemed to regret the fact that the European Commission was obliged to commission studies at “independent research centers”, whereas a single “private, non-profit-making and completely independent” institute with a limited staff of fifteen to twenty people could fulfill this function perfectly well. [139] It would be located in Brussels, and “should cooperate with existing institutes, national governments and the institutions of the European Community”. [140] The creation of this new institute was scheduled for mid-1973, and was to be funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the Agnelli Foundation, and the Royal Dutch Shell Group, which, according to Kohnstamm, had already agreed. [141] The project was strongly supported by Robert Schaetzel, the United States representative to the European Communities. [142] It also had the support of the Ford Foundation. However, criticism began to develop within the Ford Foundation. Alessandro Silj, who was now directing the European and International Affairs (EIA) program in the International Division, pointed out, after discussing the project with Kohnstamm, that the latter was “aware of the fact that his contacts with younger generations of scholars are limited”. Silj recommended Kohnstamm make contact with the leaders of the CES and of the “Consortium of European Political Scientists”. [143]

73Craufurd Goodwin, Silj’s successor, was even more severe in a 1976 report. [144] According to him, the ECIUS’s original ambitions “exude the confidence and excitement of the times” about what should have become an “integrative device” aiming all at the same time to create a link between “Europeanists”, to “modernize European social science through exposure to American research techniques and, especially, research for public policy”, and even to serve as an “intellectual bulwark against communism”. Goodwin thus expressed his surprise that, in the motivations for the initial grant, the Institute’s leadership could have been “characterized by political sympathy for the United States and the belief that without the United States even a United Europe would be overrun by Soviet Russia”. [145] His report instead pointed at the “schizophrenic” character of the initial project, aiming either simultaneously or cumulatively to develop a “visible, physical structure” and/or become a “‘clearinghouse’” or a “‘switchboard’”—“various terms were used throughout the years”. Had the final achievements met these initial ambitions? According to Goodwin, the ECIUS hardly bore comparison with the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS), which had also been created in 1958, under the direction first of Alastair Buchan (1958-69) and then of Duchêne (1969-74).

74

Whereas ISS worked carefully to build up a wide constituency and broad base of support, ECIUS never became much more than a funnel for Ford Foundation funds and dispersed its income annually for such things as chairs and centers of European studies at several European universities. Moreover, much of its energy seems to have gone into the dream of perhaps becoming the European university. [146]

75In short, its unique objective, the creation of “the European nation state”, had harmed the ECIUS. Furthermore, the report also pointed out Kohnstamm’s own limitations:

76

Kohnstamm’s background as a political administrator did not stand him in good stead with professional social scientists. He seems to have had difficulty in distinguishing good academic talent and prospects from bad ones.

77Kohnstamm’s many activities—his fight for ecumenism with the Committee on Society, Development and Peace (SODEPAX), his promotion of Latin American studies in Europe—had come at the expense of the Institute. Apart from the Ford Foundation, on the other hand, the ECIUS’s “only substantial funder” was the Volkswagen Foundation, created in 1961, “which, in the early years, depended on Ford advice”. [147] Faced with the “thinness” of the ECIUS’s reports and the absence of any “serious” evaluation by the Foundation (“despite three successive general support grants!”), the report concluded using a very critical tone. [148]

78

We would probably not make the grants today, partly because our objectives have changed and partly because our perception of correct operating style is different. “Lessons“ we can learn from this experience may be (1) the dangers of lack of perspective and in being too close to a grantee; (2) the desirability of stating clearly and precisely the goals of a new institution; (3) the need for regular outside appraisal of repeated grantees (and especially dependent organizations). [149]

79Such posthumous regrets, however, do not seem to have spoiled relations between Kohnstamm and the Ford Foundation. Admittedly, the project of a European university remained at a standstill for many years. But de Gaulle’s death meant that what had once been unlikely was now plausible. Since the start of the 1970s, the European Communities had started from scratch to build a public policy domain on higher education and research. [150]

80On 15 November 1976, a European University Institute (EUI)—a sort of hybrid born from the interbreeding between a European university and an institute of European studies—finally opened its doors in Florence. The name of its president, however, had been decided back in 1973: Kohnstamm. [151] He was president of the Trilateral Commission at the time (1973-76), and could take advantage of the transnational network he had established over the years. He benefited first and foremost from the support of the “European community”, embodied by the Commission’s secretary-general, Émile Noël, who campaigned on Kohnstamm’s behalf with European governments and later signed a contract with him in view of writing a “History of European integration”. [152] Secondly, Kohnstamm also enjoyed the support of the “Atlantic community”, embodied by the Rockefeller Foundation, who supported two conferences organized at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio. The first took place in 1974 (“The Institutional Development of the European Community”), and the second in 1976 (“The Organization of the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy”). [153] Nor did the Ford Foundation’s monies completely disappear. In 1976, the EUI received its first grant of 50,000 dollars; and, in 1978, a second grant of 100,000 dollars in order to support research on “the development of a new common law in Europe under the [authority of] the European Court of Justice, the Common Market, and human rights treaties”. [154] The classics of European studies were on the move.

81* * *

82In the dynamic that nurtured the emergence of a European field of power—that is, not just the institutions of the European Communities, but a more complex space of relations between formal and informal Atlantic and European institutions, as well as between economic, political, legal, and military agents—academic enterprises are of central importance. Their ultimate goal is the formation of elites and, consequently, the long-term distribution of positions of power within this emerging field. In the shorter term their aim is also the formation of learned representations of this emergent power—and thus, in part, the legitimation of the new forms of domination resulting from them.

83From this point of view, the promotion of European studies and, alongside, of a European university, appears as something other than a simple mechanical effect of “European construction”. It appears, instead, as one of the most significant of all European constructions. [155]