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102 Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen Bruna BAGNATO. – Storia di un’illusione europea. Il progetto di unione dogonale italo frances. London, Lothian Foundation Press, 1995, iii-336 p. ISBN 1-872210-08-2. 30,00 £. At first glance, this book might suggest pessimistic thoughts about the future of the European Union: quousque tandem will economic particularism and national interest block the way towards the utopia of a federal continent? Will this too prove to be – as Bagnato titles her work – a European illusion like the project of a customs union that French an Italian statesman drafted in 1947-48? At that time, of course, nothing was further from their minds than political utopia. Paris aimed at leadership in Europe and needed a brilliant junior partner, Rome wanted to be considered a normal and valuable interlocutor in the international arena. Hence the reciprocal interest in a project which was still imbued with old ideas, as traditional political matter lay behind an innovative economic curtain. So, not incidentally, the Monnet Plan gave it a fatal blow in 1950 just changing the political horizon by economic means. But, by analogy, should one suppose that the political substance which backs the European Union today, though its economic integration, is still too imbued with national interests partly related to residuals of power politics or aspirations? In other words, might the process of European political integration still be blocked? Bagnato’s book could be paradigmatic, under this respect, since one of its most important achievements is the demonstration – through a rigorous analysis of facts and behind-thescenes-aims of the different actors involved – that the customs union was not an economic plan that failed for economic motives but a political project which failed for political reasons. This point is soon highlighted in the first chapter, where the author shows how heavily instrumental the project was since the very moment of its conception, on both sides. France wanted to build a ninety-million-people Latin bloc that might be intermediate between West and East – needless to specify where the main pole was supposed to be. Rome meant to use the friendship with France interalia as a message directed to Washington, showing that Italy was worthy of US aid and also able to help herself (p. 36). The two partners planned to use each other for objects which were not necessarily coincident. Nevertheless, in December 1947 – when the first important report on the project was drafted by a mixed Commission – optimism reigned. But if Umberto Grazzi, Director of economic affairs at the Italian Foreign Ministry, had no doubts about the political implications and perspectives of the plan, the French still preferred the idea that the customs union should be gradually extended to more countries (Benelux, West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and even Great Britain) rather than rapidly transformed in depth just with Italy (pp. 43-44). In the second chapter, covering the first three months of 1948, Bagnato describes the diplomatic negotiations which led to the signing of the protocol, on 20 March. She explains all the difficulties that, being already then on the way, were bound to contribute to the eventual failure of the project, the doubts of the Italian Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza, the perplexities of Pietro Quaroni, then Italian ambassador in Paris, the American sympathetic position towards the project, the importance of the Turin journey of the French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault being so close in time to the April crucial elections in Italy. The path of single events is traced with vivid awareness of their connections with the international arena and the domestic situations, just like in the third chapter, which analyses the diplomatic, cultural, and economic implications of the project up to the signature of the customs union treaty, on 26 March 1949. The author stresses the importance of the Cannes meeting in December 1948, even if describing it as a moment of reciprocal incertitude and consciousness of impasse, and points out that complaints and worries began to be expressed especially in France, during that period, by the press and mostly, of course, by the industrial sectors which could sense then menace of Italian competition. The fourth chapter is devoted to hesitations and polemics which dominated the period till March 1950. Here Bagnato underlines more and more the political core of the project,
Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 103 reminding that Rome was then interested in French favour as far as two major points were at stake – the colonial question and the Italian participation in the Atlantic Pact. The French ambassador in Rome, Jacques Fouques Duparc, wrote in June 1949 that the protocol had become the “corner-stone” of French-Italian relations, not only economically but tout court. Which was true. But the gradual deepening of complaints against and worries about the plan was also true. As Quaroni wrote to Sforza in July 1949, the customs union had been since the beginning a political move, and just since the beginning its economic implications had been rather fragile (p. 184 ff.). Moreover, other cards should also be considered within the Italian game. For instance, the relations with the German and American interlocutors might either work as in se aims, especially with Washington of course, or means of pressure on France in order to reinforce bilateral connections. In 1950, Italian and French perspectives were radically changed by the Monnet Plan. It was clear for Rome that the Paris-Bonn axis jeopardised her international action. The scenery had enormously evolved since 1947. Huge international organisms had been created – the OECD, the Council of Europe, the Atlantic Pact – and French-Italian contacts within them were bound to gain more political importance than bilateral projects. Previously political objects would gradually fade during the following years, pressed by growing economic oppositions. To tell the truth, there was still some room for bilateral advantages, as Bagnato brilliantly points out (p. 221). In fact, Paris needed Rome in the difficult confrontation with Bonn and should symmetrically avoid an excessive strengthening of German-Italian relations, which would make Bonn’s position potentially predominant. Once again, the customs union might prove a good instrument. It was not enough, of course, as was already clear at the Santa Margherita Conference in February 1951, and more and more evident during the period till 1955 (described in the figuratively-titled chapter “a slow euthanasia”), when Italy’s Europeanism could not but consider bilateral union as a project of the past and French interests focused on the entente with Bonn. Bagnato, now at her second book, effectively uses her sources (French, Italian, and American archives, a wide range of published documents, more than a hundred books and essays, thirty periodicals) in order to build a very pleasantly-readable text where all variables – mainly political aims, economic necessities, and public opinion dynamics – are correctly considered in their interrelations. This demonstrates once more how interesting and scientifically useful the study of a failure may prove, provided a scholar is professionally so well-prepared as to investigate properly the consequences a project has anyway produced on the international background, also in terms of “learnt lessons”, future realisations, and successes. A vivid style, acutely-outlined characters (in particular Quaroni and Sforza), and a subtle analysis of the press are among the merits of a book which confirms the author’s strong methodological background and ability of exploring interesting “black holes” in the windings of international history. Massimiliano Guderzo University of Florence Eric ROUSSEL. – Jean Monnet 1888-1979. Paris, Fayard, 1996, 1004 p. ISBN 2-213-03153-3. 198,00 FF. This major thousand page biography of the icon of integration by a Le Figaro littéraire critic reads like an official history. The author makes no real attempt to view his subject in historical perspective. The story is told as if it could tell itself. Organized episodically into thirty one chapters, the book lacks structure, as do, generally, the chapters themselves. Roussel often introduces whole documents – letters, position papers, even oral histories – into the
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Integrating Europe or Ending the Co
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Page 53 and 54: Cold War Threats 51 Cold War Threat
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Page 61 and 62: Cold War Threats 59 could be immune
Page 63 and 64: Cold War Threats 61 tional organiza
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Page 67 and 68: Cold War Threats 65 IV The story of
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