Suwerenność państwa w koncepcji integracyjnej Alcide De Gasperiego

• Authors: Andrzej Madeja

Title variants

EN

State’s Sovereignty in the Integration Concept of Alcide De Gasperi

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

Alcide de Gasperi (1881–1954) represented the most expedient approach to the problem of integration. As a result, from among all the European Founding Fathers it was he who presented the least theoretically refined political vision. He should be recognised as a neo-Thomist who wanted to restore a lost unity of the Christian nations. Europe without wars did not mean actual peace for him. States had to establish a close cooperation. They were expected to limit their sovereignty and combine its attributes. It led to the settingup of a new kind of organization, i.e. ‘a community’. The idea of transferring ‘sovereign rights’ to international institutions (coined by Jean Monnet) was not adopted by De Gasperi. Thereby ‘a community’ was formed by the member states, which at most suffered and tolerated actions performed by it in precisely determined scopes of activity. Hence De Gasperi’s vision was the most conservative from all those presented by the Fathers. As a sworn democrat, he accentuated the importance of the community’s democratic legitimacy. This explains his opinion on the crucial role of the Assembly in the institutional scheme of the community. The Assembly provided a ‘political momentum’ and political control over various structures operating in the two areas of ‘high politics’: defence and foreign policy. It was thanks to De Gasperi’s initiative that the significant article 38 was added to the European Defence Community Treaty. By virtue of this article, the signatories of the Treaty took a solemn commitment to establish a political community grounded on two classic constitutional ideas: division of powers and bicameral parliament. Nevertheless, a unity of the European nations, which all De Gasperi’s efforts served to bring about, should be acknowledged as a model of confederacy.

Keywords

EN

Alcide De Gasperi; history of european integration; European Union; sovereignty

• Publisher: Centre for Europe, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Studia Europejskie-Studies in European Affairs
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 4
• Pages: s.9-30

Contributors

author

Andrzej Madeja

• Wydział Prawa i Administracji Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu