Abstract
European integration has been promoted, shaped and criticised by a variety of actors in different frameworks since 1945. Non-state actors such as employers’ associations became involved in this process very early on and, contrary to the widespread assumption in political science, created or revived transnational business associations in order to debate and shape the development of European integration from the second half of the 1940s. One of these platforms was the Council of European Industrial Federations (CEIF), which was founded in 1949 and consisted of representatives of all the national peak employers’ associations from the member states of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). It officially advised the OEEC and represented European industry. The article analyses transnational business associations’ conflictual engagement with European integration and ‘Europe’ on the basis of the CEIF's Europeanisation process in the 1950s. It argues that contestation acted as a main driver of Europeanisation and that the early period of European integration must be understood as one of fights over different ‘Europes’. However, it also shows that ‘Europe’ must be understood as a fluid category that was used in various ways and imbued with a range of meanings by economic actors in different circumstances.
Keywords
In May 1949, the presidents of 11 European national employers’ associations met to form the Council of European Industrial Federations (CEIF). 1 At first glance, there was hardly anything special about this new association, given the rather widespread establishment of European business organisations in the post-war period to respond to the uncertainty over future economic developments in Europe. Among those organisations were the de facto relaunched International Chamber of Commerce (ICC, 1947) 2 , the European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC, 1946) 3 , the European Committee for Economic and Social Progress (CEPES, 1952) 4 , and the Union of Industrial Employers’ Confederations of Europe (UNICE), which was founded in 1952 within the institutional framework of the CEIF. 5 However, the CEIF differed in three respects. First, from February 1950 it was recognised as the official economic advisor to the OEEC, which put economic integration and cooperation – the main objectives of the OEEC – at the top of the CEIF's agenda from the outset. 6 Second, it had a comparatively broad membership, consisting of high-ranking representatives from all the national peak employers’ associations of the OEEC countries 7 (in contrast, ELEC's members were made up of political, economic and intellectual elites 8 ). And third, it attempted to act as a mouthpiece for European industry in all European economic questions. 9 These unique characteristics – its membership, its self-image as a representative of European industry, and its status as an official OEEC advisor – produced conflicts over European integration once competing institutional settings for organising European economic affairs emerged.
This article analyses the contested nature of transnational business associations’ engagements with European integration and ‘Europe’ on the basis of the CEIF's Europeanisation process during three important integration projects of the 1950s – the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the plans for a European Free Trade Area – and the creation of the ‘Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD’ (Organisation for European Cooperation and Development) in 1962. 10 In accordance with Clara Frysztacka, the article re-frames processes of Europeanisation, conceiving of them mainly as ‘products and producers of crises, conflicts, contingent constellations and multiple directions of development’. 11 From this perspective, it counters the common political science understanding of Europeanisation (as the adaptation of the political and legal procedures of nation states to the developments of the European Union 12 ) by shifting the focus towards non-state actors and by arguing that contestation was a main driver of Europeanisation in transnational business associations in the 1950s. Literature has until now hardly focussed on conflictual Europeanisation processes, ignoring the fact that the early period of European integration was characterised by fights over different ‘Europes’. 13
Those fights were intrinsically linked to national considerations which clashed on the European level. During this contested period of integration, national concerns were not simply put aside in favour of a common ‘European’ cause. Rather, member associations were willing to cooperate with each other provided that their bonds with their national governments were maintained, giving the transnational dimension of the CEIF its very own character. The article analyses the different transnational 14 interaction processes within the Council, that is, between member associations themselves and the European institutions, and shows that those interactions were shaped by different or alternative conceptions of Europe which were largely informed by national concerns. It will also demonstrate not only that the CEIF's conflictual engagement with European integration led to different or alternative Europeanisation processes within the organisation, but that ‘Europe’ must likewise be understood as a fluid category that was used by economic actors when it served their cause.
The article is divided into five parts. The first situates the CEIF within existing research on European integration, its history, and transnational business associations. Part two analyses the roots of the CEIF's conflictual Europeanisation process during the first phase of integration (the OEEC, the Schuman Plan, the creation of the ECSC, and discussions about the EEC). The third and fourth parts demonstrate that the CEIF's heterogeneous Europeanisation process led to conflicts over different ‘Europes’ during the period of the Free Trade Area and that national concerns paralysed the work of the CEIF's ‘Integration Committee’, which had originally been formed to unite its members over matters relating to European integration. The last section examines the conflicts surrounding the creation of the ‘Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD’ in 1962, revealing that ‘Europe’ as a category not only produced different Europeanisation processes but was used in the early 1960s by the members of the CEIF to defend their ‘European scope of activities and interests’ 15 against their North American counterparts.
Historiographical outline
One prominent criticism of historians and political scientists, made for instance by Eichenberger, Rollings and Schaufelbuehl, is their frequent neglect of the transnational dimensions of business associations. 16 Although a number of studies have shed light on the reactions of national peak employers’ associations to European integration and/or their Europeanisation – such as the work of Neil Rollings on British business and European integration 17 , the articles by Werner Bührer on the West German Federation of German Industry (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie) 18 , or Francesco Petrini's book on the Italian employers’ association Confindustria 19 – research on transnational business associations in the context of European integration history is rare 20 and often misses one critical point: the question of what ‘transnational’ actually means in this context. The examples of the CEIF and UNICE show that it would be superficial to view these associations as forms of transnational cooperation between non-state actors across national borders. As researchers such as Ludger Pries have emphasised, the national is an important element of any transnational relationship, and one that is not simply overcome or subordinated by transnational actors. 21 Although the Council attempted to speak with one voice on behalf of European industry, this does not automatically mean that national considerations suddenly gave way to European ones, which are difficult to define in the first place. Rather, the member federations of the CEIF used the European stage to put forward national concerns. Affiliations with national governments and domestic industrial interests and efforts to use Europe for divergent goals produced different Europeanisation processes in transnational business associations. In order to fully understand the internal dynamics of these organisations’ engagements with European integration, the interaction between national and transnational considerations must be taken into account.
One important contribution to research on transnational business associations, and simultaneously the first in-depth study of the CEIF, is an article by Matthias Kipping and Neil Rollings. Their main finding is that European integration in its early phase was not a purely intergovernmental process negotiated between nation states but was also discussed and shaped in important ways by institutionalised federations such as the CEIF. 22 They furthermore emphasise the importance of the CEIF as a forum for informal multilateral exchange and trust-building which also served as an arena for discussions on ‘the nature of European integration’ 23 . What this study however conceals is the conflictual nature of transnational business associations’ engagement with integration.
This aspect has been picked up by recent research. Eichenberger, Rollings and Schaufelbuehl, for instance, conceive of business associations as ‘a battlefield on which opposed interests and political views compete to speak in the name of the business community’, 24 while Yohann Morival analyses how different European projects influenced UNICE, suggests that such projects challenged the unity of European business associations, and explores how European associations tried to define their own scope of activity (European versus international). 25 Morival argues against researchers, such as Sylvain Laurens and Cornelia Woll, who regard reverse lobbying – the European Commission's efforts to integrate industrial interest groups into the trade policy-making process in order to legitimise its actions – as a major factor behind the creation of European employers’ associations. 26 Instead, he emphasises the conflictual dynamics of different visions of Europe constructed in European national employers’ associations. However, Morival overlooks two observations that this article tries to shed light on. First, the CEIF can to a certain extent be viewed as a good example of reverse lobbying because its legitimacy stemmed from its function as an advisor to the OEEC – an institutionalised relationship that benefited both organisations. Second, this relationship influenced the CEIF's conflicts over European integration in terms of whether it should pursue integration through the OEEC (preserving its own legitimacy) or shift its focus towards the ECSC/EEC. Most importantly, these considerations were influenced by the national concerns and background of the CEIF's member federations. This struggle became particularly visible during the Free Trade Area period, when two conflicting groups – that is, two different sets of ideas driving Europeanisation processes – emerged within the CEIF. Legitimacy was, however, also a major concern during the reorganisation of the OEEC into the OECD.
Underlying all these points is the fact that several integration projects co-existed in the 1950s and 1960s. As Kiran Klaus Patel has stressed, by the 1950s – before the EEC was discussed as a possible framework for integration – there existed a considerable number of European and international institutions which contemporary actors could choose to engage with. 27 The OEEC was one of them. Founded in 1948 to monitor Marshall Plan aid, it was reorganised in 1961 into the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, extending its membership to the US and Canada. 28 The OEEC was organised intergovernmentally, leaving most of its powers in the hands of its member states, and it promoted a free market in Europe. 29 Its main areas of work between 1948 and 1961 were reconstruction, the liberalisation of payments and trade, and the establishment of and work on the European Productivity Agency, all with the aim of fostering European integration, transatlantic cooperation and the regeneration of Europe. 30 The CEIF not only directly engaged with this work but also regarded the OEEC, at least until the mid-1950s, as a better alternative to the ECSC/EEC. Transnational business associations worked towards multiple ‘Europes’, because Europeanisation was not a uniform process, but rather a contested one.
(Nearly) united against ECSC integration
The CEIF was formed in 1949 on French initiative. 31 It is important to situate its founding correctly: archival material suggests that the CEIF was formed independently of the OEEC's request for an economic advisor as a forum for European industrialists to discuss common problems. 32 One such problem was European integration, which the CEIF sometimes discussed jointly at meetings with other organisations such as ELEC – in some cases facilitated by CEIF members’ own links with those organisations. 33 However, during the CEIF's first meeting it decided to establish contacts with the OEEC, which had requested the establishment of a consultative body, and in February 1950 the OEEC recognised the CEIF as its official economic advisor. 34 In the same year, the CEIF decided to engage with the full range of problems faced by European industrialists, regardless of the OEEC's demands, and to represent their interests to all executive and quasi-executive bodies. 35 The CEIF was thus formed independently as a European employers’ association and legitimised its existence and its role as a representative of all European (meaning in this case OEEC) industrial interests on the basis of its status as an advisory body. This was important at a time when “European” was defined as an area of specific activities’ and ‘the meanings of “European” and “international” were starting to be differentiated’. 36 In this context, the CEIF made sure to position itself as the main European employers’ association. Hence, Kipping and Rollings are correct in highlighting that during the 1950s ‘there was no other body like the CEIF in Western Europe’, because other existing organisations representing industry were either sector-specific, limited in scope or dominated by special constituencies. 37
Two additional factors influenced the CEIF's decision to become closely affiliated to the OEEC. First, for many industrialists, the OEEC represented the most obvious or promising framework for European integration during the early stages of this process. The Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie in particular was full of praise for the OEEC. 38 West German business associations valued the OEEC mainly for its broad geographical scope and its intergovernmental decision-making structures, which offered beneficial conditions to the Federal Republic's export-oriented economy. 39 A direct channel of influence was therefore certainly attractive to both the CEIF and the Bundesverband. 40 Second, and following from this, in the first half of the 1950s many CEIF members rejected the ECSC/EEC and supported the OEEC – two contrasting models of European integration.
The discussions among CEIF members on the ECSC make this particularly clear. Criticism was mainly directed against the High Authority – the ECSC's supranational European executive body. It was feared that industrialists would not be represented among the High Authority's staff, leaving them without any direct means of influencing its work. 41 For example, the Italian member of the CEIF, Quinto Quintieri 42 , wanted alternative ideas to and possible improvements on the Schuman Plan to be discussed in Council meetings. 43 The desire to be represented and to influence the work of the High Authority stemmed from a general fear that it could be used as a dirigiste instrument to make economic planning in a supranational framework the new dominant economic principle in Europe. 44 This stood contrary not only to the aims of the OEEC, which sought to foster a liberal European free market, but also to the interests of most European industrialists, especially those in West Germany. 45
The speech given by Louis Cornil, Managing Director of the Federation of Belgian Industries and member of the CEIF, on the Schuman Plan during the Conference of Directors of the Council in June 1951 is a prime example of this scepticism, which was voiced by many industrialists of the six EEC countries. 46 He criticised the far-reaching powers of the High Authority, which was interfering in the foreign policy of nation states, and he expressed concern that restrictive economic planning would be extended to other industrial sectors, as envisioned in the Schuman Plan. 47 On the first point, he stressed that the CEIF had made considerable efforts to revoke the powers given to the High Authority. 48 A solution to his second point was the fostering of alternatives by bringing about integration without transferring all powers to a ‘despotic High Authority’. 49 With this in mind, Cornil considered the OEEC the most suitable organisation to promote integration, arguing that it should gradually pave the way for integration by removing obstacles to the flow of goods and services, thus bringing about economic integration in different sectors. 50
Cornil's critique is interesting in three ways. First, as an alternative to ECSC integration, he favoured the broader framework of the OEEC, in which a slow adaptation of various industrial sectors was possible. Second, the CEIF had apparently actively tried to reduce the powers of the High Authority. Finally, Cornil regarded the CEIF as a ‘corrective’ to integration efforts outside the OEEC framework.
In sharp contrast to this, the president of the CEIF and of the French employers’ association Conseil National du Patronat Français, Georges Villiers, suggested in September 1952 that the CEIF be developed into a separate platform from the OEEC – a forum where ideas and plans for European integration could be debated and shaped into an economic policy that served industrialists interests. He wanted the CEIF to ‘be a sort of Round Table, a meeting place where any questions could be discussed’. 51
The timing of Villiers’ suggestion is striking. In the same month, the Union of Industries of the Six Countries of the European Community 52 , which represented the industrial interests of the six ECSC countries, was founded within the framework of the CEIF as a round table which offered non-members the opportunity to stay informed of its work. 53 The six representative federations of the ECSC countries had lobbied the CEIF for a committee of this kind since the Schuman Plan (1950). The fact that it was only set up in 1952 was mainly due to the opposition of the British, Danish and Swedish CEIF members, who did not want to risk weakening the organisation's unity 54 – or, in other words, who were afraid of losing their influence within the Council. Morival suggests that the Union of the Six, as it was called by the CEIF before it was re-established as UNICE, did not develop into an autonomous organisation before 1958 primarily because it struggled to justify its usefulness, and as a result it was forced to put its activities on hold in 1956. 55 However, it must be pointed out that the Union of the Six continued to hold meetings within the CEIF despite being put into hibernation in 1956 56 and that these meetings, however irregular, contributed to the formation of blocs from 1952, each with different conceptions of Europe. The extent of the resulting conflicts became fully visible during the debate on the Free Trade Area.
Two important turning points can thus be identified in 1952. First, the creation of the Union of the Six marked the beginning of different Europeanisation processes within the Council, and hence the beginning of a contest over different ‘Europes’, shaped by different national interests. Second, with the creation of the ECSC it became apparent that some CEIF members (including Villiers) did not think the OEEC would develop into the main future framework for integration. However, Villiers’ proposal for the CEIF to work separately from the OEEC was not put into practice, indicating that most members were not willing to sacrifice the legitimacy provided by the OEEC. Furthermore, the fact that the CEIF was unable to respond unanimously to the 1956 plans for the creation of the EEC (members agreed to reject Euratom's future supranational institutions but differed on whether to favour the Common Market 57 ) indicates that in the early phase of European integration the CEIF was unsure whether to pursue integration via the OEEC or shift its focus towards the institutions of the ECSC/EEC. Officially, it took the safe route of remaining within the OEEC, but internally the first cracks began to appear with the foundation of the Union of the Six.
The fight over different ‘Europes’
The conflict between CEIF members escalated with the plans for a European Free Trade Area (FTA), which fundamentally changed the debate taking place within the CEIF. The idea for an FTA 58 proposed by the United Kingdom in 1956 – not to be confused with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) which came into effect in 1960 as a result of the breakdown of FTA negotiations – marked a turning point, in that negotiations were held at the level of the OEEC and thus involved all industries represented by the OEEC. The situation was complicated by the fact that the FTA plans coincided with the signing of the Treaty of Rome (1957), which established Euratom and the EEC. The challenge for governments was to integrate these newly formed institutions into an OEEC-wide FTA, preferably shortly after the Treaty of Rome came into effect on 1 January 1958. However, the challenge for the CEIF was to offer expertise to the OEEC and simultaneously represent a common position on behalf of European industry, which was divided on the question of which integration project it actually favoured and therefore which future Europe it sought to bring about. The CEIF's task, therefore, was to come to a consensus and to represent that consensus to all official bodies by significantly increasing its lobbying activities. Its advisory position offered the prime platform for this. However, as will be shown, heterogeneous Europeanisation processes that began in 1952 led to conflicts among CEIF members and paralysed the organisation during an important time for European integration.
What made the period of the FTA negotiations so crucial was that a supranational Europe took precedence over the idea of ‘Greater Europe’ inscribed in the FTA. As Laurent Warlouzet has argued, the FTA project was by no means bound to fail and might have replaced the EEC as the principle institution for European cooperation. 59 The importance of this period was also recognised by national employers’ associations such as the West German Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, which noted in its annual report that the FTA had been the focus of nearly all international industrial discussions between 1957 and 1958. The Bundesverband viewed it as a stabilising factor and an effective instrument of peace in a united Europe anchored in an Atlantic community. 60
However, not all industrialists were in favour of the FTA due to its implications for their national industries. In September 1957, for instance, the French employers’ association Conseil National du Patronat Français distributed a hostile communiqué to all the relevant French industrial public authorities in which the organisation rejected the FTA because of its incompatibility with the Common Market and its ‘disastrous consequences’ for the French economy. 61 This provoked scepticism within European industry and was also discussed at a CEIF meeting. 62 Additionally, French government plans to restructure and rename the FTA, in the process allowing only the other five Common Market countries to see the communiqué, raised suspicion among CEIF members who did not belong to the future EEC. 63 According to Fritz Berg (West German member and CEIF president), the French employers’ association was not only involved in these plans but also tried to persuade the other five Common Market industrial federations to support them. 64 This suggests not only clear bloc-building activities on the French side, but also that France had taken a national decision not to pursue integration via the OEEC, with French CEIF members also representing this position in the Council.
The meetings of the Union of the Six were another area of conflict. The Union discussed both integration questions (the FTA and the Common Market) at its meetings but had apparently tried to exclude non-members of the Common Market by sending out invitations too late. 65 In retrospect, the Council's decision to ‘outsource’ the Union of the Six by giving it round table status, instead of establishing a European integration committee including all OEEC member federations, proved to be a mistake during the FTA period. The actions of the French employers’ association and the practices of the Union of the Six reveal that national interests clearly clashed within the CEIF when it came to the question of which ‘Europe’ to support. This became even clearer in early 1958 when the British and Scandinavian members of the CEIF 66 staged an ‘intrigue’ 67 through which the British in particular aimed to show the other five Union of the Six members the possible consequences of their commitment to France. 68
British and Swedish representatives arranged a ‘counter-meeting’ 69 with the Scandinavian countries, Austria, Portugal and Switzerland in March 1958, similar to those regularly held by the Union of the Six. A letter from Peter Tennant (the British representative) to Wilhelm Paues (the Swedish delegate) implies that the idea originally stemmed from a discussion between the two of them. 70 Like Paues, Tennant felt that something ‘has to be done to unlock the present log-jam’ and suggested that the plan ‘might raise the eyebrows of the “Six” and make them more amenable to meeting us’. 71 He also raised the question of the format of the counter-meeting – whether to arrange it under the aegis of the CEIF like the gatherings of the Union of the Six or to meet privately and then arrange a get-together in the CEIF to which observers would be invited in such a manner that they would hardly be able to attend. He added that ‘this is rather the sort of ploy I think we have got to play in order to bring our friends in the “Six” to the right frame of mind for talking over all these issues in a practical way […]’. 72 They agreed to meet on 15 and 16 March to discuss the consequences of a possible breakdown of the FTA negotiations and the common difficulties they had encountered. 73
The CEIF's General Assembly took place on 17 and 18 March, and a reaction to the ‘intrigue’ was expected. According to Tennant, the ‘atmosphere was charged’ 74 . Léon Bekaert (Belgian CEIF member and president of the Union of the Six) reacted first by inviting the other seven CEIF member federations to join the Union's discussions in its expert commission for the FTA. But ‘he and his friends were discomforted to find that this awkward and flat footed ultimatum was treated by us with offhanded ridicule and not with the grateful enthusiasm to be expected of outsiders being offered the privilege of dining rights in the servants hall’. 75 This statement shows how deep the rift between European industrialists was by 1958. The ensuing discussion then revealed the hardening of attitudes: while the British delegate, Sir Hugh Beaver 76 , questioned the honesty of the Common Market industries’ commitment to the FTA, others, such as the Swiss representatives, suggested that the FTA should be given greater priority than the EEC and feared that European integration efforts were actually leading to the disintegration of Europe. 77 The president of the Council and FTA enthusiast Fritz Berg, in turn, tried to mediate by assuring both sides that European industry was aiming to establish a FTA and that all the Common Market countries wanted to cooperate within such a framework. He concluded that it would have been better to discuss the European market in the CEIF two years earlier, but that the decision had been made not to and governments had moved on without them. He urged his colleagues to cooperate and to put forward proposals to their governments on behalf of the 17 rather than the Six. 78 Berg also addressed two important failures of the CEIF: its members had avoided a thorough discussion on how a common European market could be established; and as a result, they had failed to influence this development, thereby leaving the task to the Union of the Six and to national employers’ associations. This episode led to the establishment of the ‘Integration Committee’ in May 1958 which aimed to unite the two blocs within the CEIF and to devote greater effort to discussing FTA and Common Market questions together. 79
Two conclusions can be drawn from this episode. First, in the second half of the 1950s, CEIF members were forced to choose between concrete integration projects, with the open resistance of the French employers’ association to integration via the OEEC and the Federation of German Industry's adherence to the OEEC serving as examples of different choices. Second, national concerns clashed on the European level, fuelling CEIF debates over different ‘Europes’ and bringing to light the various Europeanisation processes that began in the early 1950s.
Re-united for good? The CEIF's Integration Committee
The establishment of the Integration Committee – the CEIF's first forum dedicated to integration questions – can be viewed as an attempt not only to unite European industry but also to recover some of the legitimacy it had lost between 1956 and the first months of 1958. However, differing views on the objectives and function of the Committee, as well as on the right strategy with which to respond to the upcoming intergovernmental FTA negotiations in October 1958, paralysed its work from the beginning.
It had been agreed in April 1958 that a Steering Committee would examine 11 problems of interest to industrial federations, of which six would be covered by working parties (including liberalisation and agriculture). 80 This suggestion was approved at the General Council meeting in May, and the Swedish representative Axel Iveroth was elected as the first chairman of the Integration Committee. 81 Each country was invited to appoint a representative, and the Secretary of the Union of the Six was appointed as a permanent member. 82 Its official name was the ‘General Committee for the study of the problems posed by the association with the Common Market of the other OEEC countries’, but internally it was referred to as the ‘Iveroth’ or ‘Integration Committee’. Its task was to analyse what difficulties the member industries faced in the European market, what solutions could be found to meet them, and what useful proposals they might be able to develop. In order to achieve this, Iveroth made clear in May that adequate time for consideration was necessary, as well as a concrete programme to quickly produce shared views on issues which could influence FTA negotiations. 83 He warned: ‘If we want to succeed and finish in so good time that it is useful as a contribution to finding a solution of the European Market problems [sic], we shall have to devote a considerable time to this job. The meetings of our committee therefore have to be given top priority […]’. 84 This plea was one of the main reasons why the work of the Committee nearly came to a standstill in 1958.
After a productive two-day meeting in June 85 and another in July 86 , the work of the Committee ground to a halt in September and October. Instead of engaging in the ongoing debate, its members preferred to wait and see, anticipating concrete results at the governmental/OEEC level in spite of Iveroth's plea for a meeting in October to discuss a possible strategy for European industrialists before the beginning of negotiations. 87 In a letter to Sir Norman Kipping (Director-General of the Federation of British Industries), he raised the prospect of ‘a serious loss of prestige for the CEIF and for private industry as a whole’ if the CEIF were to give up its work every time governments went to work. The influence of industry in an FTA would be considerably weakened. 88 However, Kipping disagreed with this view, arguing that the CEIF should not simply duplicate government action but closely observe events, taking up matters for which governments were not able to find solutions. 89 One of the reasons for this reasoning was the fact that the Federation of British Industries had barely been consulted by British government officials during the FTA negotiations and was involved only in the final stages to legitimize decisions already made by the government. 90 Iveroth eventually scheduled a meeting for November. Members clearly differed not only in their view on the right strategy to influence negotiations but also apparently on the aims and powers of the Committee itself, leading Iveroth to seriously question its purpose.
Iveroth expressed these worries in a letter to Fritz Berg in late October. He emphasised the importance of joint discussions to ‘foster the growth of a common spirit and outlook’ among European industrialists. 91 Other members, however, seemed to be under the impression that the Committee should help governments out of stagnation in their talks. Instead of simply taking note of the decisions made by governments, Iveroth wanted the CEIF's work to be forward-looking, and for there to be a common policy that would allow the Council to advocate certain positions when they appeared on government agendas. 92 He wanted the CEIF to be a European (and not necessarily OEEC-affiliated) interest group capable of influencing the integration process through expert discussion. This is reminiscent of Villiers’ 1952 proposal. However, the situation in late 1958 differed from that in 1952 in one important respect: instead of two main integration frameworks (the ECSC and OEEC), there were now four possible routes – the FTA, OEEC, EEC and EFTA. If the FTA was to fail, the CEIF's close affiliation to the OEEC would be an obstacle rather than a source of legitimacy.
After FTA negotiations broke down due to France's refusal to participate in them any further 93 , the General Assembly agreed in January 1959 to keep the Committee alive in order to discuss integration problems. 94 Its activities were reduced in the first half of 1959, but picked up speed again by the end of the year. 95 Iveroth's criticism of European industrial behaviour during the FTA period highlights one problem already mentioned: industrialists had insisted on national interests and had not tried ‘sufficiently hard to co-ordinate [their] efforts, to cut out the cant and get down to the hard facts of international economic life’. 96
To sum up the argument of the last two sections: the speed of integration, as well as conflicts over exclusion and the right strategies to influence negotiations, led to fights over Europe and thus to different Europeanisation processes within the CEIF. This ultimately paralysed the CEIF's work during a crucial period for the future development of European integration and prevented it from becoming a strong pressure group throughout its subsequent existence. However, one other important event changed the character of the CEIF in the long term and revealed how ‘Europe’ as a category was repurposed by the CEIF in the early 1960s.
Becoming independent: The reorganisation of the OEEC and the BIAC
In 1961, the OEEC was replaced by the OECD, which extended its membership to the United States and Canada and subsequently developed into a global organisation. 97 It also proposed the formation of advisory committees to represent industry and trade unions. Because 18 of the countries affiliated with the OECD were already members of the CEIF, the Council decided to consult with Canadian and US organisations. In January 1961, Marcus Wallenberg (president of the CEIF and Swedish member), Cyril Harrison (president of the Federation of British Industries) and Fritz Berg (president of the Federation of German Industry) travelled to New York for a joint meeting. Together they managed to draft the constitution for the ‘Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD’ (BIAC), reaching a final agreement at a meeting held on 9 March 1962 in Paris. 98 However, in his statement to the Grand Council of the Federation of British Industries on 14 March, Sir Norman Kipping emphasised that the CEIF still had wider functions as a representative of business and industry than the BIAC, ‘for although it was originally formed for the representation of industry to the OEEC, it subsequently adopted a system of “round tables” for mutual study between the members of a variety of questions of mutual interest; this has proved useful’. 99
Kipping addressed two important aspects that subsequently shaped the debate of the General Council of the CEIF in April 1962, shortly after the BIAC had been recognised by the OECD as its official advisor organisation. On the one hand, the CEIF had been formed inter alia to advise the OEEC, so with its replacement by the OECD and the creation of the BIAC, it lost one of its major objectives and, as a result, its legitimacy. On the other, from 1960, when plans for the reorganisation of the OEEC were initiated, the CEIF was used as a platform where Common Market, EFTA and OEEC industrialists could meet and discuss either the problems arising from this integration on three fronts or ideas on how the process could be reshaped. These opportunities for exchange were valued by CEIF members.
The General Council debate in April 1962 was characterised by two intertwined concerns: the future of the CEIF and its relationship to the BIAC. However, the major motive was to demarcate European from North American interests. The impression that their stable relationship with each other – their ‘team’ 100 , as René Arnaud (Secretary General and French representative of the CEIF) put it – had been suddenly challenged by the inclusion of US and Canadian industrialists in the BIAC dominated the discussion. Morival has emphasised in this context that the late 1940s were important for the formation of a ‘European’ (in opposition to an ‘international’) label of employers’ organisations. 101 For the CEIF, which labelled itself as European very early on, the creation of the BIAC in the early 1960s abruptly threatened this distinctive status.
At the General Council meeting, René Arnaud read out a letter dated 30 March 1962 that the president of the CEIF, Marcus Wallenberg, had written to the chairman of the Board of the National Association of Manufacturers (US), Milton Lightner. Wallenberg wanted to draw attention to it because the Americans had ‘literally described the Europeans as “ganging up” against them’. 102 The letter suggested that the European and US/Canadian federations should meet separately to decide on a common position concerning the first three items which were to be discussed at a BIAC meeting (balance of payments, aid to under-developed countries and restrictive business practices) and that every member organisation should then send an expert to Paris to contribute to the joint draft of decisions. However, Lightner, fearing that US/Canadian and European positions would be at odds with each other, was not enamoured of this idea. Wallenberg took the view that the Americans could not forbid the CEIF from meeting and discuss matters, as there were ‘certain purely European questions’ that would be better to discuss within the CEIF, and so the Council should also continue its work. 103
The Italian member and representative of Confindustria, Alighiero de Micheli, agreed with Wallenberg but feared a breakdown of relations between European industrialists if they could not agree on a common position vis-á-vis the Americans. He noted that ‘the important point was not to allow the European solidarity created in the CEIF over the last thirteen years to be broken up by the establishment of the new organisation’. 104 René Arnaud was even more straightforward in expressing his dissatisfaction with the USA and Canada entering the European stage. He was convinced that the ‘Americans were afraid of Europe’ and suspicious of the CEIF. 105 In his view, the simplest solution would have been to let the Americans and Canadians join the Council because of its established links with the OEEC, but they had opposed this and instead insisted on a separate body from the CEIF. ‘It appeared that they had feared, coming to join such a body, that they would find themselves among people who had been working together for twelve years and who consequently would be a team. They would be in the position of poor relations, in an inferior position’. 106
Participants in the meeting also tried both to develop a strategy that would allow the CEIF to remain in existence without interfering with the work of the BIAC and to simultaneously find a way to deal with the Americans. Because the BIAC had been officially recognised by the OECD as its advisory organisation, matters under its remit should no longer officially be discussed in the CEIF. However, the General Assembly debate revealed that, although they had agreed on a diplomatic strategy, the CEIF members were ready to work behind the backs of the Americans and Canadians – mainly because they wanted to use the CEIF as a place for forming common opinions before meeting in the BIAC, where many of the CEIF's members were also represented. 107 The solution: by working on a ‘private basis’ through unofficial meetings, the Council could also include OECD matters on its agenda. 108 Although some members, such as the Belgians, were unsure what else the CEIF could discuss beyond OEEC/OECD matters 109 , they agreed to continue the organisation's work. But the question of ‘how’ was still unresolved. The British CEIF representative Peter Tennant favoured an idea which developed over time into a custom: to maintain the CEIF as a European industrial organisation that primarily facilitated exchange over the developments of European integration, but which worked separately from the BIAC, the OECD and UNICE. 110
One important conclusion can be drawn from this debate: the CEIF's legitimacy and existence was threatened by the reorganisation of the OEEC into the OECD and the creation of a competing organisation that claimed a European sphere of activity but included North American members. ‘Europe’ was used by the CEIF to legitimise the continuation of its work. The CEIF's emphasis on its ‘European label’ and on the ties that had developed among its members shaped the Council's debates in the early 1960s and helped to distinguish it from the BIAC. This does not mean that conflicts over ‘Europe’ suddenly vanished. Rather, this episode reveals that ‘Europe’ as a category was repeatedly repurposed by economic actors.
Conclusion
The case of the CEIF has demonstrated that the 1950s and early 1960s were a crucial period in which economic actors responded to European integration by creating or reviving transnational business associations. The CEIF was focused on Europe from its very inception due to its unique character as advisor to the OEEC, but also due to its self-image as representing European business to both the OEEC and other European institutions. As this article has shown, the CEIF's critical response to the ECSC stemmed not only from a general fear of economic planning but also from grave concern at the prospect of being excluded from the decision-making process in the ECSC. Thanks to the CEIF's advisor status, the opportunities for exerting influence seemed greater through the OEEC, particularly to member associations from non-ECSC countries. In order to preserve the CEIF's legitimacy, the majority of its members decided in the first half of the 1950s to continue to pursue integration via the OEEC, though the formation of the Union of the Six in 1952 was already a source of growing conflict. Subsequently, different integration projects led to different Europeanisation processes within the Council.
The emergence of four different (possible) integration frameworks (OEEC, ECSC/EEC, FTA and EFTA) increased not only the salience of integration matters but also conflicts within the CEIF over the ‘right’ way to integrate. The FTA period made clear that the already fragile unanimous support for OEEC integration had begun to falter by 1956 and that two competing groups had formed around different ‘Europes’. The article has shown that these fights were connected to national considerations which clashed on the European level and paralysed the work of the Council during a crucial period of European integration. In this context, it has been demonstrated that Europeanisation must be perceived as a producer of conflicts and crises (Clara Frysztacka) and that contestation acted as a main driver of different Europeanisation processes. This heterogeneity in turn prevented the Council from developing into a strong European pressure group. On the other hand, the conflict over the reorganisation of the OEEC and the creation of the BIAC revealed that ‘Europe’ must be understood as a fluid category that was repeatedly repurposed by economic actors – one that served to legitimise the continuation of the CEIF's work by allowing it to claim sovereignty over European matters.
The CEIF continued its work well into the 1970s, when, perhaps ironically, its working groups and round tables were finally incorporated into the former Union of the Six (UNICE). Convinced of its possible use in the future, however, its members maintained it to be convened whenever they deemed it necessary. 111
