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The European Coal and Steel Community wasn't meant to be a political federation, as the name shows. Nor was the European Economic Community to give it its full name.

The concept of the ECSC/EEC/EU as a political federation was always a goal of some small number of federalists (mostly in the beginning communists who were imprisoned on Ventotene during the war), but they didn't have any support for that from the people of Europe themselves, which is why the history of the EU is full of the people building it saying explicitly that they have to lie about their true intentions and can only expand its powers during a crisis.

Certainly there was absolutely no intent anywhere immediately after WW2 to create a political federation. Far from it.



Yes, Jean Monnet, pretty much the founding father of the EU, said this in 1943

“There will be no peace in Europe if the States are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty, with all that that entails in terms of prestige politics and economic protectionism. The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the prosperity that modern conditions make possible and consequently necessary. Prosperity for the States of Europe and the social developments that must go with it will only be possible if they form a federation or a "European entity" that makes them into a common economic unit.”

Federation was always the goal and it was in direct response to WWII.




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