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Advances in Politics and Economic 
ISSN 2576-1382 (Print) ISSN 2576-1390 (Online) 

Vol. 4, No. 1, 2021 
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1 
 

Original Paper 

Striking Similarities: The Origins of the European Economic 

Community 

David Blake1* 
1 University of London, United Kingdom 
* David Blake, University of London, United Kingdom  

 

Received: November 16, 2019   Accepted: December 28, 2020   Online Published: January 4, 2021 

doi:10.22158/ape.v4n1p1          URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ape.v4n1p1 

 

Abstract 

A Plan for a European Economic Community was developed at the University of Berlin in 1942. There 

are striking similarities with the European Economic Community that was introduced in 1957—and 

which became the foundation stone of the European Union. Particularly striking is the innate hostility 

both to liberal economic values and to democracy—a hostility that permeates the EU to this very day. 

Keywords 

Origins of the European Economic Community, University of Berlin 1942, European Union 

JEL codes 

F45, F55, N14, N24, N34, N44 

 

1. Introduction 

A Plan for a European Economic Community was first proposed in 1942. At its heart is a Customs Union 

and a Single Market. The Plan covered all areas necessary for economic integration. Its ultimate aim was 

full economic and political union with state economic leadership over highly regulated private sector 

companies, but without any requirement for securing democratic consent. We compare the Plan with the 

European Economic Community introduced in 1957 and discuss how it turned out in practice. We end by 

discussing how believers in liberal economic values and democracy should respond. 

 

2. A Plan for a European Economic Community Was First Proposed in 1942 

A conference was held in 1942 at the Berlin School of Economics—part of the University of 

Berlin—on the theme of a creating a “European Economic Community”. Speakers included academics, 

government ministers and industry practitioners. A conference volume was published, Europaeische 

Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, which was subsequently translated into English. (Note 1) There is also a 



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partial translation by Edward Spalton. (Note 2) 

What is particularly interesting is that the very same term “European Economic Community” (EEC) 

was adopted by the principal Founding Fathers of the European Union, Jean Monnet and Robert 

Schuman. It is not known if they were directly aware of the 1942 Plan for a EEC. Yet there are striking 

similarities between the Plan and the EEC that they helped to establish just fifteen years later.  

The 1942 Plan is not well known, and needs to be much better known, since it has had—possibly 

subconsciously—a significant impact on both the economic philosophy underlying the EEC and the 

political thinking behind the European Union (EU) itself. This is because at its heart is a strong dislike 

of what is described variously as English/Anglo-Saxon/Anglo-American/liberal-capitalist laissez-faire 

economics and a particular distaste for the USA, with its “addiction for records. …Americans must 

always have the largest, the best, the fattest, the longest, the fastest and so on”. 

The underlying economic philosophy behind the Plan for the EEC is “state economic leadership” over 

heavily regulated private sector companies which are expected to operate as efficiently as possible 

using the latest available technologies. It differs therefore from the Soviet state planning model, where 

the vast bulk of businesses are state owned. 

Professor Dr Heinrich Hunke, President of the Publicity Council of German Industry, in the 

Introduction to the 1942 Plan, provides the following motivation for a European Economic 

Community: 

The existing failures of clarity arise in the first case around the concept of the control of the economy, 

the degree of solidarity and neighbourly support, the development of individual strengths, the concern 

over the maintenance of living standards and the question of raw material purchases from foreign 

economic areas. It is natural that each considers this according to the proportions of whatever question 

stands in the foreground of his interest. We should try in this place to establish whether a conclusive 

answer can be given. 

There can be no doubt that the concept of economic control, or rather economic leadership, is as much 

revolutionary as it is new. The fact of its establishment is more important than fate and the significance 

of European co-operation, not least because a new, unitary concept depends on it. The Anglo-Saxon 

economy is no longer classic but obsolete. It comes therefore to this: that a new ideological and 

terminological concept has arisen, which has a particular sturdy foundation of communication and 

co-operation. In particular, the following individual points should be noted: 

1) State economic leadership is no momentary crisis solution, but forms the core of the new theory and 

practice. It replaces the autonomic egotism and the automatic, self-acting laws of the Anglo-Saxon 

theory. 

2) Economic direction and control is not synonymous with a tendency towards a planned economy. It 

strives neither for the extinction of individuality nor for the administration of the economy through the 

state apparatus. 



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3) State economic leadership signifies much more the new empowerment of the originative and creative 

power of the individual grounded in the community, the creation of a uniform economic understanding 

and attitude, the allocation of decisive tasks through the political leadership and the final decision of 

the state in all questions of economic power. Apart from this, the economy is free and self-responsible. 

3. At the heart of the Plan for the European Economic Community are a Customs Union and a 

Single Market 

One key component of the 1942 Plan for a EEC is a Customs Union (Zollverein). This is important for 

helping to create “economic unity” as discussed by Walther Funk, Reichs Economics Minister and 

President of the Reich bank, in his Plan chapter The Economic Face of the New Europe: 

About a century ago, German economic unity began to be formed out of a plethora of territorial 

economies. A political unification of Germany was then unthinkable, but all the same, economic 

agreements were crowned by the achievement of the German Customs Union of 1843. This released a 

mighty growth in the economy. 

How did things look then? Anyone wanting to travel through Germany drove on bad roads, paying 

countless customs duties and bridge tolls through dozens of states. Every one of these states had its 

own sovereign territory, its own finance system, its own currency and sought, as an independent 

economy, to stand on its own feet. The responsible men of the time simply did not grasp that their large 

neighbors England and France were more economically advanced only because they had created at the 

right time a level of technology and economic activity in a sufficiently large area 

(Grossraumwirtschaft). 

Another key component is a Europe-wide Single (or Internal) Market, as Funk goes on to explain: 

If now instead of Germany we consider Europe, we come naturally, impelled by pure economics, if not 

to the same then to very similar conclusions. Once again, it is technical, economic development which 

presses unstoppably towards the formation of a great continental economic area. Today, technology 

offers such possibilities as cannot be fully realised within the bounds of a single national economy. 

The raising of railway speeds, the building of traffic networks and waterways, energy grids which 

connect the whole continent with undreamt possibilities of developing the latest technologies, above all 

through the aero plane: these have pulled the borders of all states closer to each other. Already outside 

Europe, stemming from these facts, large economic areas are rising or in active contemplation. In its 

own interest, Europe cannot remain in the backwardness of its romantic hankerings after the era of the 

mail coach. Certainly, the difficulties of European economic unification are harder than those which 

the German Customs Union had to overcome. Also the methods will be different, more complicated and 

not to be mastered fully with a customs union. In spite of that, the unification of the European economy 

will come because its time is here and now. 

…If one only considers the natural potential of our continent, it becomes apparent that Europe, in fact, 

meets all the requirements of a complete, self-sufficient economic area. 

Professor Hunke discusses the benefits from “completing the Single Market” with the help of a large 



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number of “Directives”: 

The concept of the large economic area has proved to be viable. I see no obstruction which can 

seriously stand in the way of its realization. For the formation of large economic areas follows a 

natural law of development.  

…Trade between individual states will not yet be classified as internal trade because a complete 

abolition of customs and currency controls is not immediately practicable. Nevertheless, as trade 

within the great economic in Norway, the market gardener in Holland and the Danish poultry breeder 

will need have no concern that they can dispose of their produce or have it left on their hands. They 

also need not worry that the price will fairly reward their efforts. Then they will know that production 

and sales prospects are founded and secured by inter-state treaties and that there is no more room for 

speculators and crises. The workers in the spinning mills of the Protectorate, in the chemical works of 

France and in the mines of Belgium will no longer have to fear wage cuts or unemployment. 

They can rely on this: that the European Economic Area contains further unrealised technical and 

natural possibilities in abundance and a demand for consumer goods of all kinds from masses of 

people, which will never be [fully] met. The word “Unemployment” will not be found in the European 

economic dictionary. 

…It should not go unrecognized that the system of community economic endeavour naturally requires 

on-going state Directives in a larger quantity than those to which businessmen in many European 

states were previously accustomed. The …previous operation of the internal German economy show[s] 

clearly that the state, even in the controlled economy, can and will leave to the industrialist and 

entrepreneur his original and proper field of activity. …Private enterprise remains. …The complicated 

economy of our century needs state control, but it is not able to function without the driving forces of 

entrepreneurial initiative. 

In the UK, the combination of the Customs Union and Single Market is better known as the Common 

Market. The UK joined the Common Market on 1 January 1973. 

 

4. The 1942 Plan Covered all Areas Necessary for Economic Integration 

The Plan covered all areas needed for economic integration to work effectively.  

For example, there are chapters on The European Industrial Economy (by Dr Anton Reithinger, Leader 

of the National Economy Department of IG Farben Industries AG, Berlin), The Deployment of Labour 

in Europe (by Dr Philip Beisiegel, Ministerial Director, Ministry of Labour), and European Transport 

Questions (by Gustav Koenigs, State Secretary, Berlin). Professor Hunk explains why a Europe-wide 

industrial policy is needed: “The European Economic Community has no interest in seeing potential 

and capabilities lying unused anywhere. … [But] the national spirit of the individual economies must 

not be allowed to oppose neighborly cooperation”. A particular problem at the time was rural 

over-population which led to temporary and seasonal emigration of workers. This should be dealt with 

by the economic “intensification” (or industrialization) of these areas. This would lead to the 



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“awakening of new economic demands” which would avoid the problem of “[p]ermanent emigration 

from Europe [which] is by all the laws of our time as false as it is impossible”.  

You can see immediately here the similarity with the EU’s Single Market in goods and labour, with the 

aim of creating an efficient self-sustaining internal market that maximized resource allocation in all 

parts of the EEC. While temporary and seasonal migration are accepted as “partial solutions”, 

permanent emigration would be a sign of failure of the system. It is also unnecessary, as Hunke points 

out: “The harmonization of the newly free powers of labour in the new sectors of the common 

economy can be achieved without difficulty”. 

There is also a chapter on European Agriculture by Professor Dr Emil Woermann from the University 

of Halle. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that was adopted by the EU could well have been 

drawn directly from the Plan, as Edward Spalton discovered: “I worked in the animal feed business and 

the changeover from free trade in food from all the world to the highly protectionist, minutely officially 

controlled, mind-bogglingly complicated CAP was a profound culture shock. Something so detailed 

obviously had to have an ideology behind it, but nobody could tell me what it was. It was entirely alien 

to the common-sense system we had known before. [Woermann’s] paper reveals its philosophical 

fountain head completely. The CAP, which we joined on 1 January 1973, was not just similar to, but 

exactly based on, the ideology and policy which he set out. The EEC’s biggest project andbudget item 

was squarely founded on principles and policy objectives, decided in Berlin by 1942”. The purpose of 

the CAP was to provide an assured income to farmers in rural areas, leading to an increase in prosperity 

and a reduction rural de-population. 

A common Europe-wide currency was envisaged in the chapter on European Currency Questions by Dr 

Bernhard Benning, Director of the Reich Credit Institution, Berlin. Nevertheless, it is apparent that 

“money” was regarded as a necessary evil in the Plan. The role of the common currency was to 

facilitate intra-European trade, although this was a clear second-best option compared with the 

preferred one: “In the [ideal] continental European bloc, there will be no gold. Everything will be 

settled through clearing—goods against goods”. In other words, what was preferred was a sophisticated 

barter system with clearing exchanges to match buyers and sellers. 

Funk accepted that: “It will certainly be no easy task to bring the currencies of Europe together. …But 

they can be brought into stability amongst themselves and then with currencies outside Europe. But this 

task is only possible if we first bring the European national economies into order and thereby stabilize 

the internal worth of their currencies. Then, with co-operation in trade policy, the external values can be 

brought into line”. This is now known as the Funk Plan (Note 3) and was initially proposed in 1940. 

Dr Karl Clodius, Ambassador in the German Foreign Office, discusses European Trade and Economic 

Treaties. The primary purpose of exporting, according to the Plan, was to secure raw materials not 

available in Europe, so that these could be used to increase the output of finished products which could 

then be sold in Europe and increase the welfare of European citizens. This would be arranged through a 

“framework of constructive and far-sighted economic treaties”. However, Funk had not yet decided 



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whether the procurement of overseas raw materials should be through the clearing system or by free 

currency exchange. He was very uncomfortable with the latter: “Currency movements though will 

always be subject to a certain irreducible level of state control so that no unforeseen, uncontrollable 

movement of capital can destroy the essential, planned state direction of the economy”. 

Notice the hostility to money and finance, given the risk that they cannot be completely controlled from 

the centre and so can disrupt well-laid plans. Such a view is not confined to the Berlin School of 

Economics in the 1940s. Modern-day France, for example, is also opposed to “finance capital”—as 

exemplified by François Hollande (Note 4) who, when elected President, announced that his “only real 

enemy” was the “world of finance”. Also notice the hostility to international trade: it was a necessary 

evil to pay for raw materials that were not available domestically. 

Fiscal policy is also critical. Funk again: “It is unavoidably essential to have a tight, prudent public 

expenditure policy, as in the private economy. Above all, there must be a sensible control of production 

and demand, a control over money and credit and of consumption. We will deal with all these things in 

one way so that no upheavals occur. They will not occur because we recognize in good times what must 

be done. We have everything in hand through the authoritarian means of the state to bring these things 

promptly to order. [A key role of taxation is to ensure] excessive purchasing power be avoided. On the 

other hand, we have always taken care from social grounds that the screw of taxation should not 

beturned too tightly. We wish to maintain the will to enterprise and achievement. In this matter, the 

Ministry of the Economy has always been on guard”.  

German obsession with fiscal discipline, readily apparent in the above statement, is as strong today, 

where it is known as the Black Zero (Schwarze Null) policy, i.e., ensuring fiscal balance virtually every 

year—whatever the macroeconomic state of the economy. This obsession extends to German insistence 

on EU-wide fiscal discipline. This is enforced by Germany’s refusal to allow the EU to become a 

“transfer union”. In a “transfer union”, the central government makes fiscal transfers from regions with 

internal trade surpluses to regions with internal trade deficits to ensure the economy as a whole remains 

in balance. It is essential for the effective operation of a unitary state, and many federal states, such as 

the USA, also make internal fiscal transfers to stabilise their economies. But in the federal EU, 

Germany—which has an enormous trade surplus with the other member states as a result of the uber 

smart way it arranged for the Deutschmark to convert to euros at the most favorable possible 

conversion rate—refuses to make fiscal transfers to deficit member states, such as Italy. 

 

5. The Ultimate Aim of the Plan Was Full Economic and Political Union 

The final chapter of the Plan is called The Basic Question of Europe: A Geographical Concept or a 

Political Fact. Professor Hunke argues that: “Europe is a community of living space, a single economic 

area. The desire for security from crises can no longer be achieved by independence from each other, 

but only through the common improvement of Europe’s individual national economies”. Expansion to 

cover the whole of the European continent was also part of the Plan. Hunke again: “[The Plan] should 



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underline the common destiny of the peoples of Europe and emphasise the fact that enlargement of the 

Economic Community into presently foreign lands is both possible and desirable”. A key benefit would 

be access to key raw materials, such as oil, not available within the existing economic area—again to 

reduce the dependence on international trade. 

Funk was more specific about political union being a longer-term aim: “The European peoples should 

at last be able to acknowledge that they live in a community of destiny, which in logic leads only to one 

conclusion, namely Europe-wide, continental co-operation. Previous years were not politically ripe for 

this”. 

Political union was, in Funk’s view, essential to protect Europeans from the negative consequences of 

“liberal-capitalist” market forces:  

To impress upon you this theme and to sum it up succinctly, I must saythis. The economic face of the 

new Europe… will have two essential characteristics: common endeavored economic freedom. Granted, 

this will not be that economic freedom which is embodied in capitalism and which is now nearing its 

end. …As a promise to the people of Europe, the liberal-capitalist ideal of economic freedom is lifted 

from them. Today it is sinking in misery, blood and flames. 

What were the promises of liberal economic thought? According to the liberal theory, economic life 

unfolded its greatest potential when individuals followed their own interests without restriction. The 

state can leave the harmonious development of the economy to free competition, through which the 

self-interest of every individual will, in the end, serve the good of the whole. It is believed that fully free 

trade will ensure by means of competition that each country will provide the goods which are most 

suited to its own conditions of production. According to the theory, every nation can buy on the world 

market where it is cheapest, whilst selling its own products at the lowest costs and best profits due to 

their natural conditions. Consumers can provide themselves most richly with goods, businessmen 

employ their resources unhindered and the workers seek their employment where the highest wages are 

paid. The desired state of so-called social harmony seems most surely to be achievable in this way. 

But how did it turn out in practice? 

…Without doubt however, the different individual peoples, like individual companies, did not draw the 

same advantages from this system inspire of apparently similar opportunities. The English moral 

philosophy of Hobbes and Hume, which was permeated by David Ricardo with a typical shot of Jewish 

spirit, proved in the first place to be an exceptional means of establishing and preserving British world 

domination. At the moment this system reached its peak, the English had developed their industry most. 

Theywent into the race with the largest cost advantages. Because they also possessed the largest 

merchant marine and navy in the world, they could tune in to the great circuit of world trade in such a 

way that their economic and political power grew proportionately. Every intensification of traffic in 

goods created new profits. The whole world worked in English money and the English were the bankers, 

the manufacturers, the traders, the carriers and, last not least, the policemen of the world. 

…But the debit balance of the British-capitalist era is, in fact, even greater. They wanted to keep all 



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peoples in the position of favorites or stepchildren of the liberal economic order. The effects of the 

laissez-faire system, especially the principle of free trade, caused severe internal, economic damage. 

The symptoms of this sickness were everywhere the same. 

Agriculture in the industrialized states could not gain sufficient support against the interests of industry, 

trade, bank and stock exchange. Self-sufficiency in food supplies was lost, the aggregation of large 

estates began, the peasantry sank into poverty, the population streamed from the land to the cities or 

overseas. A thin upper stratum of bankers, industrialists and speculators could accumulate grotesque 

wealth and also create for themselves dangerous power over the state– because everything could be 

bought for money—in particular public opinion. 

On the other side, the industrial proletariat grew ever larger. The increasing dissatisfaction of this class 

drove them into pseudo socialist Marxism and communism. 

All these indications were not sufficiently heeded, perhaps because of the prevailing trend of the 

time—”get rich, it matters not how”—which disproportionately obscured a true view of the facts. 

Certainly, Liberalism was a system of “freedom”. Anyone who could not find work and bread in his 

own country had the “freedom” to emigrate. And if things were going badly economically for a nation, 

it had the “freedom” to burden itself with debt in England. But this kind of freedom was badly founded 

in moral terms as was its continued existence. 

…[T]he World War of 1914-18 was both the high point of the capitalist economic system and 

simultaneously the beginning of its end. 

…Since the First World War, the peoples of Europe have come through a generation-long, pitiless 

lesson. We all know this and some of us sooner, some of us later, realized that the idol of freedom of this 

vanished epoch was false and pernicious. With war, inflation, the most extreme economic crises, hunger 

and unemployment—the lesson was hammered into people. That the sense and purpose of all 

economies did not lie in the self-seeking, irresponsible making of profits but in the fulfillment of a 

social task. It is no wonder that the people of central Europe, who suffered most under the lash of this 

unsocial system, first conceived a different, higher ideal of freedom. 

In securing the basic supplies of food and raw materials, in the liberation of the economy from 

international financial interests and dependency, in the voluntary submission of the individual to the 

primacy of a people’s economy, we glimpse today the new ideal of a true economic freedom. 

…The will towards European Community effort, as it is forged under hard wartime conditions must 

become the leading concern of the basic, ruling economic theory in peacetime too. That means a 

constant effort to understand the great objectives and coming tasks and to get stuck into them. It also 

means a readiness, in certain circumstances, to subordinate one’s own interests to those of the 

European Community. That isthe highest goal which we require from the European states and we are 

striving to attain it. In individual cases, this will mean sacrifices, but the outcome is that all peoples 

will benefit. 

What is remarkable about this passage is that the Plan’s notion of “economic freedom” is diametrically 



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opposed to the idea of liberal economic thought propounded by economists and philosophers in the UK 

over centuries. Instead, there was a “higher ideal of freedom” embodied in the “voluntary submission 

of the individual to the primacy of a people’s economy” and a readiness to “subordinate one’s own 

interests to those of the European Community”. And it does not just refer to individuals. All European 

states are “required” to submit to the “common endeavour”, so that the outcome is that “all peoples will 

benefit”. Continent-wide self-sufficiency is also a very important objective, with an overarching 

concern to “secur[e] the basic supplies of food and raw materials”. 

 

6. Comparison with the European Economic Community Introduced in 1957 

There are a number of striking similarities between the 1942 Plan and the European Economic 

Community introduced on 25 March 1957: 

 The establishment of a centralised, highly bureaucratic system of administration in the form of 

the European Commission.  

 The exercise of economic and political leadership through “Directives”—the same term used by 

Hunke—from the Commission in order to maximise “community economic Endeavour”. There have 

been more than 80,000 Directives—including “regulations and decisions”—since 1957. There have 

been more than 50,000 in the last 25 years (Note 5) alone, emanating from more than 150 specialist 

working parties and committees, known as the “Council preparatory bodies”. (Note 6) 

 The importance of a continent-wide European Economic Community which recognises the 

continent’s “natural potential” and hence “meets all the requirements of a complete, self-sufficient 

economic area”. 

 The introduction of a Customs Union with a Common External Tariff on imports into the EU set 

by the Commission. 

 A Single Market subject to detailed regulations also set by the Commission. 

 A Common Commercial Policy in which all trade deals with other countries are negotiated by the 

Commission via a “framework of constructive and far-sighted economic treaties”, reflecting the Plan’s 

hostility to the “principle of free trade [which] cause[s] severe internal, economic damage”.  

 A Common Agricultural Policy to guarantee and stabilise farmers’ incomes. 

 EU-wide management of common resources such as fish via a Common Fisheries Policy. 

 Expansion of the EU into eastern and south-eastern Europe. Since 2007, the EU has spent €23bn 

via the Pre-accession Assistance Fund (Note 7) on financial and technical support to a number of 

“enlargement countries”—or what Hunke called “presently foreign lands”—such as Albania (€1.24bn), 

Bosnia and Herzegovina (€0.78bn), Kosovo (€1.28bn), Macedonia (€1.28bn), Montenegro (€0.51bn), 

Serbia (€2.89bn) and Turkey (€9.25bn). 

 The Stability and Growth Pact with its five structural and investment funds:  

o European Regional Development Fundš—“promotes balanced development in the different 

regions of the EU”. 



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o European Social Fund—“supports employment-related projects throughout Europe and invests 

in Europe’s human capital—its workers, its young people and all those seeking a job”. 

o Cohesion Fund—”funds transport and environment projects in countries where the gross 

national income per inhabitant is less than 90% of the EU average. In 2014-20, these are Bulgaria, 

Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, 

Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia”. 

o European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development— “focuses on resolving the particular 

challenges facing EU’s rural areas”. 

o European Maritime and Fisheries Fund—“helps fishermen to adopt sustainable fishing 

practices and coastal communities to diversify their economies, improving quality of life along 

European coasts”. 

 The European Exchange Rate Mechanism—introduced in 1979 to reduce exchange rate 

variability and achieve monetary stability across Europe, in preparation for Economic and Monetary 

Union and the introduction of the euro—precisely followed the Funk Plan. 

 A policy of fiscal discipline, introduced via the Maastricht criteria, with strict limits on the size of 

member state budget deficits—they must not exceed 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 2.2% if 

the member state is also in the Eurozone—and national debts—they must not exceed 60% of GDP. 

These limits apply whether their breach is due to an economic recession beyond the control of the 

member state or due to government spending profligacy. In addition, no distinction is made between 

current and capital expenditures. All of this is fully in line with the Schwartze Null fiscal policy 

outlined in the Plan. 

 Consistent with this belief in rigid fiscal discipline, the refusal to allow the federal EU to become 

a “transfer union”, thereby forcing member states to solve their economic problems through “enterprise 

and achievement”. 

 Hostility to free markets, especially money and capital markets, which could interfere with the 

implementation of the Plan, leading to a heavy reliance on the banking and insurance sectors to provide 

both short- and long-term financing to the corporate sector. This explains why Capital Markets Union 

(Note 8) has been such a failure. 

 The concepts of solidarity and neighborly support, so long as members fit in with the Plan.  

Some of the above quotes come from the Plan, while others come from the EU website—it is hard to 

differentiate. 

 

7. But How Did It Turn out in Practice? 

The Plan’s aims for the EEC were to exploit the continent’s full natural potential and to ensure 

self-sufficiency. These led to the following objectives: “prices will fairly reward” the efforts of 

producers, and production and sales will be secured through inter-state treaties, and there will be “no 

more room for speculators and crises” or “fear wage cuts or unemployment”. How did it turn out in 



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practice? 

It is difficult to quantitatively assess how comprehensively these objectives have been met across all 

EU member states. However, unemployment rates are reported and “unemployment” was going to be 

banished from the European economic dictionary. At the end of 2019—so prior to the massive 

distortions caused by the global coronavirus pandemic—the average Eurozone unemployment rate was 

7.8%. It was 18% in Greece, 10.5% in Italy, 8.8% in France, but only 3.2% in Germany. So only in 

Germany can we say that unemployment has been effectively “banished”. By comparison, the UK 

unemployment rate was 4%. Youth unemployment is far worse. It averaged 16.1% in the Eurozone. It 

was40% in Greece, 33% in Italy, 20% in France, and 5.6% in Germany. In the UK, it was 11.5%. So this 

demonstrates a massive failure of the Eurozone economic system to provide the balancing mechanisms 

that were promised by Funk. The UK, by contrast, measures favourably on both unemployment 

measures, except when compared with Germany. 

Then there is the common currency, the euro, which is regarded as one of the greatest achievements of 

the EU. Milton Friedman said the euro would be a great success until the first financial crisis—and so it 

turned out. The Eurozone economies were roughly in balance, with trade flows between them being 

largely offsetting, but since the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis, (Note 9) this is far from the case. A 

key underlying problem is that the Eurozone does not satisfy the economic conditions for being an 

Optimal Currency Area, (Note 10) a geographical area over which a single currency and monetary 

policy can operate on a sustainable long-term basis. The different business cycles in the Eurozone, 

combined with poor labour and capital market flexibility, mean that systematic trade surpluses and 

deficits will build up—because inter-regional exchange rates can no longer be changed. Surplus regions 

need to recycle the surpluses back to deficit regions via transfers to keep the Eurozone economies in 

balance. But as previously mentioned, the largest surplus country—Germany—refuses formally to 

allow the EU to become a “transfer union”. This means that deficit countries including the largest of 

these—Italy—end up in a recession, owing huge debts. They are unable to use fiscal policy to boost 

aggregate demand, again because of German insistence on fiscal discipline, and the supply-side policy 

of appealing to “enterprise and achievement” has also been ineffective. So the recession becomes 

permanent. The Italian economy has not grown since Italy joined the euro in 1999.  

The Plan also promised to end wage cuts. Ireland provides a striking example of the failure of this 

objective. Between 2008 and 2011, median and mean total disposable income (excluding all social 

transfers) in Ireland fell by 30% and 21%, respectively. These cuts were required as part of the EU”s 

rescue package for the collapsed Irish banking system. Irish banks had lent excessively to property 

speculators—another group that was going to be banned—leading to a property boom. Had Ireland had 

its own currency, the Irish central bank would have raised interest rates to curtail the boom. But Ireland 

is a member of the Eurozone where interest rates are set to suit the economic needs of Germany, in 

particular, rather than peripheral members such as Ireland. Ireland had no alternative but to sit it out 

and wait for the inevitable collapse of its banks—and then pay for it through massive wage cuts. So 



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much for “solidarity and neighborly support”. 

The idea of parliamentary approval is not mentioned in the Plan. A European Parliament was 

introduced with appointed members in 1958 and with directly elected ones from 1979. But its role is to 

do little more than rubber-stamp the Directives proposed by the Commission. It is unable to initiate, 

block or repeal legislation. While it can suggest amendments to proposed legislation, these can be 

ignored by the Commission. Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck, in his 2016 book Against 

Elections: The Case for Democracy, describes the European Parliament as little better than one of the 

“councils of the people” in the interwar colonial empires of the Belgium, Holland, Britain, or 

France—with the real power resting with a distant imperial executive.  

Nevertheless, this has not prevented the onward march to political union. The EEC was transformed 

into the European Union on 1 November 1993 with the aim of being a continent-wide economic and 

then political entity. Full political unification was the clearly stated objective of Jean-Claude Juncker, 

President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019, in one of his final State of the Union 

addresses—ideally by 2025.  

Germany is the strongest supporter, just as it was in 1942. As soon as German reunification had been 

achieved in 1990, Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor at the time, announced: “We now seek political 

unification, the construction of a United States of Europe”. This was supported by Ursula von der 

Leyen, the new President of the European Commission, in an article in Der Spiegel (Note 11) in 2011. 

The present German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, explains how it will happen: “Of course, the European 

Commission will one day become a government, the European Council a second chamber and the 

European Parliament will have more powers”.  

But the reality is that the European Union is not an institution interested in giving “more powers” to the 

representatives of the people. Significantly, the authoritarianism of the original 1942 Plan is still there 

below the surface in the modern EU. Just as Walther Funk was fond of saying “We have everything in 

hand through the authoritarian means of the state to bring these things promptly to order”, so Juncker is 

fond of saying “There can be no democratic choice against the European Treaties”. Yanis Varoufakis, 

the former Greek finance minister, sums it up well and he should know better than most: “In truth, 

Brussels is a democracy-free zone”. The proof of this is that once those 150 or so Council preparatory 

bodies have framed policies, it will often already be too late to inject much democratic oversight into 

the draftsmanship. (Note 12) 

Similarly, the concepts of solidarity and neighborly support are there only so long as member states fit 

in. Witness the ruthlessness with which deviant member states, such as Greece, (Note 13) are treated. 

Even states that are not part of the EU are not immune from what can only be described as EU bullying 

and control creep. One example is Switzerland (Note 14) which was threatened with losing access to 

EU markets when it voted in a referendum to limit “mass migration” to stop the undercutting of local 

wages; Switzerland is a signatory to the Schengen Agreement, but is not a member of either the Single 

Market or the Customs Union. Another is Norway which was threatened with having its salmon sales to 



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the EU blocked when it refused to implement the EU Postal Services Directive; (Note 15) Norway is in 

the Single Market and has to accept an average of five new EU Directives every day, (Note 16) without 

having any vote on them, a state of affairs which Norwegians call “fax democracy”. Both countries 

eventually backed down. But the EU is never satisfied. It is currently trying to bring Switzerland (Note 

17) under its legal and regulatory control by forcing it to accept the “dynamic alignment” of EU rules 

on migration, social security, and key areas of economic policy in perpetuity. Because of Swiss 

resistance, it has suspended the trading of Swiss shares on EU stock exchanges and is threatening to 

withdraw mutual recognition for exports of medical equipment.  

Nor did the Plan mention any legal framework under which it would operate. The European Court of 

Justice (ECJ) was set up in 1952. It is the highest court in the EU and has “ultimate sovereignty”. The 

ECJ itself established the primacy of EU law over the laws of member states in the Costa v ENEL case 

(Note 18) in 1964, without any approval of this by elected politicians. The ECJ’s members, like those of 

the Commission, are unelected. It operates using the “purposive approach” (Note 19) which means that 

it interprets EU laws according to their “purpose” rather than to what the text of the law actually 

states—which is what happens in common law countries. And, of course, the “purpose” frequently 

changes to reflect the changing intentions of the Commission. The ECJ is therefore a political court, not 

a neutral interpreter of EU laws. The UK granted “ultimate sovereignty” to the ECJ when it passed the 

1972 European Communities Act. 

Only once since 1964 has the supremacy of the ECJ been questioned and that was in May 2020 when the 

Germany Federal Constitutional Court (Note 20) declared that the European Central Bank’s Public 

Sector Purchase (i.e., quantitative easing) Programme in 2015 was ultra vires and exceeded EU 

competences and, by implication, that EU law did not overrule member state law which, in the case of 

Germany, would not have sanctioned this programme. 

 

8. How Should Believers in Liberal Economic Values and Democracy Respond? 

Hunk described the Plan thus: “It contains …the obligation that from considerations of European 

freedom, continental Europe must receive first loyalty in all economic transactions. …[I]t must be 

firmly held above all that the national spirit of the individual economies must not be allowed to oppose 

neighborly cooperation”. This centralizing authoritarianism permeates much of what we see in the 

European Union today, particularly in terms of the Commission directives and ECJ rulings that restrict 

economic and political freedoms. 

So what can believers in liberal economic values and democracy do? A few of them might take the 

view that it would have been better for countries like the UK to remain in the EU in order to “reform” 

its aberrations from within. But it should be clear from the above that this is impossible. So much of the 

Plan has been implemented—again possibly subconsciously—that it now has a life of its own. There 

are no aberrations: what you see is what is fully intended. And arch euro-federalists, like Jean-Claude 

Juncker, Guy Verhofstadt and Michel Barnier, have no intention of changing any element of the Plan or 



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allowing it to be reversed. They take the long view and remember that it took 150 years for the USA to 

become a fully united economic and political entity with a single currency being used in all states. 

However, most will surely recognise that the EU is incapable of being reformed (Note 21) and that it 

was better for the UK to fully leave the EU politically and economically as soon as possible. 

Nevertheless, it should be readily apparent—in the light of the Plan—that the EU would not be willing 

to make this easy. This was made very clear when the EU published its negotiating guidelines (Note 22) 

in January 2020 and in the subsequent negotiations, led from the EU side by Michel Barnier. The EU’s 

intention was to oblige the UK to follow EU law in respect of “competition and state aid, tax, social, 

environment and regulatory measures and practices”—the so-called “level playing field” 

conditions—and be subject to the rulings of the ECJ in perpetuity. This would have left the UK with 

absolutely no freedom of manoeuvre to negotiate any meaningful free trade agreements with other 

countries. We know that the Plan does not like these at all.  

In the event, the UK negotiating team, led by Lord David Frost, was able to extract from the EU a 

standard free trade agreement in which disputes were settled by international arbitration rather than the 

ECJ. (Note 23) The agreement was signed on behalf of the EU by European Commission President, 

Ursula von der Leyen, and by European Council President, Charles Michel, in Brussels on 30 December 

2020. It was then flown to London by the Royal Air Forceand signed on behalf of the UK government by 

Boris Johnson in Downing Street. Later the same day, the UK Parliament voted in favour of the 

agreement by 521 votes to 73. It passed into UK law as the EU (Future Relationship) Act, having 

received Royal Assent, on 31 December 2020. (Note 24) What is noteworthy is that the European 

Parliament played no role whatsoever in approving this historic agreement. It was merely allowed to 

“ratify” the agreement after it came into effect on 31 December 2020, thereby magnificently confirming 

Van Reybrouck’s point that the European Parliament’s role is simply to rubber-stamp agreements 

already made by the Commission, and, in the process, making a mockery of the very concept of 

ratification. Equally noteworthy is that neither von der Leyen nor Michel are elected by the European 

people, unlike those who signed and voted for the agreement in the UK. 

Further, those who argued for a complete separation need to be much more nuanced. In particular, they 

must recognize just how much the 1942 Plan has influenced how the EU has developed. This, in turn, 

implies that many of the proposals in the Plan will implicitly have widespread acceptance—both in the 

UK and on the European continent. For example, there will be many people who will readily agree 

with Funk when he says that “The European peoples should …acknowledge that they live in a 

community of destiny, which in logic leads only to one conclusion, namely Europe-wide, continental 

co-operation”. Similarly, many will support Hunke when he states that “The desire for security from 

crises can no longer be achieved by independence from each other but only through the common 

improvement of Europe’s individual national economies” or when he calls for state economic 

leadership over highly regulated private sector companies and the “final decision of the state in all 

questions of economic power”.  



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Soif proponents of free markets continue to talk about having a bonfire of regulations or having a free 

trade agreement with the USA which puts chlorinated chicken on supermarket shelves—without taking 

account of the Plan’s already extensive influence—they are likely to alienate even many Brexit (Note 

25) supporters. They should also recognise the particular anger on the continent about the Global 

Financial Crisis which completely disrupted the EU’s well-laid plans for further economic integration 

and which is blamed entirely on “liberal-capitalist” market forces. The GFC explains why so many 

people both in the UK and on the continent fully support Funk’s call for “the liberation of the economy 

from international financial interests and dependency”. 

 

9. Conclusion 

Very few people know about the 1942 Plan: Boris Johnson (Note 26) is a rare exception, although he 

misses the key economic implications. The principal Founding Fathers of the European Project, 

Monnet and Schuman, never acknowledged the Plan when they set up the European Economic 

Community. The European Union’s website does not mention the Plan: instead it states that the idea of 

a European Union originated with Winston Churchill’s speech at Zurich University in 1946. (Note 27) 

Now this is somewhat disingenuous, since, as Professor Robert Tombs has pointed out, (Note 28) 

European federalism has a far longer history. It goes back at least to the 18th century. Victor Hugo 

called for a United States of Europe (USE) in the 1860s, while Ernest Renan—author of What is a 

Nation?—predicted in the 1880s that the European nations would inevitably be replaced by a USE. 

There have also been previous attempts at economic integration. For example, Britain and France set 

up what has been called the First Common Market, with plans for a common currency and rights of 

citizenship, in the 1860s. Then there was a Latin Monetary Union between France, Belgium, Italy, and 

Switzerland between 1865 and 1927. In the World War I, Germany had a plan for an economic area 

which historian Niall Ferguson has dubbed the “Kaiser’s Common Market”.  

However, this misses two key points. The first is that, while there have been many previous calls for a 

federal Europe, there has only ever been one detailed proposal for a European Economic 

Community—and that is the 1942 Plan. And we have shown that this Plan has had an enormous impact 

on how the EU has developed. Surely this is not pure coincidence? It seems to me inconceivable that 

the Plan was not known to at least some of the EU’s Founding Fathers—and in particular, Walter 

Hallstein. (Note 29) He was the first President of the European Commission between 7 January 1958 

and 30 June 1967 and had been a member of both the Bund NationalsozialistischerDeutscherJuristen 

(Association of National Socialist German Lawyers) and the Rechtswahrer (Law Protectors) 

Organisation, although was not a member of the National Socialist Party. He also received specialist 

legal training at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, (Note 30) a private institute financed largely by 

IG Farben, an institution intimately involved in the Plan. The EU’sbiography of Hallstein fails to 

mention any of this, although it does acknowledge that he “worked towards a rapid realisation of the 

Common Market. … During his mandate, the integration advanced significantly”. (Note 31) 



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And this leads directly to the second key point. However much you try to play down the influence of 

the Plan, the centralising authoritarian language of its authors cannot be ignored. The Plan did not and 

was not intended to have a democratic foundation. And the way in which the EEC was set up—with a 

governmental and judicial system in the form of the European Commission and ECJ, 

respectively—ensured that there would be no genuine democracy in the European Union. There is, of 

course, a democratic veneer in the form of the European Council and the European Parliament. There 

are periodic elections to the European Parliament, where around 85% of the laws that the citizens of 

member states have to obey are “approved”, but all these laws are initiated by the Commission and then 

interpreted by the ECJ to suit the Commission’s “purpose”. All this is made perfectly clear by Hallstein 

in his book Die Europaeische Gemeinschaft (The European Community): “Every action starts with the 

Commission. …The Commission is the most original element in the organisation of the [European] 

Community without any direct precedent in history. …Its function is to represent the [European] 

Community to the inside and to the outside. …The Commission is independent of the governments of 

the member states. Instructions of the member states must not be given to nor taken by the 

Commission. ….The Commission has the monopoly to initiate legislation”. 

So much about recent events surrounding Brexit become much clearer when you understand the Plan. 

The way the EU conducted the Brexit negotiations is entirely consistent with its underlying 

philosophy–this is not a club that you can leave once you have joined—as Varoufakis warned us in 

Adults In The Room: My Struggle with Europe’s Deep Establishment. (Note 32) Similarly, the language 

used by people like Juncker—when he said that the British were “deserters” who needed to be 

punished—could have been lifted directly from the Plan. But most significant of all is the realisation 

that the hostility to Anglo-Saxon economics is both long-standing and widespread on the continent and 

that the democratic deficit in the EU—widely acknowledged even by strong EU supporters—is here to 

stay. 

Believers in liberal economic values and democracy cannot possibly compromise on these points–both 

in the UK and on the European continent. It should now be clear that the only way out for the UK was 

a clean-break Brexit—which involved leaving the Customs Union, the Single Market and the 

jurisdiction of the ECJ, as Theresa May originally promised in her Lancaster House Speech on 17 

January 2017. (Note 33) The UK has now achieved this. It was the only way to avoid being drawn 

inexorably into the kind of political union envisioned in the 1942 Plan. However, the remaining EU 

member states will find it very hard to avoid this fate. 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Acknowledgements 

The author is grateful for the comments made on a previous draft by Professor Kevin Dowd and 

Professor Robert Tombs. 

 

Notes 

Note. 1. Europaeische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft; 

http://www.jar2.com/Files/Nazism/The_Europeische_Wirtschaftsgemeinchaft_Berlin_1942.pdf 

Note 2. Edward Spalton, Witness to History, posted on April 18, 2017; 

https://campaignforanindependentbritain.org.uk/witness-to-history/ 

Note 3. Funk Plan, https://www.academia.edu/8935003/The_Funk_Plan 

Note 4. François Hollande; 

https://www.france24.com/en/20170405-france-president-francois-hollande-five-years-not-normal-look

-back 

Note 5. 

https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/press-releases/2017/march/eu-laws-introduced-in-the-uk-highlight

s-scale-of-challenge-facing-lawmakers-following-brexit.html 

Note 6. 

https://brexitcentral.com/wanting-close-uk-eu-relationship-beware-brussels-opaque-law-making-proces

ses/ 

Note 7. https://facts4eu.org/news/2019_apr_remain_in_what 

Note 8. Capital Markets Union; https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/capital-markets-union/ 

Note 9. Global Financial Crisis; 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008 

Note 10. Optimal Currency Area; 

https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/19674/1/Target%202%20v1.pdf 

Note11. Der Spiegel; 

https://www.spiegel.de/consent-a-?targetUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fpolitik%2Fdeutsc

hland%2Fschuldenkrise-von-der-leyen-fordert-die-vereinigten-staaten-von-europa-a-782879.html 

Note 12. 

https://brexitcentral.com/wanting-close-uk-eu-relationship-beware-brussels-opaque-law-making-proces

ses/ 

Note 13. Greece; https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/greek-tragedy 

Note 14. Switzerland; 

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/even-independent-switzerland-isnt-immune-to-eu-control-creep 

Note 15. Norway; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47734583 

Note 16.  Norway; 

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/916657/Brexit-news-latest-update-Norway-UK-EU-future-trade-de



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al-European-Union-EEA-video 

Note 17. Switzerland; 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/07/02/eu-sharpens-torture-tools-long-showdown-defiant-sw

itzerland/ 

Note 18. Costa v ENEL case; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_v_ENEL 

Note 19. purposive approach; http://e-lawresources.co.uk/Purposive-approach.php 

Note 20.  Germany Federal Constitutional Court; 

https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2020/bvg20-032.html 

Note 21. As UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, found to his cost when he tried to renegotiate the 

terms of UK membership in 2015-16; 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_memb

ership 

Note 22. 

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/brexit-negotiations/negotiating-documents-article-50-negotiations-unit

ed-kingdom_en 

Note 23. Trade and Cooperation Agreement Between the European Union and the European Atomic 

Energy Community, of the One Part, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of 

the Other Part, 24 December 2020; 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/9481

04/EU-UK_Trade_and_Cooperation_Agreement_24.12.2020.pdf 

Note 24. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/eu-future-relationship-bill 

Note 25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit 

Note 26. Boris Johnson; 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3578741/Whats-Hitler-got-to-do-with-the-euro-E

verything.html 

Note 27. Winston Churchill’s speech at Zurich University in 1946; 

https://europa.eu/european-union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/body/winston_churchill_en.pdf 

Note 28. In a private communication. 

Note 29. Walter Hallstein; 

https://worldhistory.us/european-history/did-the-nazis-create-the-european-union.php 

Note 30. Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin; https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/tag/brexit/ 

Note 31. https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/history/eu-pioneers_en#box_4 

Note 32. Adults In The Room: My Struggle with Europe’s Deep Establishment; 

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/books/adults-in-the-room/. Varoufakis likened Brexit to the Eagles 

song Hotel California, where you can check out any time you like, but you cannot really leave; 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/yanis-varoufakis-says-brexit-hotel-california-you-c

an-check-out-any-time-you-you-can-t-really-leave-a7334781.html 



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Note 33. Lancaster House Speech; 

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-governments-negotiating-objectives-for-exiting-the-eu-p

m-speech 


