Great Britain is not an Island

[Watchman]

The kinds of ideas about closer economic cooperation across state borders that the EU stems from were being floated around already in the interwar period, you know. One reason was that the benefits of scale the US derived from the sheer size of its internal market were not lost on Euro economists.

Anyway, what can be regarded as the concrete first step in the chain that led to the present EU was the Coal And Steel Union formed between France, Germany, the Benelux countries and maybe someone else (can't be arsed to check the details ATM) shortly after the war; the direct impetus was a distruption in the supply of English coal due to domestic reasons that put French industry in a tight spot, and convinced them to start looking for alternate suppliers and arrangements.

Furuncu wasn't entirely incorrect, however, as one important consideration in the various postwar cooperative agreements indeed was binding the interests of at least the big boys of the block (initially France and Germany) so closely that they'd be flat out forced to cooperate and compromise with each other in the future. The downsides of confrontational competition and "me-firsting" had, after all, become demonstrated concretely indeed in the recent few decades...