HISTORY OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

The course will deal with the following topics:
1) some basic remarks on methodological issues (the origins of the history of the European integration, the major interpretions, the sources, etc.)
2) The origins of the European integrations and its close links with the Cold War and US foreign policy
3)The turning point of the early 1950s and the functionalist approach (the Schuman Plan and the Pleven Plan)
4) The early crisis of the European project (the collapse of the European Defence Community)
5) The relaunching of Europe (fron the Messina Conference to the Rome Treaties): EEC and EURATOM
6)The European integrations in the de Gaulle era (economic achievements and political difficulties)
7) The new relaunching of Europe of the early 1970s ("enlargement", "completion" and "deepening")
8)The new characters of the European integration during the 1970s
9) The European Community in world politics (the relationship with the US, the North-South relationship, the crisis of Southern Europe)
10) The political, economic and social changes of the early 1980s (neo-liberalism, computer revolution, early globalization)
11) The turning point of the period 1985/1992 (the Delors Commission, the Economic and Monetary Union, the Maastricht Treaty)
12) The results of both the EMU and EU (achievements and failures)
13) the great illusion of Europe as a civilian power and the Constitutional Treaty
14) the beginnig of the European crisis (from the economic crisis of 2007/2008 to the emergence of the euroskepticism)
15) The deepening of the crisis: causes and perspctives
16) the History of the European integration and its interpretation of the European crisis.