The Process of European Integration as Historical Phenomena

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to highlight the structure of the historical process of European integration. Historical phenomenon of the process of European integration is considered as a historiosophical example of unevenness and not the linearity of development. The Great French Revolution set two opposite trends: the development of sovereign national powers while simultaneously spreading universal cosmopolitan ideas. Two world wars weakened Europe’s influence on world history. The idea of “Eurocentrism” turned to the background. The process of European integration has recreated Europe’s influence on the world-historical process. An interdisciplinary methodological approach to the study of European integration considers it an anonymous socio-historical process. The history of Europe demonstrates the various stages of the development of a liberal rational-market project, which is an integral result of the interaction of different social interests. An alternative is the project of ideocratic, focused on the priority of democratic values, human rights, which are the foundation of European modern civilization. The history of European integration of 1957-1990 was a process of overcoming the ideological split of the continent to the East and West in the Cold War. The Maastricht Treaty actually became a watershed in the transition to a postmodern model of European integration. The experience of developing the European integration process has fixed the following main integration-political strategies: federative community; linear expansion and cooperation of the Union of European Peoples; dual strategy: expansion and deepening of integration; d) flexibility and differentiation of “Europe of Nations”; creation of an integration core of Europe and a strategy of many speeds in the process of European integration, (g) intergovernmental cooperation strategy, sectoral integration, (i) the Directorate of the great powers, Europe of flexible geography, or concentric circles. Therefore, from the point of view of the historical process, the crisis of European integration is structural rather than systemic.