European Community

Background

After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism which had devastated parts of the continent. In a speech delivered on 19 September 1946 at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, Winston Churchill went further and advocated the emergence of a United States of Europe. The 1948 Hague Congress was a pivotal moment in European federal history, as it led to the creation of the European Movement International and of the College of Europe, where Europe's future leaders would live and study together. It also led directly to the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, the first great effort to bring the nations of Europe together, initially ten of them. The council focused primarily on values—human rights and democracy—rather than on economic or trade issues, and was always envisaged as a forum where sovereign governments could choose to work together, with no supra-national authority. It raised great hopes of further European integration, and there were fevered debates in the two years that followed as to how this could be achieved. But in 1952, disappointed at what they saw as the lack of progress within the Council of Europe, six nations decided to go further and created the European Coal and Steel Community, which was declared to be "a first step in the federation of Europe". This community helped to economically integrate and coordinate the large number of Marshall Plan funds from the United States. European leaders Alcide De Gasperi from Italy, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman from France, and Paul-Henri Spaak from Belgium understood that coal and steel were the two industries essential for waging war, and believed that by tying their national industries together, future war between their nations became much less likely. These men and others are officially credited as the founding fathers of the European Community. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community (EEC) and established a customs union. They also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958. The EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC and they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein (Hallstein Commission) and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand (Armand Commission) and then Étienne Hirsch. Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members.

The Community

During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power. Nevertheless, in 1965 an agreement was reached and on 1 July 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities. Jean Rey presided over the first merged commission (the Rey Commission). In 1973, the communities were enlarged to include Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum. In 1979, the first direct elections to the European Parliament were held. Greece joined in 1981, Portugal and Spain following in 1986. In 1985, the Schengen Agreement paved the way for the creation of open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-member states. In 1986, the European flag began to be used by the EEC and the Single European Act was signed. Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who had previously supported the common market and the Single European Act, in the Bruges speech of 1988 warned against "a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". Euroscepticism amongstperceived In the 1992 general election, Thatcher campaigned for her fourth term on the promise of a referendum on continued membership of the European Community. She won the election, and a referendum was held - resulting in a 58.2% majority on the side of "withdraw". The United Kingdom ultimately left the European Community on the 1st January 1995, although the official process was heavily disrupted by the devastation from the Collapse, which occurred later that year.

The Collapse

While Europe was largely untouched by meteorite fragments, it was not entirely unscathed. Tsunamis several stories high made landfall at the Bay of Biscay and along the coast of Portugal shortly after the impact, while several earthquakes destroyed large portions of France, West Germany, Spain and Italy, notably (and most destructively) the Adriatic Quake, which also destroyed colossal swathes of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of the Soviet Union. Belgium was severely flooded, and the Netherlands were almost entirely swallowed by the shifted tides. In France, the Blayais Nuclear Power Plant suffered severe flooding in all four of the plants pressurised water reactors, leading to the Blayais Disaster. Effective evacuation and containment measures were unable to be put into place due to the chaos occurring throughout the rest of the European Community, and the Blayais Nuclear Power Plant continued to emit over 3.6 roentgen every second, for over six years (until the Blayais Sarcophagus was constructed, with assistance from the Soviet Union). It, along with the Beloyarsk Disaster, are blamed for the sharp rise in cancers present in mainland Europe in the years following the Collapse. It is believed to have caused the deaths of over three million people in mainland Europe. In Portugal, the large coastal cities of Porto and its capital city, Lisbon, were entirely flooded, with an initial combined fatality count of over 1.8 million, with up to three million dying in the following weeks due to break down of supply chains and the resulting anarchy. Spain was largely untouched by flooding, although severe earthquakes in the South of the country killed thousands, and caused billions of pesetas worth of damage. Severe earthquakes practically reduced the entirety of Italy to rubble, with the only areas spared severe earthquake damage being the West coast of Italy, which in turn was partially flooded by large waves from the Mediterranean Sea. In Western Europe, the Netherlands and Belgium experienced severe flooding - although it was largely shielded from any direct landfall by a tsunami. Major flooding gradually occurred over the following years and decades, however, due to melting ice caps. Ultimately, only the southern portion of the Limburg providence in the Netherlands would remain. West Germany experienced some minor flooding towards the North, although was predominantly damaged due to severe Earthquakes in the South and West of the country. Large portions of Denmark were flooded. Complex bureaucracy prevented efficient distribution of humanitarian aid amongst member states in the immediate aftermath of the impact, while the relatively unscathed United Kingdom refused to distribute any aid, with Margaret Thatcher famously quoted as saying- "When one escapes from a sinking vessel on a lifeboat, one must be sure not to extend an arm to those flailing in the water - lest they pull you down with them, in their panic." Member states that were less damaged by the various disasters were compelled by the European Council to use what resources they had to aid those more affected, which frequently made things in their (still quite severely damaged) countries far worse.