Since its inception, the European integration project has been contested. This interdisciplinary research project analyzes the different blueprints for Europe that were present in the period 1930-1963, thereby aiming to show why some blueprints set their stamps on the institutional start-up of European integration, while other blueprints were rejected.  Going beyond a state-centric analysis in order to achieve this, the research project focuses on transnational political, clerical and economic networks. By including a wider range of actors, the project expands the existing historiography of the EU’s “early” integration. Moreover, such a new understanding of the diversity of ideas of “what is Europe” in these early years of European integration may help to elucidate the driving forces and institutional dynamics in today’s EU.

Clemens' research, subtitled 'Spiritual Blueprints of Europe', involves the question how ecclesiastical networks and actors dealt with and played a role in the early European integration. The rise of fascist movements in the early 1930s triggered a broadly shared feeling of cultural dissatisfaction with Europe's alleged moral decline among intellectuals across the continent. Simultaneously, the so-called ecumenical movement, striving for global clerical cooperation, expanded its activities.Although delayed by the outbreak of the war, this would culminate in the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948. The way in which leading figures within and beyond this World Council expressly envisioned a role for Christian principles and values in any eventual European cooperation from the 1930s onwards, is at the core of this sub-project.

[under construction - will be updated soon]

• prof. dr. Beatrice de Graaf
• prof. dr. Peter Ben Smit
• dr. Trineke Palm
• dr. Jorrit Steehouder
• Myrthe van Groningen MA

• Mathieu Segers