How did Monnet's ideas lead to the EU?
My method was to identify a critical point of leverage where common action could yield significant benefits and simultaneously make conflict difficult. The pooling of coal and steel was this point. By placing these war-making industries under common supranational authority, we simultaneously reduced the capacity for conflict and created a shared economic destiny. This success then demonstrated the efficacy of this functionalist approach, encouraging member states to extend cooperation to other sectors. It was a process of building interdependence, making war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.
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