Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's

best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Korthorn. Today's interview is with Kiran Klaus Patel, who's professor of

European history at Ludwig Maximillian's University at Munchen.

His latest book, Project Europe, a history, reflects on the development of the European Union

over the post-war decades, considering whether it really

did bring peace to the continent and what impact it's had on economic growth.

He discussed these questions and others with BBC History magazine editor Rob Atta.

Kiran, to begin with, could you just remind our listeners of how what we now call the European Union came to be in the first place.

That is actually one of the most difficult questions because it took so many steps to establish what we now know at the European Union.

The first institution that was built was the

European Coal and Sea community that was set up in 1952 and there were other

communities added to this first community. most importantly the two organizations associated with the treaties of Rome, the common market, on the one hand,

and the European atomic community, both in 1957.

And from there we moved on and on with further treaties and changes and that has

ultimately led to the European Union as we know today. And was it always destined to be

the predominant institution of European cooperation?

Very much depending on whom you ask. I think there were some people in the institutions who from

the very beginning were hoping that this was eventually lead to an institution that would be

dominant and really the main forum of coordination in Western Europe and in Europe

altogether. Now if you look back in 1950 when the first idea was launched with the so-called

Schuman Plan, a declaration by the French foreign minister, that was certainly the ambition that he and also the person who was standing behind the planet was really

the genius who thought it up.

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