The EU Was Started to Stop War

8 May 2025 marked 80 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe – Victory in Europe Day, first celebrated on 8 May 1945.

What has VE Day to do with the European Union? Everything.

The European Economic Community – which later became the European Union – was created in the aftermath of the war with one overriding purpose: to build a lasting peace on a continent that had torn itself apart.

That was the passionate aim of the EU’s founding architects, including our own wartime leader, Winston Churchill.

After all, Europe had been infamous for nations resolving their differences through violence, invasion and war. Both world wars began here.

So, the EU was never just about economics or trade.

It was a political and social project as much as an economic one – a community of European nations committed not only to working together, but to never again going to war with each other.

The founding vision, set out in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, was to create ‘ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’ – not simply a union of states, but of citizens, bound together by shared values, cooperation, and peace.

Winston Churchill saw it clearly. In his landmark Zurich speech of 1946, he said:

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important.”

That dream took shape just over a decade later, when six nations – France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – founded the EEC in 1957.

It was a remarkable feat. Some of these countries had been brutal enemies only a few years earlier. Four had been occupied by Nazi Germany.

And yet they came together, determined that war between them must become unthinkable.

It worked.

In the 80 years since 1945, no EU member has ever gone to war with another. That is an extraordinary achievement on a continent with such a violent history.

Whilst NATO has protected us – so far – from external threats, it’s the EU’s deep political and economic structure that has helped to prevent war between its members.

This is what many Brexiters never understood – or chose to forget.

The EU is not just a trading bloc. It’s a peace project. A human project. A bold, ongoing effort to build unity where once there was destruction.

By leaving, the UK sent a message: that we no longer value this remarkable peasce project as our neighbours do.

And that’s a tragedy.

Jon Danzig is an award-winning medical journalist and formerly an investigative journalist at the BBC. He specialises in health, human rights and the European Union. This article has been republished with kind permission from Jon and his blog EU-ROPE blog which is hosted by the University Association of Contemporary European Studies. https://eu-rope.ideasoneurope.eu/2025/05/08/the-eu-was-started-to-stop-war/

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