The creation of the European Community and subsequent European Union was partially an attempt to consolidate european nations into one entity that wouldn't need to rely entirely on the United States, correct? How successful was that venture?
I know there's a 20 year rule here so we can make the range from the start of the 70s to the fall of the Soviet Union.
The entire History of the EU is a history of repeated attempts to remove Europe from over-reliance on the United States.
The origins of the European integration process are much older than the 1970's. After 1945 the European powers were economically, financially, and militarily spent. Their ability to wage war on a global scale would be forever hampered by the irreparable cracks appearing all over their colonial empires. What’s more, the Soviet Union under the yolk of Stalin proved again and again that the very real threat of authoritarian oppression had most certainly not disappeared with the defeat of Hitler’s Germany. There was nothing the depleted armies of the European states could do about the new threat apart from trust in the United States as a benevolent, albeit distant, ally. The question European heads of state asked in the postwar era was if the destiny of Europe would be that of eternal submission.
The idea to create a united Europe front actually predates the Second World War by some years (I won't bore you by rattling off a list of Franco-English intellectuals to that effect). However, it really accelerated in 1947, when that year representatives of the United States, Soviet Union, China, Great Britain and France met twice in Moscow and once in London, ostensibly to agree on the postwar organization of Germany and Austria. The talks were derailed by the growing ideological divide between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.: Stalin’s previous agreements with Churchill to divide Europe into Russo-British spheres of influence fell apart once it became clear that Great Britain would be unable to meet its postwar responsibilities. Having to contend with the United States as Europe’s dominant power changed the Russian attitude significantly. Although Churchill and Atlee governments could be reasoned with in terms of political control and spheres of influence, the United States were fundamentally disinterested in traditional European-style imperialism, and openly condemned the increasingly repressive soviet chokehold on Eastern Europe.
Curiously, the impetus to create a unified Europe with the express purpose of contrasting the soviet bloc came precisely from the increasingly peripheral Great Britain. Fresh from the breakdown in talks, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s reported in the house of commons advocating for a political and defensive union of Great Britain, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, as well as Germany, provided its form of government was pluralistic.
To this effect, the Brussels Treaty was signed in March of 1948. American authorities were enthusiastic about the prospects of a European Federation: in addition to an unrelenting faith in American-style federal democracy, a united Europe would be an additional bulwark against soviet aggression should Russian tanks cross the inner German border. In the American mind’s eye, Great Britain was to take a leadership position within this European Federation. However, the British were far more preoccupied with keeping their own empire together and had a different conception of what a united Europe would look like. Although the British Government was initially enthusiastic about a military and political union, there was a disinterest — if not outright aversion — with regards to establishing any sort of supranational authority, as well as a reluctance to jeopardize English industry by opening up economically.
American enthusiasm for a united Europe aroused suspicion among European with regards to the consequences of being overly reliant on the United States. Marshall Plan money had come at the cost of submitting portions of economic policy to the intergovernmental Organization for European Economic Cooperation (O.E.E.C.), which was itself monitored by the European Cooperation Agency (E.C.A.), mostly staffed by prominent American former businessmen (incidentally, this agency was also given the second goal of promoting European unity). Further, the American government had reduced the initial Marshall Plan proposal because suspicion that money destined for economic development would be rerouted into European States' generous social welfare programs. The fear of having to again align policy with the wishes of the United States led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community. The economic boom of the late 1950's and 1960's unsurprisingly led too a lull in the european integration process, but picked up again once the aftershocks of the recessionary American 1970's reached Europe. Already in 1973 the United Kingdom decided to abandon the notion that it was an island located somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic and joined the EU. Soon, European States realized how dependent they were on the United States' high consumption levels to fuel their exports, leading to the implementation of the European Monetary System in 1979, and the Single European Act in 1986. Today, although the European Union suffers from a democratic deficit, as well as bloated and haphazardly constructed institutions, economically the EU has been a resounding success at creating a distinct economic sphere. The united European Economic Area has, as a whole, GDP and development levels on par with the United States.
Militarily, there's a whole other story. By 1949, the Soviet Union had detonated it's first nuclear weapon: Europe's safety now relied on the United States' willingness to fight a nuclear war. The suspicion that the United States was less than enthusiastic about the responsibility led the United Kingdom to conduct its own nuclear tests by 1952, and Charles De Gaulle's French government conducted it's first nuclear test in 1960, not one year after taking office. In fact, De Gaulle fundamentally hijacked the EU's order of the day in the early 1960's and attempted to transform the EU into a sort of French-led NATO (just with more economic integration). The other european states were understandably averse to the idea; France had just lost two colonial wars and couldn't get it's nuclear bombs to work very well, not a good resumé when applying to be the protector of Europe. This led De Gaulle to throw a hissy fit in 1965 and withdrawing the french delegation from the European Commission until a compromised was reached granting each nation veto power in Council decisions. Militarily, Europe would continue an uneasy dependence on the United States until the collapse of the eastern block.
Although Europe managed to create a united trade policy and a united monetary policy with implications as important as those of the United States, China, and other great powers, fiscal policy is by and large still the purview of member states, as is defense. In fact, European states' can project power on par with great powers on those occasions when they choose to work together, however they seldom have, and there is no institutional framework for them to do so, nor does there seem to be an internal desire to do so.