UN General Assembly
1953

76. Even if the problems of common defence had never arisen, even if their countries had never been threatened by aggression since 1945, the governments of Western Europe would have been bound to establish rules and common institutions to regulate vaster markets and wider spaces, that is to say, to create appropriate conditions for raising the living standards of their peoples. That is why the building of a European community, strictly defensive in itself, is in addition a factor making for stabilization and hence for a lessening international tension.