The European Coal and Steel Community, which in many ways is the precursor organization to EU was formed in 1951, with the explicit goal of linking the German and French economies to such a degree that they would be incapable of waging war against each other.

And a complete shadow of the current EU. Should we call a current intel CPU an 8086?

I only make the point because the current EU is so far removed in scope from the initial post-WW2 version

We do call current intel CPU x86.

As so many things, the organization we now call EU has changed over time. Pretending it formed ex nihilo in 1993 is at least as silly as ignoring what came before.

Reality is messy and drawing hard lines can easily discard a lot of nuance. But if I have to, I would place the foundation of the EU in the post-war era, not at the Maastricht Treaty

It's not pretending. It's literally a treaty. How more formal and matter of fact would you like to get? And I never said it formed ex nihilo - try reading my comments "ab initio"

Pretending is believing the EU is just a handful of countries getting together to form a farming union to feed their people, in 2024. The EU is a totally different beast. To imply or believe otherwise is delusional

And "x86" is not the same term as "8086"

The EU is an evolution of the EEC which is much older. The whole federation as a concept was made after and in response to WWII

A significant and huge evolution. That's why they have separate names

The European Coal and Steel Community wasn't meant to be a political federation, as the name shows. Nor was the European Economic Community to give it its full name.

The concept of the ECSC/EEC/EU as a political federation was always a goal of some small number of federalists (mostly in the beginning communists who were imprisoned on Ventotene during the war), but they didn't have any support for that from the people of Europe themselves, which is why the history of the EU is full of the people building it saying explicitly that they have to lie about their true intentions and can only expand its powers during a crisis.

Certainly there was absolutely no intent anywhere immediately after WW2 to create a political federation. Far from it.

Yes, Jean Monnet, pretty much the founding father of the EU, said this in 1943

“There will be no peace in Europe if the States are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty, with all that that entails in terms of prestige politics and economic protectionism. The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the prosperity that modern conditions make possible and consequently necessary. Prosperity for the States of Europe and the social developments that must go with it will only be possible if they form a federation or a "European entity" that makes them into a common economic unit.”

Federation was always the goal and it was in direct response to WWII.