"After the war, European states actually scrambled to preserve their empires and use them to claim geopolitical leverage vis-à-vis the dominant superpowers to the east and the west, the Soviet Union and the US."
EU-AFRICA: Eurafrica: History of European Integration, “Compromise” of Decolonization (EuropeNow, link):
“In fact, rather than a postcolonial project, the EU (or the European Economic Community, EEC, as it was called at its foundation) was from the outset designed, among other things, to enable a rational, co-European colonial management of the African continent.
The relationship between the history of European integration and the history of colonialism is best understood through a compelling geopolitical entity once known as Eurafrica. As we have shown in a recent book by that title, most efforts to unify Europe from 1920 to 1960 systematically coincided with efforts to develop and stabilize the colonial system in Africa.”