The Unfinished History of European Integration 9789048540198

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The Unfinished History of European Integration

The Unfinished History of European Integration

Wim van Meurs, Robin de Bruin, Liesbeth van de Grift, Carla Hoetink, Karin van Leeuwen, Carlos Reijnen

Amsterdam University Press

Originally published as: Europa in alle staten. Zestig jaar geschiedenis van de Europese integratie. Wim van Meurs, Robin de Bruin, Carla Hoetink, Karin van Leeuwen, Carlos ­Reijnen, Liesbeth van de Grift. Uitgeverij Vantilt, 2013 [isbn 978 94 6004 126 6] © 2013 De auteurs en Uitgeverij Vantilt Translation: John Eyck (chapters 1 to 4) Edited by: Amanda Getty and Louise Vines

Cover design: Mijke Wondergem, Baarn Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Maps interior: Bert Heesen Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 814 9 e-isbn 978 90 4854 019 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/978 9462988149 nur 697 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

Contents Preface 7 Introduction 9 1. Many Roads to Europe Theory and Historiography: Federalism and Neofunctionalism The Other Europe: European Officials From the Sources: Egodocuments

21 44 50 57

2. The European Communities Under Construction Theory and Historiography: Intergovernmentalist Theory The Other Europe: The Court of Justice From the Sources: National Archives

67 93 99 105

3. What is Europe For? Theory and Historiography: Liberal Intergovernmentalism and the Economic Perspective The Other Europe: European Political Parties From the Sources: Opinion Polls

113 139 146 153

4. From Community to Union Theory and Historiography: Multilevel Governance and the Rediscovery of the Institutions The Other Europe: Think Tanks From the Sources: European Treaties

187 196 202

5. A Constitution for a Larger Europe? Theory and Historiography: Constructivism and Democracy The Other Europe: The European Central Bank From the Sources: Policy Documents

209 238 247 254

6. From Crisis to Crisis Widening and the External Crises Deepening and the Internal Crises An Unfinished History and the Future

263 267 272 278

163

Notes 281 About the authors 289 Abbreviations 291 Chronology 295 Bibliography 307 Index 325

Preface No expert on contemporary European affairs can evade the question of whether he or she is ‘for’ or ‘against’ the European Union. Yet, if this work has a political purpose, it is to convince its reader that we as citizens share responsibility with national and European politicians for the unique creature the EU has become. Today, probably more so than twenty years ago, Europeans are rethinking and remaking integration, well aware that in one form or another the EU is here to stay. So, this is an ‘unfinished’ history – the EU is by nature a work-in-progress and we are nowhere near fully understanding its nature. The present book was initially written for university courses for historians, political and social scientists, and students in cognate disciplines. It avoids jargon unknown to a well-informed newspaper reader and tells its ‘unfinished’ story in fewer than 150 pages. All of its contributors lecture on European integration at universities in the Netherlands. The first edition (2013) sought to satisfy the particular demands of two distinct disciplinary worlds: history and political science. Typically, political science textbooks on the EU are precise and systematic in explaining the institutional architecture and theories of integration, but their attention to its history prior to 1979, or even prior to Maastricht, is almost always inadequate. Conversely, even newer historical textbooks often end their narrative with Maastricht and Amsterdam, focussing on leaders and summits to the detriment of institutions and procedures. Our Dutch colleagues have not only encouraged us to take up the gauntlet here, but have also commented on draft chapters and offered answers to intricate EU questions. Meanwhile, five cohorts of students in Amsterdam and Nijmegen, born between the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam, have studied the European Union using this textbook; they in turn gave us plenty of feedback, which has helped us to further improve this edition. We are grateful to Kiran Patel, Ann-Christina Knudsen, Jan-Henrik Meyer and other colleagues at home and abroad, who encouraged us to have this textbook published in English and German for the international reader. The original edition of this text ended with Croatia’s accession to the EU in July 2013. To say that much has happened since is a gross understatement. In this updated version, the introduction has been rewritten to take into account new insights, the five chronological chapters have been updated where necessary, and a sixth chapter on new developments in the EU since 2013 has been added, ending with the first year of formal Brexit negotiations. The chronology and bibliography were updated to 2017 as well.

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The original project for a Dutch textbook on EU history owes much to Marc Beerens of Vantilt Publishers in Nijmegen, who was the first to embrace our aspirations and, together with his editors, helped to turn them into an elegant book. The same goes for the Faculty of Arts at Radboud University in Nijmegen and its History Department. Their financial support helped us to translate the enthusiasm of the initial brainstorm into a fully-fledged book manuscript, for the original Dutch edition and again for the present English edition and the concise German version (published by Dietz Verlag in Bonn, in cooperation with the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung). The Pademia Award for outstanding teaching on parliamentary democracy in Europe 2016 additionally motivated us to reconvene for updated editions in English and German. Thanks to the professionalism and commitment of Amsterdam University Press and editor Rixt Runia, the complex process of updating, translating and editing was completed in less than a year, from the publishing contract to the bookstore shelves. Special thanks go to our assistants Dana van Beurden and Joske Dekkers in Nijmegen for painstakingly compiling the large bibliography and other annexes, as well as for generating the multipurpose index. We are greatly indebted to John Eyck (New York) and Amanda Getty (Los Angeles) who proofread the English manuscript. Needless to say, we are solely responsible for the imperfections that inevitably remain. Due to its complex institutional and procedural architecture and the political imbroglio of its seven-decade history, the European Union is a challenging subject for a textbook. We hope that we have succeeded in presenting to the reader both less and more than a plethora of historical and contemporary facts and institutional idiosyncrasies: Less, by being highly selective in which events, names and events we chose to include in the text as an introduction to the European Union; and more, by offering context to historical events and a systematic analysis of the institutional architecture. We have succeeded in our mission if the reader finds the seven ‘eternal’ strategic dilemmas of the integration process, the central theme of this book, useful in making sense of day-to-day media reporting on Europe. We welcome comments and suggestions by students and faculty for an updated edition that will certainly be due in a few years’ time, given the pace of European politics today. Wim van Meurs Robin de Bruin Liesbeth van de Grift Carla Hoetink Karin van Leeuwen Carlos Reijnen

Introduction Today, swirling uncertainties as to the mid-term future of the European project constitute a significant challenge to the on-going process of European integration. Predictably, now that the EU is for the first time in its history witnessing a decline in membership, pamphlets proffering sweeping verdicts on Brussels are very much in vogue. The authors of this book, however, believe that recent developments should be met with fresh study into the past and present functioning of the EU and the long-term dynamics of European integration. After all, today’s uncertainties and controversies over the future of the European Union not only impact our reading of the present, as is visible in Brexit and the consequent soul-searching of the remaining 27. Current problems require a revisiting of the historical past. Events like Brexit or the migration crisis motivate historians to review historical crossroads in integration history, which is all too often reduced to unilinear progress. The impact of external structural forces such as climate change or conflict in the Middle East, the autonomous power of grand concepts – federalist aims, monetary union – and the motives of political agents both within and outside the Union are all being re-evaluated and scrutinized anew. This textbook responds to the demand to revisit the past on two levels. First, in the central chronological chapters, the authors present their versions of a consolidated, uncluttered narrative of European integration. Whereas some of the nuance and alternative perspectives suggested by recent scholarly work may find their way into these chapters, much more of this is offered in the thematic sections that are presented separately. Here, students will find that the challenging of the well-known grand narrative of integration history opens up new vistas for term papers, while the general reader will see how, through new interpretations of past events, political spice is added to present controversies. As a consequence of today’s turmoil, any presentation or interpretation of the history of European integration, no matter how academic or impartial, is inevitably perceived as a public statement weighing in as pro- or anti-Brussels by those championing re-nationalization, a federalist future, a two-speed Europe or an avalanche of national exits. As the reader of older textbooks on European integration will find, the classic narrative of European integration was one of optimism and progress – European integration as an incremental development towards an ever-closer union. In this model, intricacies and tensions, such as the stagnation of the seventies for instance, are reduced to temporary setbacks and decisions made prematurely. The terms ‘cul-de-sac,’

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for the aborted plans for a European Defence Community in the fifties, and ‘relaunch’ for Europe’s new ambitions thereafter, testify to this perspective. Today, the forced optimism of such a historical perspective has gone. By all appearances, this artificially-confident narrative has been replaced by an equally dominant negative one. While the optimistic view transformed any past decision into another step towards European federalism, the pessimistic view anachronizes present controversies, such as the democratic deficit, to the founding decades of the European Communities. In these Eurosceptical accounts just as in the classical narrative, the constraints of historical context are woefully ignored as the (controversies of) today’s reality are projected onto the past. This book is neither an uncritical panegyric nor a vituperative attack on European integration. Instead, the mission of The Unfinished History of European Integration is to unpack the inherent tensions in the concepts and realities of EU history. With the help of the seven ‘strategic dilemmas’ below, we aim to debunk both the narrative of the inexorable deepening of integration as well as the counter-narrative of ‘we the citizens versus Brussels.’ The attentive reader will encounter these dilemmas time and again as the chequered life story of Europe unfolds in the chapters that follow. They highlight structural contextual factors, question idealistic motives, identify ambiguities in citizens’ expectations and historicize the European project. This exercise neither attempts to proselytize die-hard Eurosceptics nor disconcert staunch believers in an ever closer union. It may, however, provide orientation to all other readers in the arcane and unfinished story of European integration.

Building Europe: Seven Dilemmas Throughout the chronological narrative of the European Union, seven ‘strategic dilemmas’ will help to identify continuity and change in the more than 70 years of its history. The seven dilemmas may be divided into two categories. Four concern conflicts over competencies and responsibilities: Who shapes Europe? The other three relate to the ideals and objectives of the integration process: What should a united Europe be? All seven are permanent issues in the process of European integration. Their relative importance, however, changes over time. The first dilemma is the one most acutely felt today – citizens versus states. From the very beginning, the EU has represented both member states and European citizens. Tellingly, each member state has its own European

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Commissioner as well as one representative in the European Council or the Council of Ministers. The weight of a minister’s vote, however, depends on the size of his or her country’s population. Seats in the European Parliament are allocated more or less proportionally to the number of citizens of each member state. Some federalists have gone so far as to suggest that citizens should be able to vote for MPs from any member state. A citizens’ initiative requires one million signatures from eight countries. More than any one of the other dilemmas, citizens versus states is inherent to the very process of European integration and is indissoluble. The next dilemma – intergovernmentalism versus supranationalism – is on the other hand often construed as a binary choice, with the European Union wavering from one extreme to the other. Throughout the decades, both politicians and analysts have used these two terms as a measure to assess any strategic proposal as a choice for ‘more’ Europe, or ‘less.’ Realities and ideals have thus evolved around these terms. Fischer’s Humboldt speech in 2000 was both hailed and denounced as a supranational endeavour. Half a century earlier, the same qualifications shaped the debate over direct elections for a European Parliament. The transfer of sovereignty to Brussels is real, but observers should be aware that these terms are political weapons as well. A third dilemma, often eclipsed by the aforementioned tension between Europe as a whole and individual nation states, concerns the division of labour between Europe and the world as a whole. Those who focus on Europeanization tend to forget the parallel process of globalization. Within the expanding Union, the deepening of integration, encompassing ever more policy fields, has led to demands for re-nationalization and a curtailing of European policymaking competencies. In many fields, however, the question is whether Europe has the size and power to cope with key challenges. Environmental issues, terrorism and financial markets respect neither the borders of nation states nor the outer borders of the European Union. On a slightly different note, the fourth dilemma pertains to the tension between external relations and the domestic affairs of Europe. For most of its existence the European Union has enjoyed a relatively comfortable position in this respect. On the one hand, Brussels has only had EU member states to take into account in setting incremental steps towards enhanced cooperation in (new) policy fields. On the other hand, Brussels has been free to define its own ambitions vis-à-vis neighbouring regions and countries. For a long time, the constellation produced by the Cold War and the Iron Curtain freed Brussels from extensive dealings with neighbours and Union applicants to the east. After the fall of communism, Europe was the only game in town and the single prospective future for more than a dozen countries. All this

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has changed in recent years, with Turkey and Russia offering alternatives to countries in Europe’s periphery (and even within the Union) and building their own spheres of influence. Furthermore, both external and domestic tensions have become entangled in critical challenges like Eurosceptical populism, the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts and, most importantly, the issue of refugees and migrants. The fifth dilemma of the intertwined dynamics of deepening and enlargement is associated with the fourth. Since the eighties, consecutive rounds of enlargement have tended to coincide with reforms of the European Union. Some have argued that the EU ought to decide on treaty reforms, modified institutional arrangements and major new policies well in advance of the next round of enlargement, as each round taxes political energy and makes consensus harder to come by. Conversely, others have argued that EU member states need the time pressure and the tangible problems that emerge from the accession of yet more nation states to garner the political will needed to overcome deadlock. Like the fifth, the sixth dilemma concerns the very ideal of Europe. In their strong reliance on technical expertise and the reconciliation of conflicting political and societal interests, the European Communities reveal their origins in the early post-war decades. The High Authority, the European Commission(s), the European Economic and Social Committee and the Court of Justice are cases in point. The rationale of output legitimacy, wherein the European project is validated through the products of its legislative work for all states and citizens, is akin to Monnet’s functionalism. In recent decades, the power of the directly elected European Parliament has increased and demands for more citizen participation are louder than ever. Partly due to the EU’s sheer size and complex nature as a union of both states and citizens, European politics bear few similarities to the politics of a national polity, the obvious point of reference. Europe’s Parliament is not driven by the dynamics of coalition and opposition, and plenary debates fail to enthuse what little European public sphere exists as a consequence. That said, not unlike in national politics today, the public’s conflicting demands for the politicization of policy decisions and for de-politicization as an alternative to much-detested politicking, coexist. The seventh dilemma is a classic, on par with intergovernmentalism versus supranationalism: Is Europe a solid community based on solidarity and shared values or norms? Or is Europe an ephemeral collusion of national interests that is perpetually re-negotiated? Thatcher’s ‘I want my money back’ and the endless debates over the costs and benefits for net contributors to the EU’s budget strongly suggest the latter. The recent euro crisis

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13

and the transfer of billions to Southern Europe have strained the ideal of European solidarity to breaking point. Brexit has arguably demonstrated to most other members the risks and limits of such a utilitarian perception of the EU. If the EU is accepted as legitimate only in its capacity to solve cross-border problems that require collective action, but is mistrusted or even rejected outright for all other policy issues, disintegration may be the result. In non-monetary terms, Turkey, Poland and Hungary have triggered recent debates on inalienable European values with their controversial reforms of constitutional and media laws, much like issues of war guilt and reconciliation in the Balkan countries or the status of non-nationals in the Baltic states.

Understanding Europe: Analytical Challenges As these seven dilemmas demonstrate, for those in Brussels and in national capitals attempting to manage European integration, this process is one of avoiding myriad pitfalls and often choosing between two evils. Hindsight is the advantage of historians, who reflect on strategic choices made in the past and their unintended consequences. Those writing the history of this process at the present time, however, find themselves facing challenges of their own. A survey like this book, which aims to contribute to both the history and political science disciplines, to be at the same time innovative and classic, both narrative and systematic, cannot escape hard choices in its set-up and selection of topics. Perhaps surprisingly, historians are latecomers to the field of EU studies. Prior to the nineties, historical studies on the European Communities in any language of the founding six were few and far between. In the first post-war decades and the early years of European integration, historians were focused predominantly on high politics and national politics; the European treaties and Communities were discussed only on the periphery. Academic disciplines other than history – political science and legal studies in particular – dominate the scholarly literature on the more than half century of EU history. Legal scholars above all are interested in the formal ‘reality’ of European treaties, institutional architecture and decision-making procedures. Political scientists with a background in international relations view the EU as an intergovernmental organization, whereas their colleagues in comparative politics take the supranational position of Brussels as their point of departure. Interpreting long-term processes and informal interactions beyond the institutional and procedural formalities may provide the

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historian’s in. The discipline’s attention has recently shifted from the high politics of key figures, conferences and treaties to a more structural and embedded history of European integration as a complex and multi-faceted process, rather than a simple chain of events. Conversely, the multifaceted character of the EU itself and the disciplinary plurality of European Studies, including economists and sociologists as well, are far beyond the competencies of even a large team of authors. The required conciseness of an introductory textbook thwarts ambitions to present an innovative perspective on the European Union in several respects. No textbook can make do without discussion of quite a number of key actors, conferences, treaties, institutions and other ‘memorabilia’ from high politics. Societal actors and processes, rather than the eventoriented institutions of low politics, are by default subordinated in such a historical overview. Similarly, the authors are acutely aware of the risk of teleological bias in examining incremental progress from early ideals and ambitions to institutional fruition and membership extension. High politics is particularly prone to omitting alternative options, roads not taken and unfinished projects. Finally, one of the major drawbacks of most EU history writing cannot be remedied here – its de-contextualization. Political events of the Cold War, economic issues such as oil crises or societal trends such as citizens’ disenchantment with politics, national and European, cannot be fully and systematically integrated. The systematic and comprehensive bibliography for both generic and thematic studies of European integration since the turn of the century, at the end of this textbook, is intended as a resource for further reading for the student writing a thesis or term paper on the European Union.

An Unfinished History Seldom has the direction of European integration been as uncertain as it is now, including as it does the possibility of disintegration. For that reason – and contrary to the customary practice of textbooks and the intuition of historians – the authors have updated this text as late as the publication process would allow. The manuscript was finished in December 2017, in total covering nine decades of European history, from Briand to Brexit. The authors have opted to first relate the classic historical narrative of European integration in each chapter. Additionally, the first five chapters each include three sections to supplement the historical narrative and the institutions under discussion. The ‘Theory and Historiography’ section

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introduces paradigms in the development of integration theory in political science, as well as schools of thought in historiography, within the particular temporal context of the chapter, offering further consideration and elaboration of the time period discussed. The ‘The Other Europe’ section offers selected topics concerning political and institutional actors within the integration process that are often disregarded in the classic narrative of high politics. Finally, the section ‘From the Sources’ attends to specific categories of sources and introduces basic skills for using them analytically. The latter sections in particular aim at classroom use, providing introductory-level students with practical starting points for their own research projects. More general readers with a primary interest in the historical narrative can easily leave these sections aside. Alternatively, those who have sufficient prior knowledge of institutions and history can study these three sections alone as well – each is varied and comprises approximately 30 pages. The historical narrative of the European Union is divided into six phases, each with their own central topics that follow both from the experiences of the politicians and citizens for whom European integration is a lived reality, and from the analyses of political scientists, historians and others. As discussed in the first chapter, which ends with the Treaty of Rome (1957-58), the relation of politicians and citizens to the grand ideals of the federalists took centre stage in these initial years, and tensions between normative ideals and political pragmatism is discernable in the work of early EU theoreticians and historians. As Chapter 2 describes, the subsequent era – lasting until the first expansion of the EU in 1973 – witnessed the consolidation of political power relations in the new Europe, the result of struggle between the larger and smaller member states and between member states and European institutions. This highly political and critical phase too had its impact on the development of theory and resulted in a more cynical perspective on the part of historians. In the third phase, from 1973 to 1985, which is covered by Chapter 3, both the successes and the conflicts in Europe were more economic than political in nature. Around 1980, the economy was increasingly foregrounded, both in the historical narratives and in the academic search for the driving force behind the integration process. As Chapter 4 demonstrates, it was not until the leadership of Jacques Delors and Jacques Santer (1985-99) that the political centre once located in the national capitals began to shift to Brussels. The question was no longer whether Europe would increasingly take the lead in policymaking, but how. Historians, political scientists, sociologists and public administration experts likewise began to focus their attention to an increasing extent on the functioning of the EU as a new, unique political system with an

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unprecedented number of policy fields and levels of governance. Consequently, as thematized in Chapters 5 and 6, there is but one question left that interests citizens, politicians and academics alike in the twenty-first century. In many respects, even the euro crisis is derivative of this issue. How do we identify European democracy and its deficiencies? Both in Brussels and in the national capitals the need for a more participatory and representative democracy for the increasingly unpopular European Union is more and more at odds with the need for pragmatic crisis management, including tough measures for saving the euro and coping with the influx of refugees. Each chapter in this textbook introduces the reader to major theoretical perspectives on European integration in their historical context. After all, theory not only explains the process of integration, but often has a normative function as well, indicating how politics and integration ought to operate. It has influenced the goals and strategies pursued in politics. The development of theory concerning European integration in political science can be described as a succession of schools of thought, which have at their core new questions and lines of inquiry; these questions, as well as their answers, are directly related to the ups and downs of the integration process itself and its perceived character. During the first two decades of European integration, most studies offered explanatory models as to why national governments were willing to transfer sovereignty to an international organization. The integration crisis of the sixties and seventies affirmed the theory of neorealism or intergovernmentalism, which approaches the hybrid EC/EU above all from the perspective of international relations. In the earlier optimistic phase federalists and (neo)functionalists had viewed the (unique) dynamics of European integration with much more confidence, but with the same ‘Why?’ question in mind. As states were transferring competences, a new line of inquiry came to light. From the perspective of comparative politics, the how concerning joint European policymaking could now be hashed out, with a focus on Brussels as a new and unique political system. Since the eighties, a third question has also arisen: In whose name has this Europeanization taken place? Alongside the administrative ‘How?’ the need for democratic legitimacy and public support for policymaking became a matter of increasing concern, both at European and national levels. The discussion of constructivism – e.g. the ‘national interest’ as a public and political construct, includes democratic and non-democratic forms of influence and the formation of public opinion. In the historiographical sections, it becomes clear that history writing does not allow for such clear division in schools of thought or for such inflexible coupling of developments in the integration process itself. By virtue

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17

of the heterogeneity of the discipline and the sources they use, historians are less inclined to choose a theoretical or methodological school explicitly. Additionally, the requirement of a certain temporal distance and the need for lengthy and labour-intensive archival research mean an inevitable delay before there can be any talk of well-defined conceptualizations among historians. However, with a bit of persistence, the pattern in political science texts described above is also recognisable in history texts on the EU. Until well into the seventies, historians showed little interest in the process of European integration. Following the German expert Walter Lipgens, their work focussed above all on Europe as an idea and an ideal, with a clearly normative bias. Just as neo-functionalism emphasises the ‘spill-over’ effects from optimistic visions of the future, these historians concentrated on the power of the European idea and its advocates. For most historians (just as for the intergovernmentalists among the political scientists), the new communities maintained ‘business as usual’ – a particular form of multilateral relations between sovereign states. Diplomatic history and archival research was the preview of classic political history in this regard. In view of the fact that most archive legislation provides for access to official documents only after thirty years, it was not until the eighties that studies based on internal negotiation documents could be performed. These tended to emphasize national interests, though attention did shift from international diplomatic history to decision-making and positions taken within each member state. Even as an innovator in archival research, Alan Milward and his famous The European Rescue of the Nation State from 1992 still fits within this realistic school of historiography, in terms of its economic angle and the attention Milward paid to the European Economic Community. The rise of new approaches to political history in the past twenty or thirty years – from conceptual history to the history of policy fields, from political culture to neo-institutionalism – has also impacted the history of European integration. Just like the development of theory in political science, ideas of a fixed national interest and the state as the (only) arbitrator between its citizens and Europe have grown obsolete as points of departure. In conjunction with the concept of multilevel governance since Maastricht, historians have recently begun to concentrate on European policy development, decision-making and implementation at national level. Similarly, since the nineties the public and political debate has drawn academic attention to the democratic deficit of the European Union. Whereas governance and policy history focus above all on the output of (democratic) policymaking, other historians (together with the constructivists) are interested in forms of representation, advocacy and participation at national and European levels.

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In each chapter that follows, the sections ‘The Other Europe’ and ‘From the Sources’ discuss those skills, sources and issues that make innovative contributions to advanced studies concerning the history of integration. New approaches are key to the selected topics, which address historical moments or actors that have remained underexposed from the classic perspective of international relations and the historical narrative sections of this book. As such aspects and actors are numerous, the selected topics (more than elsewhere in the book) bear the signature of the respective authors of the chapters. In ‘The Other Europe,’ European officials, the European Court of Justice, European political parties, interest groups, lobby organizations and think tanks and finally the European Central Bank are highlighted. In ‘From the Sources,’ approaches to different source types are discussed not only on the basis of practical examples but also systematically, including discussions of methodological pointers and pitfalls. Again aiming for the greatest possible variation of the most relevant categories, the sources discussed in these sections vary greatly, from memoirs and other autobiographical documents to national archives, the Eurobarometer surveys, treaties and finally European policy documents. For those who read critically between the lines, these sources yield valuable information concerning underlying conflicts of interest and institutional turf wars. The reader will explicitly and implicitly encounter the seven strategic dilemmas time and again as the story unfolds in The Unfinished History of European Integration. The analytical challenges are the sole responsibility of the authors. In this respect, the book is a balancing act. It offers a concise narrative of the key actors, events, institutions and treaties in the history and current reality of the European Union. It has been written with the general reader in mind and requires little or no prior knowledge, but offers some additional assistance for secondary school teachers and students in higher education. Finally, students writing a paper or thesis on an EU-related topic may find this book a welcome reference for the historical and institutional basics, a hub for the multidisciplinary and inexhaustible academic literature on the EU, as well as a toolbox of analytical skills. Wim van Meurs

Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi: Pan-Europa

Aristide Briand: Memorandum

Announcement of the Marshall Plan

European Congress in The Hague

Establishment of the Council of Europe

Schuman Plan for the European Coal and Steel Community Pleven Plan for a European Defence Community

Signing of the Treaty of Paris for the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community

First meeting of the Assembly of the ECSC in Strasbourg

Blocking of the treaty for the European Defence Community by the French parliament

Conference of Messina

Signing of the Treaties of Rome: European Economic Community and Euratom

First meetings of the Commissions of the EEC and Euratom

1923

1930

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1954

1955

1957

1958

1.

Many Roads to Europe

Almost seven decades have passed since the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was established as the earliest forerunner of the European Union. Today’s awareness of the problems, successes and failures in the integration process over the ensuing decades hinders an evaluation of the EU’s predecessors such as the ECSC. National interests, as well as the pressure of the Cold War present at its founding, cannot allow either the daring or the European idealism of these initial European institutions to be forgotten. Caution is quite advisable, then, when evaluating the ‘visionary thinkers’ of the nineteenth century and the interwar years. The supranational European integration after the Second World War, in which national governments put themselves under a higher European authority in specific policy areas, would to a significant extent come about as the consequence of the experience of that war, under the pressure of international developments. Yet there are substantial similarities between the foresight of these ‘visionary thinkers’ and subsequent European integration. The combination of economic integration and the promotion of prosperity, on the one hand, and peace in Europe, on the other, is but one example. Other recurring elements include the conviction that European institutions might create a sense of a shared European destiny as well as the perceived need for European unity in order to give Europe weight in world politics.

European Cooperation Before the Second World War If there was ever any talk of cooperation and unity in (part of) Europe in past centuries, then it was seldom based on any grand design. Sometimes the circumstances obliged political leaders to cooperate economically or militarily. At other times unity was the consequence of wars motivated by economic gain or power politics. Occasionally, plans were made for peaceful, unforced political or economic integration – literally the fusion of parts into a greater whole. Some of these plans and initiatives were intended as mere means to promote economic prosperity; for others, European political unity was the ultimate goal. Between these ‘functional’ and ‘idealist’ plans, however, no hard and fast dividing line can be drawn. Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon, was one of the important early thinkers of European political unification. In October 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and on the eve of the Congress of Vienna, he drew

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up a sketch for a united Europe. It was intended for the parliaments of the United Kingdom and France. As a start, those countries were supposed to set up a joint parliament. Other European countries could join this Europe yet in the making, provided they abolished their absolutist monarchies. Eventually, this future Europe should include the German nation. According to Saint-Simon, this nation – in view of the size of their population and the area it inhabited in the heart of Europe – would irreversibly acquire a leading role in Europe in the long term. Striking similarities exist between Saint-Simon’s ideas and the character of European integration after the Second World War. He advocated an ordered, planned collaborative society with ‘men of outstanding merit’ leading the way. Other similarities between his plan and the European Union included a social peace between the haves and the have-nots as well as an emphasis on economic rationalization. The integration of Europe that led to the European Union is often associated with perpetual peace among the countries in Europe. This idea was not foreign to Saint-Simon either. Whereas some thinkers from the beginning of the nineteenth century saw rivalry among the states of Europe either as the reason why European countries set out to explore and colonize the world, or as a source of vitality and strength, Saint-Simon saw disunity in Europe as a weakness instead. Just as in the EU later on, in Saint-Simon’s plans nation states were to keep their own parliaments. At the European level, however, accommodation was made for a representative body made up of the educated professional classes in Europe. People were shaped by their institutions, according to Saint-Simon, and this kind of a European ‘parliament’ would lead to a European harmonization of interests and even to European patriotism. Following Saint-Simon, many thinkers in the nineteenth century developed ideas on future European cooperation. This situation is remarkable, because the nineteenth century is generally seen as the century of nationalism and national unification. However, some nationalists like Giuseppe Mazzini – a champion of the pursuit of Italian unity in the nineteenth century – saw the ideal of cooperating European nations as an extension of their pursuit of national unification, equality and fraternity. Unlike the optimistic plans for Europe in the nineteenth century, the plans for Europe in the interwar years were driven by intensely felt political and economic crisis. At the beginning of the twentieth century, large parts of the world were ruled by European colonial powers. The First World War brought a relative decline in their position of power and marked the economic ascent of the United States. This first modern war with its

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millions of dead and inhuman trench warfare was also perceived as a deep crisis for European civilization and damaged the self-esteem of Europe’s political elites. Such feelings of doom and crisis were intensified by the communist seizure of power in Russia in 1917, and by the fear that this ideology and Soviet influence would spread to Central and Western Europe. After the First World War, more and more trade restrictions were introduced by nation states to protect their own economies. After the war, the global market in the agriculture sector witnessed a sharp fall in the price of food crops, specifically grain. During the war grain production had increased markedly in the United States, Canada and Argentina – as had exports to the European market – Central Europe’s own production shrank as a result of the warfare. When European production again reached its pre-war capacity after the end of the war, an oversupply arose. Beginning in the summer of 1921, a crisis ensued. After the First World War, new hope for preserving peace was placed in the League of Nations – a global organization that was supposed to effect peace among the nations of the world – established at the initiative of the United States. The division of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (as a loser of the war) into smaller states was in accordance with the League of Nations’ initial ideal of national self-determination. The initial concept of the League of Nations for peace and cooperation was thwarted, however, by the draconian conditions for peace that the United Kingdom and France placed upon Germany. As the main culprit of the war, Germany had to make enormous reparations by way of the Treaty of Versailles. After the First World War, the Austro-Japanese count Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, a fervent anti-communist, had initially been an enthusiastic propagandist for the League of Nations. Yet, he gradually became disappointed in this organization. In response to the sense of crisis in Europe, he published his famous book Pan-Europa in 1923. The book put forward a plan for the political and economic unification of Europe. ‘Europeans’ like Coudenhove-Kalergi actually considered the unity of Europe as a second-best option, because the League of Nations was not functioning well. Just as in Saint-Simon’s plan and the later European Communities, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s plan was based on ideas about peace among the nations of Europe as well as socioeconomic peace between capital and labour. In Pan-Europa Coudenhove-Kalergi elaborated a vision for the future. From his point of view, the European tendency toward ‘Kleinstaaterei’ (territorial fragmentation) was at odds with the increase in size of the four global power blocs of the future (Pan-America, the British Empire, the

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Soviet Union and the Far East). Compared to the size of these empires, a fragmented Europe could not hold its own, in spite of its colonies in Africa, South-America, Indochina and Indonesia. In Coudenhove-Kalergi’s eyes, the European continent, together with these colonies, would have to form one large economic entity without internal tariff barriers. It was relatively easy to fit French ‘Eurafrica’ into this project. However, a Dutch economic free trade policy in Indonesia had resulted in extensive trade between the Dutch East Indies and the extra-European world, especially the United States. The interests of Dutch colonial enterprises could not easily be reconciled with the building up of tariff walls around the borders of Pan-Europe. Pan-Europe would have to develop a strongly regulated economy. PanEuropean agriculture and industry had to be protected from cheap imported products. In the area of agriculture, Pan-Europe would even have to become self-sufficient. The assumption that larger economic entities would lead to better coordination of economic production and more mass production constituted the core of his thinking. European economic unity would lead to rationalization, an increase in production and lower prices. As a consequence, prosperity would increase and become more widespread. The ‘class struggle’ between the propertied class and the workers would be prevented by European unity. And communism would lose its appeal. Poverty, after all, was the breeding ground for communism. In the 1920s, the problems caused by the peace treaties after World War I, seemed to be solved. This situation induced the French statesman Aristide Briand to bring forth the 1930 Briand Memorandum, which contained a plan for European cooperation within the framework of the League of Nations. Much like in the League of Nations, his plan envisioned complete sovereignty for the affiliated countries. Although the plan did mention a common market, for Briand peace among the great European powers came first. Institutions of the envisioned cooperation were a European conference with representatives from the national governments, a permanent political committee as an executive body for the conference, and a secretariat. The plan did not arouse much enthusiasm in Germany or the United Kingdom. Germany read it as a French attempt to consolidate its own position of power in Europe. The British felt the same way and were more focussed on their empire outside Europe than on the European continent anyway. Economically speaking, the times were unfavourable for the plan too. After the October 1929 Stock Market Crash, a worldwide economic crisis had broken out, which led to nation states embracing economic protectionism. When the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, all hope for cooperation in Europe evaporated.

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The League of Nations also constituted the point of departure for another European initiative for economic cooperation. In order to fight the economic crisis, the League of Nations was pursuing the reduction of barriers to international trade. In December 1930, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg signed the so-called ‘Oslo Convention’ to that end. In this rather modest trade agreement, no increase in existing import tariffs without prior consultation and no promulgation of new duties unilaterally and without prior consultation, were stipulated. The Oslo countries wanted to set a good example in trade policy for the major European powers. As the United Kingdom and other countries refused to join, their objective shifted to the expansion of trade among members of the agreement instead. In July 1932, three Oslo countries (the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) concluded the more ambitious Ouchy Convention. The goal was the phased reduction of tariffs among the signatories. Existing import duties would not be raised, nor would new ones be introduced. The agreement, which was intended as the first step towards a customs union in Europe, was open to accession by the Oslo states and other countries on an equal footing. Yet, after the United Kingdom rejected this convention, too, and allowed its imperial trade interests to prevail over continental trade, hope for liberalising European trade disappeared. A 1933 attempt by the League of Nations to put an end to increasing national protectionism in international trade by organising an economic world conference failed as well. Nor was this economic nationalism limited to the protection of one’s own market against products from aboard. One by one, countries proceeded to devalue their own currencies vis-à-vis those of their trading partners, which made their own exports cheaper. Some countries even ‘dumped’, selling their products onto the markets of their trading partners at rock-bottom prices in order to ruin competition from those countries. The memory of this economic warfare during the 1930s was the most significant economic motivation for a common market in Western Europe after the Second World War. In the second half of the 1930s, the Oslo states put themselves to the political task of international detente among the major European powers. Nobody suspected these smaller countries of pursuing territorial expansion or dominance in Europe. Attempts at detente proved to be fruitless, however, and the economic advantages of the agreement, became increasingly meagre for the Member States. At the end of the 1930s, there was barely any talk of cooperation among the Oslo states.

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Hitler’s New Order and the Federalist Europe of the Resistance In the end, plans and initiatives for cooperation and unity in Europe all broke down as a result of the unwillingness of the national states before the Second World War. European cooperation in and of itself had often been a second option, after worldwide cooperation for the sake of peace or free trade failed in the League of Nations. Hitler’s Nazi Germany would have nothing of either the League of Nations, or Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europa. According to the Nazis, it was not peoples but governments that created these artificial institutions. To them, moreover, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europa was the overture to global capitalism, while they pursued a Europe under German leadership that would be independent of imports from the rest of the world. In spite of their objections to Pan-Europa, the Nazi leaders championed a European vision of their own. Albert Speer – a key economic figure in Hitler’s Third Reich during the Second World War – had wanted to create an organization similar to the ECSC in terms of economic goals (albeit an undemocratic version). As the dominant power on the European continent, Nazi Germany propagated European economic cooperation in a ‘Großraumwirtschaft’ (‘bloc economy’). On 25 July 1940, for example, the German minister for Economic Affairs presented a financial plan for a multilateral ‘clearing’ of assets and debts in territories under German rule: when the balance of trade between two countries was out of balance, the assets and shortages would thenceforth no longer be calculated ‘bilaterally’ but rather ‘multilaterally’ among all the countries participating. Thus, currency restrictions for mutual trade between these countries could be downsized, which would intensely simplify trade with one another. The plan resembled the European Payment Union subsequently created in August 1950. In Nazi Germany, many farther-reaching plans were considered, such as a customs union with free movement of capital, but these plans were not a priority for the political leadership. National Socialism was primarily geared towards the military conquest of territory for the German ‘Herrenvolk’ (‘master race’) in Poland and (from June 1941 onwards) in the Soviet Union. The National Socialist plans for an economic ‘Großraum’ in Western and Central Europe were a façade for economic exploitation by Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, some institutions in Nazi Germany as well as a few authorities in the occupied territories believed in a new economic Europe under German leadership. Among these ‘believers’ were many non-Nazis as well. To them these plans constituted the first step toward economic unification on the European continent. Many hoped that

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the Hitler regime would be pushed aside by more moderate forces from the German army after the passage of time, so that the fall of the Nazis would not be followed by the collapse of Germany. Such a collapse, in their mind, would open the door to a Soviet invasion of Europe. Because of the German hegemony that existed on the continent in 1941 and 1942, the organized German resistance against Hitler was compelled to develop a vision for Europe. There had to be a plan for the occupied territories, once Hitler was pushed aside. Carl Goerdeler, the new chancellor the German resistance had in mind, hoped for a unification of the European people against Soviet communism. In 1941 he foresaw a future European league of states under German leadership. Even though he was still thinking of a separate German Wehrmacht at that moment, a year later he was a proponent for creating a European army. The leaders of the Kreisau Circle, a Christian-social resistance group, wanted to turn the economic exploitation of the National Socialists into economic cooperation in Europe. Europe was supposed to become a federation of historical entities of similar size that would break the spell of nationalism. Later on, the Kreisau Circle developed a so-called ‘Europe Plan’ as blueprint for a European community (with European legislative institutions and a constitution). Much like in the EU many years later, the principle of subsidiarity was emphasized – decisions should be taken at the lowest possible level of governance. Furthermore, the Kreisau Circle spoke out in favour of a world organization stronger than the League of Nations. Outside of Germany, in the ranks of the resistance against National Socialism and fascism, a federalist European ideal also developed during the war. It sought an alternative to the National Socialists’ pursuit of a European ‘Großraum’, and a form of collective security against the Soviet Union. According to these federalists, the German conquest of the European continent proved that European countries could not defend themselves individually, and that national sovereignty in Europe had become a chimera. The era of Kleinstaaterei, according to them, was at an end, both militarily and economically. Despite fundamental differences, like respect for human values, their federalist ideal had a few similarities with the National Socialists’ Europe. Both for the Nazis and the resistance, ‘Europa’ had undertones of a socioeconomic ‘third way’ between the capitalist free-market economy of the United States and the communist centrally-planned economy of the Soviet Union. Increasing the scale of the market to all of Europe was bound to lead to rising prosperity. After the downfall of Nazi Germany in May 1945, champions of a stronger European continent, were more or less opposed by proponents of Europe

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as a building block for broader political cooperation and unification in an Atlantic context or in the context of the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. Some thought along the lines of Aristide Briand, whose European plans of 1930 proposed initiating a caucus for European cooperation within the League of Nations. In the early post-war years, ideas about federalist cooperation and strengthening the community of European states existed alongside even more ambitious prospects, such as so-called ‘world federalism’. In the second half of the 1940s, however, these visions for worldwide cooperation dwindled under the impact of the Cold War. The European federalists constituted a colourful elitist club, united as the Union of European Federalists under the presidency of Hendrik Brugmans on 17 December 1946. At that time, many members envisioned a Europe consisting of smaller regions united into one European federation. To their mind, the power of the nation states had to be broken. That process would politically integrate post-war Germany (the anticipated economic engine of Western Europe) without it having to be curtailed economically for fear of renewed German military aggression. Though these federalists did have their long-term objectives, they lacked a concrete strategy to achieve these ends.

The Cold War and the German Question After the end of the Second World War, the Cold War and the division of Germany constituted important catalysts for economic cooperation in Western Europe. Western European democracies were under pressure to provide higher levels of prosperity for their citizens. Poverty as a consequence of the crisis in the 1930s, was one of the root causes of the Second World War, still fresh in the collective memory. States wanted to prevent their own citizens from becoming receptive to communism due to material poverty. Economic integration of the western half of Germany into Western Europe was a significant pursuit for Western European countries. They sought to profit economically from rebuilding western Germany without risking a renewed threat from Germany as a dominant economic and political power at the heart of Europe. Integration, moreover, prevented the creation of a reunited and neutral Germany, which over time might have ended up siding with the Soviet Union. The Allies disagreed on the question of what was supposed to happen with Germany after the Nazi regime had been defeated. Toward the end of the Second World War, there were initially plans in the United States to re-agriculturalize Germany as a punishment. Germany, which from

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the nineteenth century onwards had been the industrial core of Europe, was supposedly to be divided up to become primarily agricultural. The objective was to prevent it from ever being able to produce tanks, airplanes and explosives, whereby it could once again become a threat. That plan quickly proved to be impracticable. Keeping Germany economically low, would lead to an economic downturn for Germany’s trading partners too. Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met at the Yalta conference at the beginning of 1945. On that occasion and at the Potsdam conference, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945, post-war European order and the German question were high on the agenda. As a result of these conferences, Europe was divided into Eastern and Western spheres of influence. Germany was divided up into four occupation zones. As Germany ceased to be a common enemy, the mutual fear of the communist East and the democratic and capitalist West increased ever more, resulting in the Cold War. On 12 March 1947, American president Harry S. Truman gave an historic address to the American Congress, in which he promised aid to all countries that felt threatened by communist expansion. The so-called ‘Truman Doctrine’ was translated into the policy of ‘containment’, with the objective of blocking further expansion of communism in the entire world, including Western European colonies, where the pursuit of independence was rising markedly. The Cold War had a strong economic, in addition to a geopolitical dimension. The fact that the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to acquire as much worldwide economic influence as possible constituted a significant cause of the Cold War. Moreover, the West and the East were determined to maximize their economic power as a precondition for military power as well as to demonstrate the superiority of their respective ideological systems. The post-war economic order of the Western world had already been set up during the Second World War. The 1944 Bretton Woods system for regulating reciprocal international payment transactions, in which Western European states also participated after liberation, was of major importance. Thenceforth, the currencies of the various participating countries had fixed exchange rates vis-à-vis the American dollar. The dollar was further convertible to gold and thus inflation-proof. This system, which held on until 1973, envisioned liberalization of trade, yet providing for the possibility of limiting imports from countries with scarce currencies. After the war, the economies of European countries had to be rebuild once again. Just as in the 1930s, economies in Western European countries were heavily closed off to one another as a result of tariff barriers and other national protectionist measures. An even more urgent foreign trade

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problem for Western European countries was a shortage of dollars, caused by an increased demand for imports from America after the elimination of Germany as a capital goods supplier. This hindered exports for the United States. The government of the United States was willing to help, but insisted on European economic integration, a precondition for efficiency in production and, therefore, rising prosperity. Last, but not least, integration would facilitate American exports to Europe. In June 1947, the U.S. secretary of State George Marshall made a speech declaring American intentions in the matter of aid through dollars to Europe, whereupon, on the Americans’ orders, a conference for European economic cooperation was organized in the summer of 1947. On that occasion, participating European countries were expected to organize the distribution of Marshall aid – officially called the European Recovery Program (ERP). According to the Marshall Plan, European importers would deposit money for imports from the United States in national currencies into a so-called ‘counterpart account’ for their own country. The exporter from the United States had the owed amount paid for by his own government in dollars. The European country repaid the national debt and paid for reconstruction projects with money in the counterpart account. The money (thirteen billion dollars) pledged by George Marshall, the American minister for Foreign Affairs, was initially intended for all European countries, but the countries under the influence of the Soviet Union were forced by Stalin to turn down the aid. Occupied territories in western Germany were not represented at the conference, nor were they represented by the occupying Allied authorities. At the meeting in Paris in July 1947, the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) acted in unison for the economic benefit of western Germany. Between the Benelux countries and France intense controversy arose over the inclusion of these German territories into the recovery programme. The French took the position that a recovery of German industry constituted a threat to the security of Europe and preferred to maintain the Allies’ production restrictions for Germany. The Benelux delegation successfully insisted on including the German economy in the European economy because of their substantial dependence on exports to Germany. The Americans were the driving force behind the formation of the most important institution for economic cooperation in Europe in the 1940s. In April 1948, in the context of Marshall aid, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) was established. OEEC increasingly acquired its own competences. For instance, beginning in the autumn of 1948, proposals for the use of Marshall dollars from the various European

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countries were evaluated internally. Subsequently, these proposals were presented to the American Congress for approval. The total aid between 1948 and 1952 amounted to more than 12.4 billion dollars and was distributed across sixteen European countries, including Turkey. The aid helped restore confidence in the economy of Western European countries, while the East European states kept their distance on Stalin’s order – an initial indication of the division of Europe. At the same time, financial support from the United States forced the Western European countries to cooperate. OEEC’s role was not only limited to Marshall aid. The initiative of the OEEC to cancel claims and debts in a multilateral West European framework constituted the first step towards the European Payments Union (EPU), created in August 1950. Currencies became convertible: no restrictions on currencies applied for reciprocal trade, whereby that trade was not hampered by deficits or surpluses in the balance of trade between two countries. In addition to the above forms of cooperation, joint action also emerged on a smaller scale. The spirit of cooperation between the Ouchy countries was revitalized in September 1944, for example, when the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments-in-exile signed the Benelux Treaty. They committed themselves to forming a customs union after the war. This commitment is often seen as preparing the way for European economic integration. The fact that the Benelux did not function too well economically was not widely known. The motives for the founding of the Benelux were economic in nature. Initially, the economies of Belgium and the Netherlands were expected to complement each other. A customs union was deemed beneficial to both. In reality, Belgium’s economy recovered fairly quickly after its liberation in 1944, whereas the Dutch economy came out of the war battered eight months later. As a result of its meagre exports, the Netherlands had to urgently deal with problems in its payments balance. While wages and prices were allowed to rise quickly in Belgium, the Netherlands held on to low wages and prices. It was not until the 1950s, when Dutch exports rose more strongly, that this situation changed. In February 1958, the Benelux states signed a treaty for economic union, a label that this intergovernmental alliance did not deserve, in practice. Therefore, the Benelux barely qualifies as a meaningful forerunner of the European Economic Community. In sum, after the Second World War Western Europe feared both a renewed threat from Germany and communism from the East. In the minds of policy makers, the best remedy for communism was more prosperity for their own citizens, but for such welfare, a vibrant West-German economy was indispensable. The economic integration of Europe offered a solution to this dilemma.

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Intergovernmental and Federalist Routes to Europe Functional economic cooperation among the nation states in Western Europe, as with the Marshall aid, arose independently of political European idealism and its two currents of intergovernmentalism (or unionism) and federalism at the end of the 1940s. In the case of intergovernmentalism, cooperation beween states was based on conferences and each kept its sovereignty. Conversely, European federalism pursued a federal European state with a supranational government and parliament. In supranational organizations competences of national states were transferred to institutions above the nation states. Federalists like Altiero Spinelli, former member of the Italian Resistance, wanted to integrate the European nations through a directlyelected constituent assembly. Thus, the retarding effects of national governments would be avoided in the formation of a European political community. In May 1948, a large European congress was organized where representatives of European movements came together in The Hague – prominent people from dozens of European countries, as well as Canada and America. They came from labour movements, churches, youth organizations, the business community and politics. One of these prominent figures was Winston Churchill, who advocated an intergovernmentalist position. As Britain’s former prime minister, he was an ambivalent advocate of a united Europe. In a famous speech in Zurich in September 1946, he had spoken out in favour of Franco-German reconciliation as an initial step toward the United States of Europe. Yet, in his view the United Kingdom as a colonial power should initially stay aloof. The foremost question in The Hague was whether the European countries could accept the principle of a common authority for common interests. Despite the lip service paid to federalism at the congress, this pivotal question remained unanswered. It was agreed that a Council of Europe had to be created as a European body for human rights, along with a court of justice to ascertain that those rights were respected. The international study commission for this Council of Europe, consisting of delegations from the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, tackled the question of whether this future organization should hold supranational authority. Owing to British disapproval, power was placed in the hands of an intergovernmental Council of Ministers. Additionally, the British kept the supranational parliamentary assembly, set up as counterpart to the Council of Ministers, from acquiring any real competences. The Council of Europe in Strasbourg emerged from these talks on 5 May 1949. Initially, ten countries took part: the five countries mentioned above, as well as Italy, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

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The Council of Europe had a Council of Ministers and a Consultative Parliamentary Assembly (Assemblée consultative). Initially, some federalists hoped that this assembly would become the germ for political unity, but the impotence of the advisory body became apparent rather quickly, characterized as it was by internal discord and poor relations with the Council of Ministers. The Council of Europe was responsible for supervising observance of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which stipulated the rights of individuals and citizens for all inhabitants of the contracting states. The Convention was drawn up in 1950, following the example set by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Council of Europe expanded quickly in terms of Member States. From 1959 on, citizens who believed their rights as set forth in the ECHR had been violated, could take legal proceedings before the European Court for Human Rights headquartered in Strasbourg.

Functionalist Routes to Europe During the establishment of the Council of Europe, federalism proved to be an unachievable ideal as a result of the opposition of national states. After the creation of the Council of Europe, attempts were made to bring about an integrated Europe by way of the so-called ‘functionalist’ route. Functionalism was a method to effect unity in a stealthy manner. In view of the fact that, according to the functionalists, Europe could not be created all at once or by following one single plan, they sought out a supranational shared destiny in a crucial ‘sector’, like heavy industry, agriculture or the military apparatus. In doing, they expected that the foundation could be laid for an increasingly closer union of nations. This method was called ‘sectoral integration’. The original functionalist ideal was technocratic administration by experts. In practice functionalists were just as attached to supranational political institutions as federalists, because those entities would aid in the formation of a European spirit among politicians. The Frenchman Jean Monnet is seen as the driving force behind this functionalist method and thus as the ‘founding father’ of post-war European integration. Yet at the end of the Second World War he was above all still looking after the interests of French industry. As a high-ranking official, he developed a plan for modernising the French economy, which was adopted by the French government under the leadership of De Gaulle. According to France, Germany had to be kept small in order to prevent it from once again constituting a military threat as well as to provide room for the French

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economy. For that development and modernization, France needed German coal and for that purpose it demanded assurances. Germany’s Saarland (in the French occupation zone) was placed under French administration. In addition, the Ruhr region (in the British occupation zone) as well as the Rhineland were to come under French or international administration, according to the French. The Americans, however, did not want to detach these territories from Germany, for fear that it would drive the Germans into the hands of Stalin, just as the Treaty of Versailles had driven them into the arms of Hitler. Instead, in 1949, the International Authority for the Ruhr (IAR) was created as a precondition of the Western allies for establishing the Federal Republic of Germany in the Western occupation zones. This IAR – an international entity that in effect controlled the West German economy by way of the Ruhr region – was a thorn in the side of the young Federal Republic. The French strategy had failed, but Monnet had a good eye for the American desire for European cooperation. For the sake of French economic interests, he elaborated a plan in which French management of German raw materials was worked into a comprehensive peace plan. Prompted by Monnet, Robert Schuman, the French minister for Foreign Affairs made an appeal for Franco-German reconciliation on 9 May 1950. Schuman argued that France had already been a champion of a united Europe for more than twenty years (ever since the Briand Plan). Because that plan had not been created at the crucial time, war had broken out once again. Now the age-old opposition between France and Germany was finally to disappear. The countries were to be brought closer to each other by the institution of a supranational High Authority for heavy industry, that is, for the production of coal and steel. In 1950 coal still constituted the most important industrial fuel, and steel was essential for the arms industry. Given the installation of a High Authority for coal and steel, a war between France and the Federal Republic became not only unthinkable but also materially impossible, according to Schuman. Participation was open to all European countries that wanted to join. The Schuman Plan was in essence a peace project. Even the day of its declaration – one day after the fifth anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany – recalled that intention. Without growing solidarity in production, the nations of Europe would be headed for a new war. In addition, Schuman’s declaration was a combination of various objectives. The spirit of European colonialism resounded in Schuman’s announcement that this new European community would acquire more (financial) resources for its most prominent task: the development of the African continent, which was

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at that time largely under French administration. Here, the reformist nature of Europe went hand-in-hand with imperial conservatism. Other countries participated for their own reasons. The Netherlands, for example, was interested in participation with an eye toward a future without its most important overseas territory, Indonesia, which had become independent in 1949. Decolonization obliged the Netherlands to undertake economic reorientation through industrialization, among other things. The Schuman Plan transferred control of coal and steel production to a supranational body. This entity would hinder dumping and other forms of improper competition resulting from government protectionism for trading partners. On account of its recent past, the Federal Republic could not count on very much international prestige. For Bonn, participating in the plan was a strategy to gain back some foreign influence. On top of that, the United States exerted pressure on the Federal Republic to participate in the integration process. After the introduction of the plan the Federal Republic would be rewarded with the elimination of the International Authority for the Ruhr. France, the Federal Republic, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg subsequently established the ECSC, the first supranational community with functionalist principles, based on a treaty that was valid for 50 years. This Treaty of Paris was signed 18 April 1951, whereby the ECSC brought it into effect on 25 July 1952. As its central mission, the Community was to ensure the permanent supply of coal and steel, important for the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War. The ECSC preamble saw an increase in production as contributing to the ‘workings of peace’. In August 1952, the High Authority – the administration of the ECSC – met for the first time. The Council of (national) Ministers followed in September. The approval of this Council was required for important High Authority decisions. Additionally, the consultative Common Assembly, the parliament of the ECSC, came together for the first time in September. As the ECSC went into effect, it led to high expectations in the Member States. The ECSC was directed by the High Authority. This entity consisted of nine members (at most two per member state) to avoid any appearance that members of the High Authority were representatives of their Member States rather than acting as supranational European government ministers. Eight of these officials were appointed in talks between the Member States; the ninth was appointed by those eight. Members had to swear an oath that they would represent the interests of the Community as a whole and as such give no priority to the interests of their Member State. Initially the members of the High Authority had a mandate of six years; later on, this term was reduced to four years.

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Council of Ministers Ministers of the Member States

Court of Justice Nominated and appointed by the Member States

ppro va advis es

and g rants a initia te

s mea

sures

Nominated by labour and employer organizations, appointed by the Council of Ministers

es advis

l

Consultative Committee

High Authority

monitors

Nominated and appointed by the Member States and by cooptation

Common Assembly Delegates from the national parliaments (double mandates)

European institutions: Treaty of Paris (1951/1952)

The High Authority supervized execution of the Treaty and for that purpose could provide non-binding advisory opinions to Member States and individual parties; make recommendations that were only binding in regard to the objectives but that left the way of implementing these objectives to the Member States; and reach decisions that were binding to all parties. The High Authority, then, came above national governments in areas strongly demarcated in the ECSC Treaty. In its first two and a half years the High Authority was under the presidency of Monnet. The Netherlands and Belgium had demanded robust competences for a Council of Ministers in the ECSC. This so-called ‘Council’ – from whom approval was required in the case of important decisions – was a community body that was deemed to represent the general interest in relation to coal and steel, while individual ministers also represented the interests of their Member States in the Council. In practice, the Council constituted an intergovernmental counterweight to the supranational High Authority. In this line of reasoning, political and democratic responsibility for decision-making lay with the Council of Ministers. Initially every state delegated one member of its cabinet to the Council. With the exception

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of the very first president – Konrad Adenauer, the West German federal chancellor and minister for Foreign Affairs – these delegates were mostly ministers for Economic Affairs or for Industry and Trade. The presidency was carried out in rotation for a time period lasting three months according to the alphabetical order of the participating states. The High Authority was controlled by the so-called Common Assembly (Assemblée commune), usually called ‘the Assembly’. This forerunner of the European Parliament came together at Strasbourg once a year and furthermore in extraordinary session upon request of the Council. In anticipation of future direct elections, the 78 members of the Assembly were provisionally delegated by their national parliaments. This simultaneous membership in the national parliament and the Assembly was called the ‘double mandate’. The delegates were not representatives of their national states but, rather, of their political parties. The main parties represented in the Assembly were Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals, though representatives of smaller parties could also be found there. Sister parties from the various Member States worked together, yet there was still no talk of forming European parties. In the ECSC there was a Consultative Committee, consisting of employers, employees and business people, the members of which were appointed by the Council. The goal of involving these interested parties, was to create consensus for the policy that was to be executed so that social peace would be maintained. This Consultative Committee was a forerunner of the later Economic and Social Committee in the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Community for Atomic Energy (ECA or Euratom). Finally, there was the Court of Justice, where Member States or Community institutions were able to have disputes adjudicated concerning decisions and recommendations of the High Authority. Businesses and organizations could do the same thing in certain cases. The Court consisted of seven judges and two advocates general. This court was seated in Luxembourg and ought not be confused with the Council of Europe’s European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Failed Attempt at a ‘Constitution’ for Europe Under pressure from the Cold War, sector integration for Western Europe was also pursued in the military. In spite of the Truman Doctrine, the United States reduced their troops in Europe. When the communists seized power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, it led to a reaction of anti-communist alarm

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in Western Europe. It was feared that Western Europe would be handed over to communism from the East. Various Western European countries pursued Western European cooperation in the military arena, which would also strengthen ties with the United States. This pursuit took shape in the Brussels Pact that was concluded by France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in March 1948, and was formally a military alliance against the threat from Germany. Subsequently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in 1949, which created a shared military destiny between the United States and European countries against the communist threat from the East: an attack on one of the countries was conceived as an attack on all of them. The intensification of the Cold War from 1948 forward resulted in plans for a European Defence Community (EDC) in 1950. The German question played a significant role in security policy. After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was established in East Germany in that same year. The United States insisted upon the rearmament of the Federal Republic in 1950. That remilitarization had to do with increasing tensions with the Soviet Union and the outbreak of the Korean War. A re-armed West Germany would make Western Europe less vulnerable to an attack from the East. At the head of the Federal Republic stood Adenauer, a Christian Democrat and a Rhinelander, who with his policy of ‘Westbindung’ (‘connecting to the West’) wanted there to be no doubt that his Federal Republic belonged to the West. This position was in contrast to Kurt Schumacher, his Socialist political rival, who seemed to give priority to a ‘Wiedervereinigung’, (‘re-unification’) of Germany that implied concessions to Moscow. In 1952 Stalin offered to allow both Germanies to re-unite, provided this re-united Germany would be neutral in the Cold War. The Socialists in West Germany were – in spite of their fierce anti-communism – more susceptible to this notion than the Christian Democrats. Under Adenauer’s leadership, West Germany withstood the tempting appeal from Moscow. Many European countries felt no enthusiasm for an autonomous WestGerman army with German commanders. Under pressure from his former leader Monnet, French minister-president René Pleven therefore drafted a plan for a European army. West German troops, would participate in this army, thus expressing mutual reconciliation and the pursuit of peace in Western Europe. The army would be under orders from a joint European command. There was much resistance to establishing this European Defence Community. The Federal Republic initially had little say in the plan and felt degraded as a result, whereas other potential participants were

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afraid of too much West German power. The Americans were initially not enthusiastic about the plan, because they saw it as a French attempt to drag out the re-armament of the Federal Republic. Monnet hammered away at the American allies about the need for integrating the Federal Republic into Western Europe and convinced them of the value of the plan, which was altered to the benefit of the Federal Republic. Under intense American pressure, the EDC Treaty was signed in Paris on 27 May 1952. In accordance with the usual procedures, the EDC could begin after the parliaments of the Member States had ratified the treaty. The political leadership of the EDC was to be in the hands of a supranational European Political Community (EPC). When the ECSC Assembly came together for the first time on 10 September 1952, it was directly charged with the task of drawing up a European Constitution. All at once it seemed like a European federal state with a democratic parliament had come within arm’s reach. For this occasion, the members of the Assembly of the ECSC constituted a so-called Assemblée ad hoc, in which a few members from the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe were chosen as well. Their selection was necessary for achieving the correct number of representatives that had been granted each country in the EDC. A committee consisting of 26 members was formed to draw up the constitution, with subcommittees that tackled the questions of competences, political institutions and external relations, respectively, of the envisioned EPC. The results of the constitutional committee were discussed by the Assemblée ad hoc in January 1953, after which the draft version of the statutes for the EPC was tendered to the ministers. Federalists wanted to take advantage of what they perceived as positive public opinion. In the early 1950s, national branches of the European Movement, a European lobbying group for European unity, organized several referendums on European unity in selected West European cities. Just how high expectations were in 1952 and 1953 among the population of, for example, the Netherlands, and how great their enthusiasm, was apparent in a trial referendum organized on 17 December 1952. Approximately 95 per cent of those entitled to vote who turned out in the Dutch towns of Bolsward and Delft (considered to be representative for the Netherlands as a whole) desired a united Europe with a European government and a democratic representative body. At the end of 1952, against a backdrop of talks concerning the EPC, the Dutch minister for Foreign Affairs Wim Beyen presented the Beyen Plan, for a customs union that was to make economic warfare as waged in the 1930s impossible once and for all. During times of crisis, according

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to leading politicians, a lax form of economic cooperation would not be able to withstand the egoism of national states, which would want to solve their own economic problems at the expense of their trading partners, if necessary. Whereas France, specifically, did not in fact want any customs union on account of the weak competitive strength of its own economy, the Netherlands considered the Beyen Plan to be the most attractive component of the agenda for European integration. The Dutch government did not want any integration without also having something economically substantive to it. For the Netherlands as a trading country, the creation of a customs union and, subsequently, of a fully-developed common market constituted a precondition for economic survival and modernization. West European politicians were deeply suspicious that the EDC would eventually come to be regarded as an opportunity for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Western Europe, which would imply a strong rise in defence costs for Western European countries themselves. In 1953 the death of Stalin led to a period of detente in the Cold War, and the Korean War ended in an armistice. Once again the Americans had ratcheted up their military presence in Europe, and the need for a defence community seemed less urgent. The plans for the EPC had already landed in a drawer in 1953. Ultimately, the EDC Treaty was taken off the table by the French parliament, in 1954. For European federalists this dismissal was a major disappointment. In all other countries except Italy, the treaty had already been ratified. It signified the definitive end for the EPC and the EDC. Another solution was found for the rearmament of Germany, which was to take place within the context of the EDC. In 1955 West Germany, along with Italy, entered NATO by way of the Western European Union (WEU, a 1954 successor to the Brussels Pact). The countries in the Eastern bloc formed the Warsaw Pact a few days after this accession. As a joint European voice in NATO, the WEU never weighed very heavily, because the participants were afraid that if they acted jointly they would distance themselves from the United States. Tension between European cooperation in the area of defence and the necessary support of the United States in NATO would return as a problem in the 1990s.

‘Relance’ ‘Relance’ (‘new start’) is the conventional term for the resumption of deliberations concerning European integration after the rejection of the EDC. This term gave expression to the hope and expectation of many contemporaries

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that, in spite of that rejection, a kind of European unity was nevertheless in the making, even if it still was not certain in the least in 1955. Monnet left his post as the president of the ECSC’s High Authority prematurely, convinced that he could better serve the mired process of integration elsewhere. In October 1955, he set up the now famous Action Committee for the United States of Europe, an organization that was to incite the most important politicians into conducting a European policy. In that same year he and Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian minister for Foreign Affairs, presented an initiative to establish a community for atomic energy, the energy source of the future. Much more broadly set up than this sectoral atomic community of Monnet and Spaak was the new proposal by the Dutch minister Beyen for a European market, which was to start off with a common customs union. This union led to the EEC, which would become far and away the most important Community of the European project as well as the most important column upon which the European Union would be built two generations later. These plans were discussed by the assembled ministers for Foreign Affairs from the ECSC Member States at the Conference of Messina in June 1955. Subsequently, under Spaak’s leadership in Brussels, a report was drawn up concerning the direction for this integration. Initially the British also took part in these discussions, but they withdrew when it became clear that the talks were aimed at the creation of a customs union. London did not want to go any further than a free trade zone. Under Spaak’s leadership, following his report, negotiations ensued over an economic community and an atomic energy community in 1956 and 1957. During the negotiations in Brussels talks concerning ‘supranational’ objectives were avoided by the negotiators. After the rejection of the EDC as a result of French politics in 1954, no one wanted to endanger these new negotiations in any way at all. The French were above all interested in the community for atomic energy and had to take the customs union as part of the bargain. During negotiations, the question for the French was whether their own economy was competitive enough to remain standing in such a customs union. The French demand for social ‘harmonization’ in Europe – the accomodation of generous French policy in matters of overtime, vacation and equal pay for women and men – ran into robust German resistance at a ministerial conference in Paris in October 1956. During increasing international tensions however, as a consequence of the Suez Crisis and of the defeat of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviet Union, in November 1956, the willingness to compromise increased on the part of both Adenauer as well as the French prime minister Guy Mollet. American resistance to the Anglo-French military intervention

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in the Suez convinced France that its interests did not run parallel to those of the United States. The French gaze subsequently focussed on the European continent. For the Federal Republic, too, it was international developments that caused its willingness for European integration to increase. The Federal Republic had no confidence in lasting protection from the United States and saw in European integration a safeguard against communism from the East. In the new harmonious relations between France and the Federal Republic, a supranational authority was no longer taboo. At the request of the Netherlands and France earlier ideas about integration in the agricultural sector were incorporated into the common market. A hot potato in the concluding phase of the negotiations concerning the EEC Treaty was the association of overseas territories, an affiliation desired by France and Belgium, in which their colonies were to receive money from a European fund to bring about development. Other Member States were not very enthusiastic about paying for the colonial policy of France, in particular, which had been wrapped up in a complicated and bloody war of decolonization in Algeria. The laborious, conclusive negotiations were conducted by government leaders and ministers for Foreign Affairs in February 1957. After an informal bilateral meeting between Mollet and Adenauer, a breakthrough was reached – an example of the Franco-German ‘engine’ in the process of integration. During the negotiations, the United Kingdom entered into troubled waters with the EEC as a result of coming up with its own proposal for a free trade zone for industrial products within the framework of the OEEC – without any plans for agriculture, though, on account of the cheap agricultural imports by the United Kingdom from its own former colonies. With some good faith, the proposed intergovernmental free trade zone could be seen as a complement to the EEC. Yet many saw in it a divide-and-conquer tactic by the British for torpedoing the EEC customs union – potentially a much more powerful trading partner than the individual Member States. The plan ran into resistance from Adenauer and Mollet, who stuck to a customs union of ‘the Six’ (the common name for the six founding Member States of the ECSC, the EEC and Euratom). The Treaties of Rome were signed in a grand ceremony on 25 March 1957, thus establishing the EEC and Euratom. More so than the establishment of the ECSC, the establishment of the EEC and Euratom were considered by many contemporaries to be the beginning of a common future for the Six. The EEC and Euratom officially commenced as of 1 January 1958. The EEC was to become a customs union in multiple steps. The existing external tariffs differed among the countries of the Six. Those of a trading country like the Netherlands were generally low compared to those of

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France, which shielded its own economy from foreign competition with these duties. As a trading country, the Netherlands benefited from low common external tariffs and wanted to head toward a customs union at high speed. This customs union subsequently needed – as agreed in the EEC Treaty – to be developed further into a fully-fledged common market, that is to say, with free cross-border movement of goods, as well as services, capital and labour. Ultimately, these so-called ‘four freedoms’ have been brought about in the European Union. In 1957, in contrast, Paris wanted high external tariffs instead and tried to put the brakes on the speed of mutual economic integration. The outcome of the negotiation process was high external tariffs to start, which would be lowered subsequently in phases. The customs union was completed in 1968. In terms of institutions, the EEC and Euratom were each dressed up with their own administrative bodies, which were comparable to the High Authority of the ECSC. The Assembly was expanded from 78 to 142 members and henceforth also included the two new Communities in its parliamentary oversight. While the ECSC Treaty still exclusively made mention of the competency for exercising oversight by the Assembly, this authority was expanded in the EEC Treaty and the Euratom Treaty to ‘the powers of deliberation and control’. Later expansions of competences in the European Parliament were based on that crucial addition. In spite of the many similarities among Communities, the EEC and Euratom had a different nature to that of the ECSC. In the two new Communities, the Council was central to the decision-making process. From the very beginning it was clear that the Member States would monitor their national interests, whereby they would be supported by the Committee of Permanent Representatives to the European Communities, the so-called Coreper (Comité des Représentants Permanents). Just like the ECSC, Euratom was a sectoral community, concentrating on a demarcated economic sector. At the end of the 1950s it had become clear that the primary interest of Member States was not in these kinds of communities but in the much broader EEC. As a result, it also became clear that the sectoral approach had become sidetracked. The EEC was less ‘supranational’ but at the same time more political than the ECSC. The High Authority of the ECSC had to adhere strictly to the letter of the Treaty; the Commission of the EEC could develop its own initiatives and thus expand its power to bring about a political union – even though it was left in limbo as to how the final objective exactly looked. The first president of the EEC Commission, the German Christian Democrat Walter Hallstein, spoke of the EEC as ‘the uncompleted federal state’ (‘der unvollendete Bundesstaat’).

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Federalism and Neofunctionalism Theory and Historiography

Between the two world wars all attempts at the formation of a European confederation seemed doomed to fail. The horrors of the Second World War signified a turning point. As a result, a momentum for Western European integration arose, and was realised in the ECSC, the EEC and Euratom. The experience of National Socialism and fascism translated into a ‘federalist’ aversion for the power politics of nation states and a renewed appreciation for cooperation that transcended national interests. The rejection of nationalism and other hard-line ideologies strengthened the ‘functionalist’ inclination toward policies for prosperity, which were relatively free from political party ideology. The theoretical models with which European integration was explained during the 1950s and 1960s – ‘federalism’ and ‘neofunctionalism’ – were closely connected to the federalist ideal and functionalist method of the same time period. These theoretical models had an intensely normative hue: they pretended to describe how political decision-making processes shifted from the nation state to European institutions, yet were trying to provide an instruction manual for an irreversible integration process that national loyalties would not be allowed to nip in the bud. Federalism and neofunctionalism were prescriptive rather than descriptive. Theoretical Explanatory Models for the Integration Process In the 1940s the term ‘federalism’ was a generic concept for the pursuit of unity in Europe. This term expressed the pursuit of a peaceful society comprised of a plurality of groups that retained their individuality. Not until around 1950 – under the influence of the Marshall Plan – did the term ‘integration’ come into vogue. Initially it referred to the removal of trade restrictions. Only later did the term also acquire the implication of any increasing, supranational coordination of policy. The federalist ideal had diverging variants. The personalist federalism of the Swiss philosopher Denis de Rougemont and the Dutch public intellectual Hendrik Brugmans was both an administrative principle for dispersing power and an anti-capitalist, anti-communist, anti-fascist moral doctrine concerning the correct relationship between individual freedom and responsibility in society. It had no strategy for realising unity in Europe. That intent was the case, though, for the constitutional federalism of Spinelli, which wanted to integrate the European nations all at once by way of direct elections for a European constitutional assembly.

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The ‘functionalist’ movement of Monnet and Schuman disputed Spinelli’s estimation that the European nations could be accommodated in a European federation all at once and according to one plan. Even so, their movement is more or less included in federalism, because their final goal was a federalist United States of Europe. The functionalist method of Monnet and Schuman – ‘by establishing an economic community […] to lay the foundations for institutions which will give direction to a destiny henceforward shared’ (according to the preamble of the ECSC Treaty) – was inspired by a book that the Anglo-Romanian historian and political scientist David Mitrany had published during the Second World War. Mitrany, too, saw concentrations of power at the national level as the source of international conflicts, and he therefore wanted nation states to transfer portions of their economic competences to apolitical, supranational administrations. As a ‘technocrat’, however, he did not think that there should also be a political government at a supranational level. During the 1950s and 1960s, scholarly theories about European integration called ‘federalism’ and ‘neofunctionalism’ issued forth from these federalist pursuits and this functionalist method. Federalism as an explanatory model for the integration of Europe grants a major role to the visions of the founders of Europe: first there was the European idea, then people had to be mentally prepared for it and finally it could be carried out. As a result of increased mutual economic and political dependence (interdependence) between countries, the nation state as an invention of the seventeenth-century Treaty of Westphalia was seen as an anachronism in federalism. In their studies from 1958 and 1963, respectively, the American political scientists Ernst Haas and Leon Lindberg developed the neofunctionalist explanatory model as a scholarly theory for the advancing process of integration. Just like federalism, they saw Monnet as a federal idealist with a functionalist strategy. Their neofunctionalism takes as its point of departure functionalist mechanisms that lead toward a desired federalist goal. In so doing, emphasis is placed on the internal dynamics of the integration process, which covers an increasingly larger surface like a spreading oil slick: the spill-over effect. According to this model, nation states are not capable of stopping the integration process once it is set in motion. By this logic integration in one sector (the coal and steel industry, for example) has an effect on an adjacent sector (transport, for example), whereby nation states are compelled for pragmatic reasons to integrate in that sector also. To this notion of functional spill-over – which had already come up in Mitrany’s functionalism – neofunctionalism added other kinds of spillover. According to

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neofunctionalism, the advancing process of integration in areas like the economy would provide for a changing attitude in parties with (economic) interests in the nation states. These interested parties would subsequently request more political say at the supranational level (political spill-over). Administrators at the supranational level would be interested in increasingly far-reaching European integration, which they would therefore actively promote (cultivated spill-over). Successful economic cooperation would exert appeal on neighbouring countries that were not yet members of the Community (geographic spill-over). Integration is a step-by-step process in neofunctionalism. Every new step has unintended consequences that change the political playing field. As a result, neofunctionalism differs substantially from the intergovernmentalist theories that will be discussed in the following chapter. Those theories see integration as a series of negotiations between nation states with conflicting interests – a ‘zero-sum game’ in which the gain of one state comes at the expense of the other. Unlike intergovernmentalism, which sees nation states as monolithic entities, neofunctionalism considers actors on various levels: parties with non-governmental (economic) interests, representatives of nation states and supranational administrators. Neofunctionalism does not have much of an eye, however, for the role of public opinion. As opposed to functionalism, neofunctionalism sees an essential role set aside for European institutions and enterprising supranational European policymakers like Monnet (‘policy entrepreneurs’) as driving forces in the integration process. European Integration and the Nation state Although the symbols of national sovereignty remained for the most part untouched in the Europe of the Six, these nation states did transfer a portion of their say to European institutions during the 1950s and 60s. From the 1980s on, this transfer of power went farther. Within the European Communities, and later within the EU, it led to public and political debate that flared up time and again concerning the undermining of national authority, whether pretended or not. Some politicians and opinion makers see this situation as a danger to the democratic legitimacy of politics because, according to them, Europe has a democratic deficit. The historiography concerning European integration during the 1950s, which emerged in the 1960s, is marked by this debate. To what extent nation states actually ceded essential power, why they did so, and to what extent the outcome of the integration process was based on rational choices by the

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responsible (national) statesmen, are crucial questions in this historiography. Was the creation of the European institutions a goal of which they were well aware, or does it need to be seen instead as a step-by-step, contingent process, in which the panoramic institutional visions of those statesmen were of subordinate importance? Some historians are of the opinion that ideas and ideals constituted only the brouhaha in a process that was determined in broad lines by increasing economic globalization or by geopolitical factors like the Cold War. Following on from this view, the question as to whether the process of European integration is to be interpreted as weakening the power of the nation state, or instead as an attempt by the nation states to slow down the restriction of their sovereignty, as a consequence of the globalization process, by partially transferring that power is a point of debate. The main current among historians has always been oriented toward their own nation states, their own nation statesmen and the diplomatic negotiations of the latter. In the European historiography that has slowly come about since the 1960s, the incipient institutionalization of Europe after the Second World War was initially explained by the federalist idea. In this traditional historiography of the process, European integration was hailed as the spiritual legacy of the democratic resistance to the Nazis. The title of the 1968 source publication by the historian Walter Lipgens speaks volumes: Plans for a European federation by resistance movements.1 Lipgens’ classic study on the origins of European integration attempts to explain how a movement for European integration could emerge from a political idea, and how this movement led the national politics of Western European countries towards a politics of unification.2 In this tradition, the arguments of European federalism are barely problematised. Motivations for European integration are distinguished, such as preventing any renewed conduct of economic warfare as in the 1930s, or the ascent of any new totalitarian – nationalist movements like National Socialism. External motivations are the fear of communism from the East or the shift in power from European countries to the United States and the Soviet Union. The decreasing power of the Western European nation states in the world, which also became obvious during decolonization, was to be stopped by connecting Western Europe economically and politically. In this historiography, the unity of Europe was an idea for the self-preservation and self-protection of Western Europe. The perception of a necessity for European integration, according to these historians, was fuelled by the conviction that an economically and politically fragmented Europe would be pushed aside by the two new major powers after the Second World War, that is, the Soviet Union and the United States. Although European unification

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was seen by Lipgens and his disciples as an inevitable process, in their eyes that unification was brought nearer by important individuals like Monnet. According to this historiography, European political integration was considered to be an end for Monnet and in that process economic integration for him was a means. During this time, European integration was also interpreted from a Marxist paradigm. In this case, the ideal of great founders of Europe faded into the background. In following leftist American historians like Gabriel Kolko, the Cold War was seen as the result of American attempts to remove obstacles for relocating American ‘capital’ to the rest of the world, and as a new form of imperialism.3 Marxist scholars saw Marshall aid, the ECSC and the EEC as American plans for Europe as a profitable investment of accumulated American capital. Alan Milward and the European ‘Rescue’ of the Nation State Marxism disappeared from historiography after the 1970s, but Alan Milward – one of the best-known historians of integration in past decades as well as a former colleague of Lipgens – followed a similarly economically oriented line of reasoning in his book The Reconstruction of Western Europe (1984). According to this book, the European Recovery Program was not motivated so much by the recovery of Western Europe – that had already been substantially underway in 1947, whereby a dollar shortage emerged – but, rather, served above all the interest of the United States. American pressure to effect a European customs union led to a response from the Europe of the Six. The ECSC was the Six’s own institutional framework to be interwoven economically, based on their own economic interests and historical reality, ‘which has proved to be more effective than any previous peace settlement.’4 In his book about European integration during the 1950s, The European Rescue of the Nation State (1992), Milward denied that there was any contradiction between European pursuits and national interests. Milward had already distanced himself from the history of ‘great men’ in his study The Reconstruction of Western Europe, but in this subsequent book he relativized the importance of the ‘lives and teachings of the European saints’ even more strongly, just as he did the importance of spill-over. Instead he put the motivations of domestic politics in the forward position. On the basis of government archives released for research during the 1980s, Milward found that the pursuit of Europe in nation states was the consequence of a hidden agenda of nationally-minded politicians and policymakers, who did not see

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European integration as an end but, rather, as a means for strengthening their own nation states. In Milward’s thesis, the actors in the process of integration are nation states, yet they act on the basis of domestic economic and political interests. High-sounding supranational ideals supposedly played as good as no role in concrete government policy. European integration was not an end for those who really pulled the strings in the Member States but a means to strengthen their own legitimacy. Milward posits that the authority of the national government was no longer self-evident in European countries after 1945. A crisis of legitimacy had arisen for ‘the nation state’, caused by the economic malaise of the 1930s and the incapacity of the nation states to defend their own borders, as made apparent during the Second World War. In Milward’s thesis the desire of national government to create socioeconomic security for its individual citizens is the driving force behind European integration. After the Second World War more social tasks were assigned to the nation state. Economic integration yielded the prerequisites for the construction of national welfare states. As a result of removing trade barriers within Europe the sales market would be enlarged, whereby economic growth could be achieved. Economic growth was needed in order to cover the costs of national social programmes and to be able to accommodate the expected loss of employment in agriculture. In addition, national politicians could make European institutions like the High Authority responsible for the necessary restructuring of branches of industry, like coal-mining in Belgium. They could attribute painful consequences such as mass layoffs to ‘Europe’, whereas ‘Europe’ at the same time was also made responsible for the creation of alternative employment. Stated briefly, Milward’s thesis came down to this argument: it was not ‘miraculous doings’ of the ‘European saints’ or the neofunctionalist spill-over effect but, rather, the European ‘rescue’ of the nation state and the legitimacy of national politics that were the driving forces behind the process of European integration. European integration created the prosperity and employment opportunities that constituted the conditions for the construction of national welfare states, which connected citizens more strongly to their own nation states, and strengthened the nation state. Milward’s propositions can be seen as an argument for what the logical motivations of national governments might have been for agreeing to economic integration, assuming that these governments acted with a view to looking out for their own national material interest, as well as with today’s knowledge about the economic success of European integration. For a long

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time Milward’s ideas were of great influence among historians, though at present the adequacy of Milward’s analytical model is under fire for being both too rationalist and too materialist. According to Wolfram Kaiser, the leading historian and political scientist of early European integration, Milward’s ideas cannot be called theory, because they cannot be tested according to the standards of the social sciences. He qualifies Milward’s main thesis as the product of an intensely generalising historiography.5 In spite of historiographical innovations through the years, diplomatic history has always had a fairly dominant position in the historiography of early European integration. Once the diplomatic archives of the nation states from the 1950s were opened in the 1980s, this historiographical orientation acquired new impetus, too. Just like Milward’s work, this branch of historiography – which concentrates above all on the negotiations among diplomats and other representatives of nation states – explains more the stance of foreign ministers and their civil service apparatus regarding European integration than the position of, for instance, national party politics. In this historiography the actors are the nation states and their government leaders, acting under international pressure. In this vision, to overstate the case somewhat, the current EU is nothing more than a special form of international talks between Member States. In this approach there is relatively little attention given to the consequences of European integration for the nation states as such. In the past decade, under the influence of academics like Kaiser, more attention is again being given to transnational non-state political and economic networks (political parties, the labour movement) as driving forces in the process of Europeanization. The goal of this scholarship is ‘to overcome the limitations of the predominantly state-centric historiography of European integration’ and ‘to shed light on the role of actors beyond state institutions’.6 In this innovative historiography of integration concerning the 1950s, the relationship between European integration and the nation state has faded into the background.

European Officials The Other Europe

The actors who most come to mind inside the European Union are – besides the heads of state and government of the Member States – the members of the European Commission and the European Parliament. Just like the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the Council of Ministers and a few other entities, these European institutions would not be able to do their

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work without the civil service apparatus that supports them in doing so. At the moment, there are around 60,000 employees in the service of this supranational civil service. The vast majority of them work for the executive body of the EU, the European Commission. In 2016 the Commission employed some 25,000 permanent and temporary staff plus 9,000 external experts, trainees and staff seconded from national administrations. They are paid from the budget of the Commission; personnel costs amount to about six per cent of that budget. The personnel division is even a separate directorate-general with its own commissioner. National media and politics regularly criticise the size of what is often called the ‘Eurocracy’. The European Commission tries to ward off this notion by pointing out that the size of the bureaucracy is relatively minimal when set against the apparatus of national governments. The civil service apparatus of the European Union is comparable to that of a larger European city like Amsterdam or Cologne, whereas it serves 500 million citizens. Cited against this point is the fact that a municipal administration has countless executive services under it, whereas the implementation of legislation and the execution of policy within the EU, such as agricultural policy, for example, takes place at the level of Member States. For that reason, it can come as no surprise that the number of officials in the European Commission per 1,000 EU inhabitants is much smaller than the number of officials at the national or even municipal level. During the creation of the ECSC at the beginning of the 1950s, it was far from clear how the civil service apparatus of the new European institutions would develop and which tasks it would come to fulfil. Jean Monnet, the first president of the High Authority at Luxembourg, did have some well-defined ideas about it, though: a small team of not more than 200 committed officials would execute the work, supported in that process by thousands of national experts, who would be directed by this elite group of officials. In this way flexibility and creativity could be guaranteed and bureaucratization or administrative rigidity avoided. The consequence of this modus operandi was that in the first years of the integration process an only slightly hierarchical civil service emerged, one which was strongly convinced of the necessity of ‘building’ a supranational Europe together. From day one these very first Europeans saw themselves as the engine of the integration process, which would expand under their leadership to sectors other than the coal and steel industries. Disadvantageous effects of the informal nature of this administrative organization were the unclearly demarcated fields of responsibility, the overlap of activities and, as a result, low efficiency.

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Monnet’s ideal of a compact administrative leadership proved to be untenable over the long term. During the first year of the ECSC 550 officials were already employed, and this number only grew after the creation of the EEC and the expansion of work areas and competences of the supranational institutions. Many of the officials who entered into service in the 1950s had been employed in their national governments and desired a more well-structured administrative organization, following the example of the Member States. Coming from the German ministry for Foreign Affairs, Walter Hallstein, the first president of the European Commission, took the lead in that structuring. The necessity for professionalising the civil service apparatus led to the establishment of nine directorates-general within the European Commission at the end of the 1950s (one per member of the Commission, comparable to national ministries), which in turn were subdivided into another 32 directorates. Additionally, so-called ‘cabinets’ were established – the personal staff supporting the Commission members in their work. These innovations were based on the French administrative model. In 1956, the first personnel directives were introduced – the Statut du personnel, which were followed by a uniform set of personnel bylaws after the merger of the three Communities in 1968, applying to the entire EEC civil service apparatus. In this way the European administrative organization changed in the first decade of its existence from a small, non-hierarchical organization, within which everyone knew one another, into an apparatus growing ever larger with concomitant personnel directives, which began to look more and more like the government services of the Member States. The positions and duties of the thousands of European officials diverge strongly from one another. The most prestigious and noticeable are those of the policymakers. They aid in drawing up policy, preparing legislation, representing their particular organization in negotiations with other institutions and maintaining contact with third parties, such as national governments, lobbying organizations, interest groups and the media. A second category of officials is charged with the task of managing personnel, coordinating programmes that the EU itself carries out as well as supervising finances. In addition, a large number of individuals are employed to execute supporting roles, such as secretarial activities, translation and policy research. The administrative system has a clear ranking system, in which these differences come to the fore. Until only a short time ago the categories used were: A (policy), B (implementation), C (secretarial work), D (drivers and messengers) and LA (interpreters and translators). There were eight levels within category ‘A’ (A1-A8), where A1 was equal to the role of director-general. When the British commissioner Neil Kinnock carried out reforms in 2004,

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this system was replaced by a division into AD (administrator) and AST (assistant), where those who work as AD are able to do so in the levels AD5 to AD16 (director-general), with the concomitant salary scales. Determining salaries within a multinational administrative organization is not easy. On the one hand, the principle applies that European officials may not be paid differently when they execute the same work. On the other hand, a salary that comes under the level of what would be earned in the member state itself can result in candidates from richer Member States like Denmark and Germany preferring to work for their national governments. For a long time this contrast provided for the so-called ‘levelling-up’ effect: salaries in Brussels kept pace with the wages that were paid to officials within the richest Member States. Conversely, this contrast meant that the salaries of EU officials from less rich Member States were higher than their colleagues in national government service – an undesirable situation as well. Under pressure from the call for austerity measures, salaries fell with the introduction of the new ranking system, which means that now there are substantial differences in salary levels among officials who have been working longer within the EU and those who have been employed under the new regulations. Working for the EU remains financially attractive, however, for other reasons. Officials do not have to pay any income tax on their salaries to the country where they work. A tax is levied on the wages disbursed, though, which goes directly into the EU budget. Depending on the level of the salary, this tax varies between eight and 45 per cent. In addition, employees of European institutions are able to claim various allowances, for example, when they have a family or work abroad. When officials reach the age of 63, they are able to retire. The European Union is a desirable place to work and, therefore, the competition for holding positions within its civil service apparatus is great. There are various ways of finding employment at the EU. The first is to take part in the ‘concours’, an admissions exam in which young candidate-officials are able to qualify for a junior position. A large-scale ‘concours’ is regularly organized in every member state, and governments of ‘underrepresented’ Member States, in particular, make an effort to offer a good course of preparation and encourage their citizens to take part in the ‘concours’. This selection procedure applies to all institutions of the European Union (and even for a few European entities outside it) and is in the hands of the Personnel Selection Office of the European Communities (EPSO). A precondition for participation in the test is having citizenship in one of the EU Member States. Candidates are tested first in the Member States themselves on their general knowledge of Europe, European politics and culture, as well as their

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linguistic proficiency, knowledge of at least two languages, capacity for numbers and professional skills and ability to use sound judgment. If they do well in the test, they may be invited to an ‘assessment’ in Brussels. If they are among the best participants in their country, they are then placed on a list that is valid for five years. Next, these candidates may receive a call to apply for a vacant position. If they are accepted, and they work out well, then the path is open for them to have a successful career within the EU. Many candidates (mostly economics, law or political science students, but historians and sociologists, too) already begin preparing themselves for the admissions process at an early stage in their studies. One of the options available to them is doing an internship at one of the European institutions during their studies. Another possibility is to take post-graduate master’s coursework at the Collège de l’Europe. This educational institution was set up in 1949 with the goal of grooming talented students for a career as a European official – at that time still assuming a path in the Council of Europe. The decision to establish this school was taken during the Congress of The Hague in 1948. The Collège, which located in Bruges as well as opened a campus in Natolin, Poland, after the fall of communism in 1989, draws around 400 students annually who specialize in economics, law, politics or management. The threshold for admission to this training is high. Students have to be fluent in English and French and take part in the admissions process at a national level under the auspices of the ministry for Foreign Affairs. In addition to the concours there are other ways to get hold of an appointment within the EU. One of them is to end up in the European civil service apparatus directly from the Member States themselves. In this case it is a matter of individuals who have had a successful career in their own government. Instead of taking the long road through the European civil service they enter top positions directly within the European institutions. Frequently these functions are more or less political in nature, like that of director-general. This situation can happen when someone with specific expertise is required or when a new member state has joined, wishing to have its ‘own’ functionaries in the highest echelons of the organization, just like the other members do. Surveys in the 1990s showed that half the high officials within the Commission had got their positions in this way. A third way to work within the EU is to be posted as a national expert for a time period of six months to four years. Off icials working within national government agencies, in particular, make use of this opportunity. They remain officially in the service of their own organization, and are compensated by the Commission for the additional costs of board and lodging. The goal of these postings is, on the one hand, to make the expertise

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within the Commission greater and, on the other hand, to see to it that national officials return home with more knowledge and understanding of the modus operandi in the EU. This enables the ties between European and national government agencies be made more robust – a form of European socialization that is called ‘vertical spill-over’. The last category of officials consists of individuals who enter into the service of the European institutions on a temporary basis, because they are fulfilling duties that have a clear closing date. For example, they are employed within the ‘cabinet’ of a Euro-commissioner or work on a research project during a demarcated time period. Some of this temporary workforce remains in Brussels and acquires a permanent appointment in another position within the civil service apparatus in Brussels. The European Union has set itself the objective of attracting the best ‘officials’ and selecting them on the basis of their capacities and accomplishments. As an employer, it competes with the big banks, law and consultancy firms, other international organizations and national government agencies. At the same time, it pursues geographical balance: the percentage of employees from a specific nationality is supposed to correspond more or less to the share of that country’s population within the EU. These two principles are formulated in Article 27 of the personnel bylaws for the European Union: Recruitment shall be directed to securing the institution the services of officials of the highest standard of ability, efficiency and integrity, recruited on the broadest possible geographic basis from among nationals of Member States of the Communities.

Geographic balance is a goal, not a reality. In particular, the Member States of Belgium and Luxembourg are strongly ‘overrepresented’ – which has to do with the locations for the European institutions. What needs to be kept in mind here is that a large number of personnel from these Member States are working in supporting roles. Clearly, following both directives can produce tensions. Member States find it important to see their ‘own’ officials represented within the European institutions. The United Kingdom for instance, aims to heighten the relatively low number of British officials at the EU. The nominating and posting of national officials and experts is an oft-used way of realising that goal. Additionally, the ‘cabinets’ are frequently filled with individuals who come directly with the commissioner from the Member States. On the one hand, there are recognized advantages to this practice, such as bringing in the needed (temporary) expertise and strengthening ties with national governments. On the other hand, it has led

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to substantial criticism, given the question of whether there can be talk of an independent civil service apparatus that is really ‘European’, when national officials are so numerous and prominent and Member States attempt to secure their own interests through their presence. A second problem the EU struggles with is the low representation of women in higher positions of policy. In January 2013, the share of women working within the civil service amounted to nearly 55 per cent, to be sure, but a large portion of them were executing support services. In 1991 the Commission issued a directive, setting itself the goal of appointing more women to junior policy positions. The measures the Commission has since taken seem to have had the desired effect: 30 per cent of those recruited to junior positions in 1999, were women. At the same time, it is a lengthy process: in the same year the number of women within the entire category A was only 19.4 per cent. The third and certainly not smallest problem is that in reality there is of course no one European civil service apparatus but, rather, various agencies that compete with one another for influence and power. The laborious creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) was a demonstration of such inter-agency rivalry. The Treaty of Lisbon put into writing that the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and the commissioner for External Relations would become a dual function. In this way, the EU would be represented in the area of foreign policy by one representative instead of two, which had been the case previously. The new High Representative would be supported by a diplomatic service of its own, the EEAS. The EU would thus speak with one voice and, partly as a result, gain in vitality and international regard. In the meantime, it has become apparent that the new service is riddled with friction. Existing departments and delegations, which had formerly been assigned to the Commission and the Council, are now to make up part of the EEAS. To put it mildly, both these institutions are reticent about handing over their competences. As president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso has seen to it, for instance, that the European Neighbour Policy – formerly the responsibility of the commissioner for External Relations – has now landed in the dossier of the Commissioner for Enlargement, whereas it was obvious that the new High Representative was to take up these duties. The Council has set up a directorate of its own for Crisis Management and Planning and intends it to make up a component of the EEAS as a separate entity, with its own personnel directives. In summary, the stance of the administrative services of the Commission and Council comes down to trying to limit the competences and influence of the EEAS as much as possible, because any expansion of the EEAS would come at the cost of the position of their own apparatus.

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Since its establishment in 1952, the European civil service has undergone many changes. It has evolved from a small, informal organization into an ever expanding institutionalized and bureaucratized apparatus, with strong French and German influences in its structure and modus operandi. With each enlargement of the EC by way of new Member States with different administrative traditions, the existing procedures and customs come under pressure and, as a consequence of these new influences, are adapted. An example of that adjustment is the policy for actively promoting the enlargement of the share of women working within European institutions; this programme was put on the agenda in the 1990s by the new member state Sweden. Influence is also noticeable in the recent substantive adaptation of the concours examination. For a long time, following the French model, this process was technical in nature and questions were posed, above all, concerning European regulations and institutions, whereby candidates with backgrounds in law or economics had a favourable starting position. During the admission of officials for the national government in a country like the United Kingdom, however, much value is instead attached to general knowledge and understanding; for that reason, candidates with a background in the liberal arts have a good chance of being selected there. By now, the European admissions procedure has been adapted so that the emphasis has been shifted from technical expertise to general knowledge and the ability to use sound judgment. European bureaucracy is changing along with Europe, albeit very gradually, and it constitutes a reflection of the integration process.

Egodocuments Official policy documents relating to the European integration process have been preserved for posterity in national and European archives. For a thirty-year period, these documents are accessible only in exceptional cases – even for historians. For the more recent time period, therefore, the researcher will have to go in search of alternative and supplementary sources of information, such as treaty texts, published policy documents, interviews and surveys. Egodocuments constitute an important and oft-used category of sources, in which those directly involved give their personal testimony. The most commonly occurring types of these testimonials are diaries, letters, autobiographies and memoirs. They may provide a glimpse behind the scenes and show what was locked away in utmost secrecy. In this case it revolves, on the one hand, around the more factual side of politics, which is

From the Sources

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also partly well-known from the media as well as from the official files after the archives have been opened. On the other hand, egodocuments can offer insight into the ulterior motives of the autobiographer or other players and, as a result, constitute a good supplement to policy documents, which more often than not leave this perspective unspoken or give an ‘official’ version, which is sometimes contradicted by personal egodocuments. Firstly, the use of egodocuments by scholars is not unproblematic. In this case and with every source, the researcher must investigate how trustworthy the information is. There is a major difference between diaries and letters, on the one hand, and memoirs and autobiographies, on the other hand. The distance in time between events and the moment of writing is shorter in the first category. Not only do the deficient workings of memory see to it that memories can become dimmed and distorted over the course of time, but people often adapt their memories to subsequently acquired information and insights, or to more recent developments and choices. For egodocuments, furthermore, it is true that the writer – often different than a researcher – by definition does not have a complete overview of the available scholarly literature, archival sources and egodocuments of others involved. Secondly, the researcher has to ask himself to what end the source has been written. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies call forth the question of what has moved the writer to entrust his experiences and memories to paper – and thus to a wide audience. Naturally, in so doing, the consideration that these particular experiences are also relevant for historians and posterity, and that they can contribute to a better historical understanding, can play a role. Frequently, though, for writers of this genre it also has to do with their own reputation. They try to influence the public’s judgment concerning their particular actions by publishing books. They emphasize certain events, omit others and cast yet others in a positive light. The individual in question thus covers responsibility for his deeds in a way that for him either works out or agrees with the image he has formed of himself. A final point that the scholar needs to take into account is how the writer of egodocuments, like memoirs and autobiographies, makes order and sense of his life after the fact. Looking back on his own existence and profiting from knowledge afterward, an author can attribute any cohesion to events and actions, which he has seen or assigned only subsequently. For this reason, too, there are sources that can be more reliable in this regard, such as diaries and correspondence, in which the writer does not have the advantage of such knowledge, yet makes note of his impressions and estimations in the moment. At the same time, even in the case of diaries and letters, it is good to keep wondering for whom and to what end the writer has written them.7

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Jean Monnet’s Memoirs In this section, the problematic nature of egodocuments will be demonstrated on the basis of Jean Monnet’s memoirs. Monnet was born in France in 1888, and died in 1979. During his long professional life, he worked as a diplomat, as the key f igure in the coordination of Allied cooperation during the two world wars and as the spiritual father and leading force within the European institutions after 1945. Monnet, the co-inventor of the Schuman Plan that would form the basis for the ECSC, is seen by many as the ‘founding father’ of the European Union. As a homage, he was added to the Panthéon in Paris in 1988, next to eminent figures like Émile Zola and Marie Curie. Shortly before his death, when his political role had already played out, Monnet published his Mémoires, in 1976. Monnet began his memoirs not during the years of his youth in the Cognac region of France, but with the origins of a united, post-war Europe, that is, with the plans for an AngloFrench Union in the year 1940. There are two relevant questions for historians that will be discussed here: the role Monnet attributes to himself and the intentions he ascribes to his own actions. On 10 May 1940, the Germans invaded Belgium and the Netherlands. Not long after the capitulation of the Low Countries, France was also in danger of collapsing under the military aggression of Germany. The Anglo-French alliance, which took as its premise that neither state would conclude a separate armistice with Nazi Germany, came under increasing pressure. The British hammered away at the necessity of the French to continue fighting, and Paul Reynaud, the French minister-president, also held this opinion. At the same time, more and more voices within the French cabinet called for capitulation. Reynaud’s position as prime minister was being debated. Thereupon, on 16 June 1940, the British war cabinet under the leadership of Winston Churchill came forward with a ground-breaking proposal for a Franco-British Union to hold the French back from capitulation:8 At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves. The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies.

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Reynaud did not succeed, however, in convincing his cabinet members, and the plan was taken off the table. Since that time, historians have occupied themselves with the question of how this intended FrancoBritish Union ought to be evaluated. Was it in this case a matter of an incentive for European integration – a missed chance, then, according to its proponents? Or was it only a final, improvized expedient for keeping France in the war? Egodocuments can help in answering these essential questions. At the same time, they have to be used with the requisite level of caution. There is an unambivalent picture that comes to the fore from Jean Monnet’s memoirs: Monnet and his friend Arthur Salter played a decisive role. They had been appointed as president and vice-president of the Anglo-French Coordination Committee in 1939, the duty of which was to coordinate the war economies with each other. On 14 June 1940, they drew up a text that served as the basis for the proposal on 16 June, according to Monnet in his Mémoires:9 There should be a dramatic declaration by the two Governments on the solidarity of the two countries’ interests, and on their mutual commitment to restore the devastated areas, making clear also that the two Governments are to merge and form a single Cabinet and to unite the two Parliaments.

According to Monnet and Salter, then, it was necessary to issue a ‘dramatic declaration’, in which France and the United Kingdom would merge their cabinets and parliaments into joint institutions for the duration of the war and, on top of that, would commit to joint reconstruction. Furthermore, both emphasize that only a courageous initiative such as this, which would speak to the imagination of many, would be able to bring about an historic breakthrough.10 In his memoirs Monnet subsequently tells how he succeeded in getting the plan put on the agenda of the war cabinet, thanks to his British contacts. According to Monnet himself, he managed to convince Charles de Gaulle; De Gaulle, in his turn, convinced Churchill.11 The researcher who bases his investigation only on the memories of Monnet comes to the conclusion that the later visionary of the ECSC played a decisive role in the emergence of the Franco-British Union. Although there is no disputing that Monnet was closely involved in its creation, his Memoirs nevertheless yield a tainted picture of the events. It is questionable whether it was actually and only Monnet who came up with the plan for the Franco-British Union. As Secretary of State for India and member of the British cabinet, Leo Amery confirmed the role that Monnet and Salter

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played, yet he also described how he himself had given his thoughts on the plan and spoke for that reason in his diary about the ‘Monnet-SalterAmery memorandum’.12 According to René Pleven, Monnet’s confidant and subsequent minister-president who presented the Pleven Plan for the European Defence Community in 1950, there was talk of a group process and not of one inventor of the daring proposal.13 In short, by emphasising his own role, Monnet kept the part of others out of the picture. In his memoirs, Monnet also kept silent about the fact that he was not the only one who had made proposals for a far-reaching type of cooperation between the United Kingdom and France. Thus, there were similar ideas from Sir Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador in France; from the historian Arnold Toynbee, as the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs; and from the French senator André Honnorat. In addition, three British governing bodies kept themselves occupied with the same issue.14 There was therefore no talk of a brilliant ‘brainwave’ from any one individual. This historical context is essential for weighing the accomplishment of Monnet and the benefit of his plan. The memoirs of Monnet show what is true in general for egodocuments in which the temporal distance from what happened is great (in this case, nearly fourty years): the writer strongly displays the inclination to assign a unique and central role to the main character. The historian is able to correct the picture by confronting the statements of the historical actor with other sources of eyewitnesses and those involved where there is less of a time gap. In addition to the role of the individual in question, the intentions that are described and ascribed in egodocuments also have to be critically held up to the light by the researcher. The example of the Franco-British Union shows the need for this process well. Individuals of very different stripes and with divergent beliefs – Jean Monnet and René Pleven, but Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle as well – were proponents of this plan. It calls forth the question as to what the actual nature of the proposal was and with what intentions it was launched at that time. Proponents of far-reaching European integration have always seen the plan and its rejection by the French as a major missed opportunity. Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the Austrian founder of the Pan-Europe movement, stated with regret that 16 June, when the plan would have gone through, ‘would have become the anniversary of United Europe. A single European nation would have emerged at the end of the war, with one Cabinet, one army, one economy and one Parliament’.15 Paul Reynaud, too, the French prime minister who after the war became a fervent advocate for a united Europe, believed that the Franco-British Union would have had far-reaching

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consequences: ‘I have continued to think that a Franco-British Union, as Churchill proposed it, could have served as the basis for the unification of all Europe’.16 The fact that Monnet began his memoirs with this episode indicates that he, too, attached much importance to the proposal. He viewed the events in 1940 as the beginning of a new ‘European’ phase in his life. The rise of Nazi Germany and the Second World War convinced him of the fact that in order to achieve lasting peace and international cooperation national interests needed to be set aside. Only supranational cooperation would provide a solution for international problems. Looking back at the end of his life, Monnet stated that he had come to this insight in 1940. Mutual deliberations among states would not be sufficient for compelling a breakthrough nor for effecting genuine unity.17 For Monnet, holding this conviction, after the failure of the Franco-British Union, it was a question of waiting until a new opportunity presented itself. That moment, as the reader knows, and as did Monnet in writing his memories, would come after the war. Monnet organized his life retroactively around this break point. He interpreted all that had gone before as developments that led to that insight and traced his subsequent plans for European integration back to this moment – convincingly giving meaning to his entire life story. What also fits into this very same picture is how Monnet had already understood the limited reach of his plan in 1940. The failure supposedly provided him with insights into the (im)possibilities of European politics, though he reportedly did not have many illusions about the plan itself. Even Monnet called the Franco-British Union of 1940 a missed chance in his memoirs. There had been talk of an initiative that with good luck could have changed the course of history: ‘Sunday, June 16, 1940, was a day of lost opportunities.’18 Nowhere, though, did Monnet contend that he believed the Franco-British Union could have served as a foundation for a European community – at most that it was a vain attempt to keep France in the war. Monnet stressed the lessons he learned in 1940 in relation to international politics, yet he hastened to add that he had not been driven by federalist motivations and concomitant political visions in 1940. He therefore put emphasis on the improvised nature of the plan.19 This explanation from Monnet seems to agree with those of other leading actors in the drama, like Churchill and De Gaulle. The British prime minister, who was initially quite critical of the proposal, had ultimately agreed to it, because along with the drafters of the plan he believed that the declaration would give the French prime minister, Reynaud, ‘some new fact of a vivid and stimulating nature with which to carry a majority of his cabinet into

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the move to Africa and the continuance of the war’.20 The Anglo-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has convincingly shown that a supranational Europe was already at odds with British notions in 1940. The same thing was true of De Gaulle: his actions were not inspired by a belief in supranational solutions but by the hope of encouraging the French with a spectacular declaration of support and of turning the tide of war.21 The Franco-British Union seems therefore to have been above all a pragmatic expedient for all those involved. And yet, those who look further discover that there are also indications for a more ambitious explanation. Monnet supposedly did indeed see the Franco-British Union as an overture to a united Europe. According to the American journalist John Davenport, who maintained good connections with Monnet, the latter mused in an interview for Fortune in 1944: ‘And so the whole business ended in failure, but think what it would have meant if the political offer of union had succeeded. There would have been no way of going back on it. The course of the war, the course of the world might have been very different. We should have had the true beginnings of a Union of Europe.’22 Here, rather implicitly, Monnet presented a supranational Europe as a peace project. Even if it had not been his original intention to make an initial step in the direction of a federal Europe with the Franco-British Union, this statement points to the fact that at the end of the war Monnet believed that a European Union could have been the consequence of his plan. Clarence Streit, another American and a correspondent for the New York Times, has argued that the notion of a supranational Europe did indeed inspire Monnet during the preparation of the Franco-British Union. What is more, Streit’s own book – Union Now published in 1939, with its call for a federal union of democracies – was supposedly the source of Monnet’s inspiration, according to the journalist 18 years later:23 He [Monnet] said it came to him from reading Union Now – though the book proposed an Atlantic and not an Anglo-French Union. He and some others had been seeking converts to it very discreetly in high places for some weeks. They had feared to come out in the open with it, he said, lest it might upset the alliance, which they thought then was working very well.

A critical historical analysis of the sources in relation to the creation and significance of this proposal serves to bring these contradictions to the fore and to comment on the (self) image of Monnet as a ‘born’ European and visionary. The fact that this does not always happen is apparent from the

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works by Monnet’s admirers. With telling titles like Jean Monnet. The First Statesman of Interdependence; Jean Monnet. The Power of the Imagination and Jean Monnet. L’Inspirateur, they each depend heavily on Monnet’s version of events.24 For the researcher, memoirs are undeniably a valuable source. They can provide insight into the motivations of the author but also, and above all, into the image he has of himself and his life. The example of Monnet and the Franco-British Union, however, has shown that egodocuments like these must be analysed critically. It is always necessary to check the facts and interpretations mentioned in them, as well as to take into account the context and time in which the statements were made. The autobiographer’s knowledge after the fact, as well as his pursuit of providing his life story with meaning both constitute problems that cannot be underestimated.

Stockholm Convention: establishment of EFTA

Membership applications from the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland First draft of Fouchet Plan for European political union

Membership application from Norway

Élysée Treaty between France and West Germany Van Gend & Loos ruling

Signing of the Merger Treaty of the European Communities Empty Chair Crisis

Luxembourg Compromise

The Hague Summit: Economic and Monetary Union

Introduction of the EPC

Accession of the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland

1960

1961

1962

1963

1965

1966

1969

1970

1973

1973 1973

1973

2.

The European Communities Under Construction

The Treaty of Rome (1957-58) set forth the objectives and framework for the realization of a European common market with all its concomitant regulations and conditions. In subsequent years, the European Commission, the Parliament and even the Court of Justice provided important contributions to the consolidation of this framework. With the completion of the customs union at the end of the 1960s, though, it became clear that the impetus for deepening integration would have to come from national governments. Resistance on the intergovernmental level – not only in the case of the French president De Gaulle – was considerable. As a result of the economic and monetary crises at the beginning of the 1970s, the strategy of more Europe to combat these crises was no longer self-evident, though it was seriously considered as an alternative for a ‘Europe of the states’. In addition to these crises and the work of Community-wide institutions, the planned enlargement to include the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland also exerted pressure on the Six to hasten completing and deepening the integration process. This case, in contrast to later enlargements, was not about the need for improving decision-making processes for a Community with more members. Instead, in this phase of the European project, the essence of many intergovernmental conflicts and obstructions lay in determining the power relations between the Member States. In the end, a balance in Franco-German cooperation was struck, offering Paris sufficient security to accept British membership while showing sufficient respect for the interests of the smaller Member States.

The Foundation: the Treaties of Rome The Treaties of Rome, which formed the basis for European cooperation, lent themselves to divergent interpretations. In placing their signatures, in March 1957, the six Member States solemnly declared to ‘lay the foundations for an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’ – a cautious reference to the ultimate political goal pursued by Monnet and his followers. In concrete terms, the EEC Treaty was supposed to further ‘a harmonious development of economic activities within the entire Community, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increased stability’ and ‘accelerated raising of the

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standard of living’. Seen in this way, the Treaty served the economic interests of the Member States above all. Indirectly, with the pursuit of prosperity, the Treaty was oriented (just like the OEEC) toward peace and stability as well. Many in Western Europe feared, that poverty made the population vulnerable to communist propaganda. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the joint West European pursuit of increased prosperity also served to keep the balance of power in place between the Western, capitalist bloc and the Eastern European communist bloc. The EEC Treaty was seen rather quickly as the Treaty of Rome. Even so, the six ministers had also signed another, the Euratom Treaty, in March 1957. In accordance with the first article of the treaty, this new community too, was intended to bring more prosperity. As a cheap source of energy, nuclear technology was still seen in the 1950s as one of the greatest promises for the future. Euratom was supposed to stimulate the nuclear power industry by turning the supply of raw materials and the sales market into a joint task. Monnet – one of the biggest advocates for this atomic community – hoped that this new joint source of energy would encourage the industries involved to increase cooperation step by step, as had also been intended with the ECSC. As a result of the quickly increasing supply of cheap oil from the Middle East, however, it was not atomic energy but oil that became the most important replacement for the dwindling production of coal. Because of this, Euratom would play a much smaller role in the end than was initially expected. The most important task of this Community was drawing up and maintaining joint safety rules, because national boundaries would not offer citizens any protection in the event of a nuclear disaster. In 1957 expectations of the EEC Treaty were high. In the first instance, it comprised an ambitious roadmap for the establishment of a customs union. This plan committed EEC Member States to gradually abolish the border taxes and/or tariffs that were hampering trade with one another. Quotas that set forth the maximum quantities of goods to be traded were supposed to be lifted at the same time. On top of that, national legislation on trade with countries outside the EEC was also to be coordinated, step-by-step, until a fully-fledged common external tariff would apply. In and of itself, the formation of a customs union was already a major step. Nonetheless the customs union for the EEC formed only the basis for the formation of a common market. Besides a prohibition on internal tariffs and quotas and a common external tariff it also stated that ‘obstacles to the free movement of persons, services and capital’ were to be abolished. To that end, the EEC Treaty required the harmonization of national legislation ranging from matters such as product standards to social security to

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the establishment of new businesses. Under the heading of ‘the right of establishment’, for example, the Treaty prohibited the introduction of new restrictions on the establishment of nationals and companies from another member state and proposed that the existing restrictions on establishment would be gradually phased out during a transitional period. Additionally, it more specifically prescribed the outlines of common policies in sensitive areas such as agriculture, transport and competition. During the treaty negotiations, Member States had already been aware that the new EEC-wide competition would not be beneficial in all regards. Whereas on the one hand competition was to make sure that products would become cheaper for European consumers, on the other hand free competition could have disadvantageous effects for antiquated companies and structurally weak regions. In order to support the modernization of companies as well as employment opportunities in these regions, the EEC Treaty also comprised a common social and economic policy. Thus, a new European Social Fund was to gather together financial resources for retraining employees who would lose their jobs as a consequence of this competitive pressure. In addition, a European Investment Bank (EIB) was established, which was supposed to extend inexpensive loans for furthering development in regions lagging behind or for modernising antiquated companies. Reducing differences in levels of prosperity and development within the EEC was seen as an important condition for further integration. In a comparable manner, the Treaty also took into account countries with which the six Member States maintained special relations: the (former) colonies of Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Italy. Before 1957 these had often had favourable trade agreements with their (former) mother countries, which would be broken by the EEC Treaty. So as to continue favourable relations as much as possible, the EEC Treaty stipulated that these countries be associated with the EEC. This association meant that the same conditions would apply for trade with these countries as for trade with one another among the six Member States. At the same time, the special relations a member state maintained with this kind of associated territory would for the most part be transferred to the Community as a whole. In addition, the Treaty declared developmental aid to these associated countries to be a Community matter in part. To coordinate this aid a special development fund was created. The EEC institutions that were supposed to carry out these ambitious goals of economic and social integration followed the model of the ECSC for the most part, though the balance in relationship between those institutions had shifted. In the ECSC, the most important body was the High

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Council of Ministers

European Court of Justice

advi se

s

Ministers of the Member States

Nominated and appointed by the Member States

sures advis es

initia tes m ea

Representatives of interest groups of the Member States, nominated by the Council of Ministers

ure roced val p appro es advis

Economic and Social Committee (ESC)

European Commission

controls

Nominated and appointed by the Member States

European Parliament Deputies from national parliaments (dual mandates)

European Institutions: Treaties of Rome (1957/1958)

Authority. The EEC had a comparable supranational body: the European Commission. This European Commission, however, was to share authority with a more intergovernmental body, the Council of Ministers. In the ECSC structure, a similar council had also already existed, but in the EEC Treaty this Council clearly had more weight. The EEC Treaty referred to the Council of Ministers as the only body that was able to make laws (‘regulations’ in European terminology) that applied directly and generally in the Member States, that is, without further intervention from the national legislature. Additionally, the determination of rules (‘directives’) that were to be adopted by Member States into their own national legislation was reserved for this Council of Ministers. In addition, only the Council of Ministers acquired the competence to indicate new areas of collaboration. In this way, the Member States wanted to ensure that any such step forward could only be made with the approval of all Member States. The voting procedure provided for in the Treaty of Rome gradually gave the Council of Ministers another character. In its first years, according to the Treaty, the Council of Ministers had to take all decisions unanimously. Each country had a veto on every decision during the phase in which the

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foundations for cooperation were being laid. In subsequent years, however, the EEC Treaty provided for a procedure in which most decisions were taken by a qualified majority. This procedure was to be introduced gradually, per policy area, and would be in force for all areas after eight to ten years, according to expectations. The qualified majority requirement included a weighted vote for each of the six Member States. On the one hand, the six Member States were ‘equal’ as sovereign states but, on the other hand, Germany represented many more European citizens than Luxembourg, and that difference also had to be accounted for in the intergovernmental decision-making process. To ensure that the smaller countries were not able to outvote the larger ones, Germany, France and Italy each received four votes, the Netherlands and Belgium two each and Luxembourg one vote. Twelve of the seventeen weighted votes were required for a qualified majority, whereby in certain cases the consent of at least four Member States was also required. The EEC Treaty placed the European Commission alongside the Council of Ministers. The Commission consisted of nine members who were independent of the Member States as the supranational component in the EEC structure. In mutual consultation, the three larger Member States appointed two commissioners each for four years, the smaller countries one each. Whereas the Council of Ministers was the only body allowed to take decisions concerning new legislation, the Commission was the only one allowed to make proposals for these new regulations and directives. In addition, the Commission coordinated the implementation of this legislation. To that end, the Commission had the power to determine ‘decisions’ on its own. These included binding legal acts dealing with one specific case, as well as advisory ‘opinions’ and ‘recommendations’. Finally, the Commission was supposed to ensure that countries and EEC institutions properly applied arrangements in the Treaty concerning the customs union and the common market. The latter responsibility was shared with the European Court of Justice, where both the Commission and Member States could appeal in the case of a violation of these arrangements. This Court of the ECSC remained the same after 1957, though it also acquired jurisdiction over the EEC and Euratom among its range of duties. Finally, the European Parliament was the body symbolically mentioned as f irst in the EEC Treaty. It was still designated as ‘the Assembly’, but from 1962 onwards its members would consistently appropriate the name ‘European Parliament’ for themselves. The European Parliament numbered 142 members who were elected by and from the national parliaments. Having a ‘double mandate’, they sat in both their national as well as the

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European Parliament. The democratic monitoring of the Commission’s work constituted the most prominent duty of the parliament. This monitoring took place by means of annual assemblies concerning the annual report of the Commission. In addition, the EEC Treaty required the European Parliament to bring forth an advisory opinion regarding all new legislation that was to be prepared jointly by the Commission and the Council of Ministers. The European Parliament shared this advisory function with the Economic and Social Committee (EESC, previously also ECOSOC). This body consisted of ‘representatives from all sectors of economic and social life’, such as labour unions and employer organisations. Using its expertise, the Committee was to assist the Council of Ministers in the more often than not technical regulations that had to be settled. Many subcommittees came about rather quickly in the process, such as those for agriculture and the transport sector. After the Treaties were signed, it still took nearly a year before the institutions were set up in practice. During this period political attention was preoccupied with the question as to where these new European entities would be established. Strasbourg and Luxembourg were obvious choices on account of their connection with the Council of Europe and the ECSC. However, other candidates put themselves forward. These included Brussels, the city where the EEC Treaty was prepared for the most part, under the leadership of Paul-Henri Spaak. For diplomatic reasons, the Six ultimately decided on a compromise. Luxembourg retained the offices of the ECSC, as well as the Court of Justice shared by the ECSC, EEC and Euratom. In Strasbourg, the European parliament was to make use of the plenary chamber for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The new bodies, like the Commission and ECOSOC, were headquartered in Brussels. At the same time, personnel staffing for the new and old European bodies constituted a point of contention. Positions were exchanged, one for the other: since Belgium had received the new European ‘capital’, Germany received the honour of providing the first president for the Commission, while the other countries were allowed to designate the president of the Court or an additional judge. In this way the Six ultimately succeeded in having the EEC ready to start in December 1957.

The Communities Under Construction: Policy and Bureaucracy In spite of the horse-trading that had played out surrounding the institutions, when the newly appointed Commissioners assembled in January 1958, they immediately formed a prestigious club. Even though the six Member

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States had been afraid of a strong supranational Commission vis-à-vis the intergovernmental Council of Ministers, this fear was not apparent in regard to the individuals they had appointed. All the Commission members had held high posts in their national politics before they were allowed to start setting the course for the EEC in Brussels. The German top official Walter Hallstein, a technocrat who had worked with the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer for a long time, was designated as president. Under his leadership the Commission expeditiously went to work. The nine commissioners got off to a flying start by setting up the customs union. As provided for in the Treaty of Rome, the Commission drafted regulations for harmonising trade policy and made proposals for a common agricultural policy. The quick start by the Commission is perhaps best seen in the similarly very rapid set-up of a civil service apparatus in Brussels. The f irst meeting of the European Commission in January 1958 was of a notably provisional nature. Armed only with pen, paper and the printed Treaty, the nine men had assembled in a few rooms of a Brussels hotel. In just a few years time the Commission grew into a fully-fledged bureaucracy. By 1962 approximately 2000 staff members were already working there. The organization was split up into ‘directorates-general’, comparable to ministries – administrative services around one policy area that corresponded to the portfolio of one of the Commission members. The French commissioner for Finance and Economic Affairs, Robert Marjolin, later characterised these first years as ‘the honeymoon period’ of the EEC. Civil servants were eager to work for ‘Europa’, fascinated as they were by the idea of integration. As a counterpart to the Commission and its administrative apparatus, the Council of Ministers also secured for itself permanent representation in Brussels, or rather, six such representations. According to the Treaty, the final decision concerning almost all areas in which the Commission went to work was in the hands of the Council of Ministers. On account of the ministers’ domestic commitments, however, it could only convene a few times a year. To prepare for these meetings as well as possible, each minister had officials who – under the leadership of a Permanent Representative with the rank of ambassador – resided in Brussels continuously, followed developments in the Commission closely and consulted with officials from the Commission and with one another about new proposals. Above all these mutual consultations among officials of the six Member States proved to be of great importance as a kind of pre-consultation for the Council of Ministers meetings. In practice the majority of the negotiations concerning new regulations and directives took place in this Committee of Permanent

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Representatives (Coreper). The ministers, then, only had to express their approval during the Council of Ministers meeting. Very soon, the permanent representations developed into mini-bureaucracies, following the various specializations of the Council of Ministers. Indeed, the Council was not always made up of the same ministers. At meetings concerning general questions, the Council was generally made up of the ministers for Foreign Affairs, though in the case of specialist issues it could also be made up of the ministers of Finance or Agriculture. All these specialist ministers had rather quickly posted a few officials in Brussels, in order to follow the developments there and prepare for meetings. The initiative for developing the Communities in these early years, however, mostly issued forth from the Commission. While more and more officials kept business running in Brussels, the commissioners themselves were travelling the six Member States to canvas for their plans among national politicians and interest groups. Regarding the customs union and the common trade policy, for example, the Commission proposed plans to coordinate national customs tariffs and competition rules. Additionally, on behalf of the six Member States, the Commission took part in the worldwide negotiations on free trade, which had been taking place since 1948 in the context of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). To the great aggravation of the United States, the EEC was able to take a unanimous position during these negotiations. In this way, the EEC succeeded in forming an important countervailing power to the US, which had hoped to achieve worldwide free trade under President Kennedy in 1962. On the contrary, the EEC was oriented precisely toward internal liberalization of trade as well as external protection of its market. The agricultural policy was seen as the most prominent test for the development of a common European policy. Agricultural products were exempted from the ‘goods’ about which arrangements were made in the context of the customs union in the EEC Treaty. Instead, the Treaty contained plans for a common policy that – just as in the separate Member States – was oriented toward a guaranteed supply of foodstuffs for European citizens and socio-economic security for farmers. France, above all, had insisted upon this ‘communitisation’ of its agricultural policy. Previously, in the 1950s, Paris had pursued cooperation in this area. The French hoped to ensure a permanent market for their agricultural products at fixed prices. Such pricing regulations were intended to provide income security to the relatively insecure agricultural sector, which remained a major economic sector in France. In the run-up to the EEC Treaty, Germany had been hesitant about an agricultural policy of this sort. Given its relatively small and modern

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agricultural sector, Germany was in fact a net importer of agricultural products and stood to gain much from global free trade in this area. By signing the EEC Treaty, Germany had accepted a common agricultural policy. In the concrete elaboration of this policy, however, the interests of the two largest Member States regularly clashed. Sicco Mansholt, the Commissioner who was supposed to elaborate this new policy, had himself been involved in the negotiations over the EEC Treaty as the Dutch Minister of Agriculture. He began work with an exploratory conference in 1958, to which he invited representatives from national agricultural organisations, in addition to national policy makers and experts. Meetings lasting for days led not only to the first policy proposals but also to the establishment of the Comité des Organisations Professionelles Agricoles (COPA), headquartered in Brussels. This was a cooperative association of national organisations for agriculture. Just like the special commission for agriculture with national officials set up in 1960, this interest group became an important partner in dialogue for the Commissioner. Together with Mansholt’s officials, they settled the preparations for the EEC Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Broadly speaking, the CAP continued the policy of regulating and subsidising that was already being conducted by national governments. EEC subsidies took the form of price supports, as was customary in most Member States. Farmers received a price for their products guaranteed by the EEC, so that their incomes were not dependent on fluctuations in the global market. During the 1960s, intense negotiations preceded the fixing of these common prices. Above all the price of grain, which was to constitute the starting point for the remaining prices, formed a major hurdle because there were major price differences among the separate Member States. The nationally guaranteed grain prices were traditionally much lower in France than those in Germany. The German agricultural organisations turned against a compromise – every variant in-between would be lower than German grain prices. Not until 1964, when these organisations received promises from the European Commission and the German government that a transitional period would apply to Germany, did the German farmers agree to abide by the common grain prices. In 1967 the common market finally entered into effect in the area of agriculture. Common pricing applied to grain, sugar, milk, beef, pork and several kinds of fruits and vegetables. Commissioner Mansholt had wanted to link this introduction of price support to major reforms in the European agricultural sector, which for the most part was still characterised by small and not very profitable family businesses. At the insistence of agricultural

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organisations, however, Mansholt postponed these plans for modernising and upscaling until after the agricultural policy went into effect. Even afterward these agricultural organisations maintained their influence, such that the structural reforms implemented at the end of the 1960s were ultimately not very radical. Because the price support provided by the CAP encouraged farmers to drive up production, it subsequently did not take long before the first signs of agricultural surpluses – the notorious ‘butter mountains’ and ‘milk lakes’ – appeared. In spite of these negative consequences – which led not only to high food prices for the citizens but also to environmental damage – the CAP perfectly met the expectations of a supranational community in many respects. First of all, the CAP instigated cooperation in all manner of other areas. This was the spillover that Monnet and his followers had hoped for. Firstly, the common pricing policy more or less required that coordination among the six countries also took place in the monetary area. Secondly, the European agricultural lobby grew rather quickly into a model for other interest groups, like the EEC-wide lobbying organisations from the business world that acquired their authority via ECOSOC. Thirdly, agricultural policy constituted a model for the growing interaction between the EEC and the Member States. As far as that model was concerned, the Coreper constituted only the tip of the iceberg. According to estimates, from the mid-1960s around 14,500 national experts were ‘flown in’ annually to assist permanent representatives in the preparation of new European legislation. Beyond all of this, the CAP gave the Commission the possibility of playing a leading role in shaping the process of integration. It ought to come as no surprise, therefore, that this increasingly greater role the Commission assumed for itself repeatedly ended in power conflicts with the Member States. Before these conflicts got the upper hand, important steps were taken elsewhere to strengthen the supranational nature of the EEC. The European Court of Justice put itself on the map in 1963 and 1964 with two spectacular rulings. The first followed on from a case that the Dutch transport company Van Gend & Loos had brought against the Dutch government on account of the increase in the import tariff on chemical products that the company transported. According to Van Gend & Loos this increase conflicted with Article 12 of the EEC Treaty, which prohibited Member States from introducing new import and export duties, or levies having equivalent effect. The central question in this case was whether a company was allowed to make an appeal directly on the basis of a treaty provision. International treaties, after all, were arrangements between states, which citizens or companies could not appeal. The European Court of Justice nonetheless found in its

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judgement that the EEC Treaty in provisions like Article 12 could indeed have direct effect and therefore could be invoked by citizens and companies. As justification the Court argued ‘that the objective of the EEC Treaty, which is to establish a Common Market, the functioning of which is of direct concern to interested parties in the Community, implies that this Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the contracting states’ and ‘that the conclusion to be drawn from this is that the Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only Member States but also their nationals’.1 With this interpretation of the EEC Treaty, the Court went beyond what the Member States had foreseen in 1957, thus severely limiting the room for national policy making in the areas concerned. A year later, the Court went a step further in the case of Costa/ENEL. On the occasion of a case brought by the lawyer Flaminio Costa against the Italian government regarding the nationalization of the electricity company ENEL, the Court ruled that EEC law also took precedence over later national legislation. Costa believed that the nationalization of the electricity company went against several stipulations of the EEC Treaty. The Italian government argued that a conflict of this sort did not exist because the nationalization law was of a later date than the EEC Treaty and was therefore based on a new decree of the sovereign national legislature. The European Court judged in this matter that later national laws were not allowed to go against to the EEC Treaty. ‘By creating a Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacity of representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the States to the Community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves.’2 Besides these European Court of Justice rulings and the steps taken in agricultural policy, the development of the EEC in the 1960s gave every reason for optimism. The customs union provided for in 1957 was set up very rapidly. It was completed in 1968, eighteen months ahead of the schedule foreseen in the EEC Treaty. At the same time, almost all economies in north-west Europe experienced unprecedented growth figures while unemployment fell to a minimum. The exact effect of the cooperation in the EEC on these growth figures is difficult to determine. What is certain is that economic prosperity was experienced to a large extent as the success of economic cooperation.

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The new treaty signed by the six Member States in Brussels in 1965 constituted a less political, above all practical step. This so-called Merger Treaty meant the existing ECSC, Euratom and EEC were transformed into one entity beginning in 1967: the European Communities (EC). The bodies of the various Communities were merged: the Councils of Ministers of the ECSC, the EEC and Euratom were combined into one Council of Ministers. The High Authority of the ECSC, the Commission of the EEC and the Commission of Euratom were subsumed into one Commission of the European Communities. In view of the fact that Parliament and Court had been joint institutions from the beginning, their merger was an obvious one. Additionally, this treaty combined the budgets of the three Communities. On top of that, the Merger Treaty recognised the spontaneously developed Coreper as an entity that prepared the meetings for the Council of Ministers and carried out their assignments.

The States in Action: From Crisis to Crisis The successful start of the EEC, however, only describes one aspect of the history of cooperation in the 1960s. At the same time, plans for a common market had become the subject of fierce debate, even before they could be elaborated in 1958. In the years that followed, major and minor crises in cooperation accumulated. In these crises the Member States played the leading role, a clear sign that the early supranational Community was strongly based on intergovernmental cooperation. The first threat to successful cooperation came from the United Kingdom. At the end of 1957, the British – who had been observing negotiations on the EEC for a long while – presented plans for a competing, more intergovernmental free trade zone by way of the already existing OEEC. This free trade zone between participating countries clearly did not go as far as the common market intended with the EEC. It did not provide for a common external tariff, for example, much less further harmonization of social and economic policy. The Dutch government, which viewed the United Kingdom as an important trading partner, supported the British intention that the EEC in its entirety would make up part of this new free trade zone. At the end of 1958 however, after consultations with Adenauer, the new French president De Gaulle abruptly called off negotiations over this new organisation. De Gaulle feared that the free trade zone would benefit the United Kingdom, above all, because this country could preserve its favourable agreements

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with its former dominions and at the same time acquire free access to the European market. The French president gave even more weight to the fact that on account of mutual competition this intergovernmental free trade zone would dismantle early EEC cooperation before it even had a chance to flourish. Following De Gaulle’s example, the EEC Member States chose not to take part in the British initiative. The remaining OEEC countries (Denmark, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland) did join in the British plans, though, and jointly established the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960. Now that this ‘threat’ had been averted, the EEC countries were able to start building their own organisation. New potential disruption of this activity showed up rather quickly. This time the disturbance came from its own ranks. Once again, the French president De Gaulle played a leading role. Elected president in 1958, he was well known as an opponent of the European idealism of compatriots like Schuman and Monnet. In the years following 1958, he evolved into a fervent defender of the authority of national states within the EEC. In the debates surrounding the EFTA, De Gaulle had still defended the EEC. This former military leader, who owed his election as president to the collapse of French colonial power in Algeria, saw in the EEC a useful means for effecting increased prosperity. Amongst other things, France needed this growth to pay for the war fought in Algeria. As soon as possible, however, De Gaulle laid out his own plans for Europe. In the plans presented by De Gaulle in 1960, existing economic cooperation in the EEC became embedded in a plan for a political union. This political union was closely connected to the vision and ambitions of the French president. De Gaulle made it clear that in his view European cooperation had to be based on the autonomy of the national states at all times. The united Europe he had in mind was a ‘Europe of the states’ – an image that he contrasted with the technocratic reality of the EEC and the federalist and functionalist ideals of Schuman and Monnet. In the long term, according to De Gaulle, this kind of united Europe was to constitute a third power bloc in the bipolar world politics dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union. De Gaulle’s predecessors had already aimed at a more autonomous European power by also pursuing joint development of a European atomic weapon in the initial plans for Euratom. Partly on account of their close alliance to the US and NATO in this area, however, other European countries had rejected these ambitions. De Gaulle’s 1960 plans for a political union clearly implied a leading role for France. After the military defeat of France in the Second World War and the crumbling of its colonial power, a leading role in an also

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militarily powerful Europe was to give the French nation something of its old grandeur back. Eventually, this move would reverse the initial openness with which the other five EEC members had welcomed the French proposals. These proposals were elaborated by a study commission under the leadership of the French diplomat Christian Fouchet. In November 1961, the first so-called Fouchet Plan for a political union of the six EEC Member States appeared. This union had a clearly intergovernmental design. The cooperation – which was oriented toward foreign policy, trade policy, defence and culture – would take the shape of regular meetings of government leaders, who would, moreover, have to take decisions unanimously. When the plan appeared, there was already criticism, above all on the part of the Netherlands and Belgium. These smaller countries turned against the anti-Atlantic tone of the plan and the intergovernmental nature of the union. The Netherlands and Belgium feared that this design would work above all to the advantage of the two dominant Member States, France and Germany. After yet another Fouchet Plan was incapable of doing away with these concerns in 1962, De Gaulle quit his attempts at building up a political union. Instead, France sought further rapprochement with the Federal Republic of Germany. After state visits back and forth that served the purpose of ameliorating resentments from two world wars, this rapprochement was ratified in the Élysée Treaty in 1963. The treaty provided above all for regular meetings and cultural cooperation between the two largest EEC Member States. For the EEC as a whole political cooperation was temporarily put aside. Meanwhile, the Franco-German treaty signified a foreshadowing of the ‘Franco-German engine’ that would prove to be crucial on several occasions during the subsequent history of integration. The issue of enlargement of the EEC was closely interwoven with consultations concerning a political union. This question had become relevant with the accession request submitted by the United Kingdom in August 1961. Above all, economic considerations hid behind this request. In 1960, the British had already noticed that the six EEC Member States had the wind in their sails, economically speaking, whereas their own growth was stagnating. In addition, the United Kingdom feared that it would become isolated in Europe over the long term, in view of the plans of the Six for political cooperation. Under the leadership of the Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan, the country therefore requested accession. Denmark and Ireland quickly followed, because the United Kingdom was an important trade partner for them. In 1962 Norway submitted its accession request as well.

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In the negotiations concerning enlargement, however, the British set the tone. From the beginning of the negotiations in November 1961, it was already clear that it would be a laborious process. First of all, there was discord concerning the nature of the negotiations. Still unused to dealing with its lost status as a world power, the United Kingdom demanded all manner of exceptions to existing EEC agreements and behaved as if a new Treaty of Rome could be concluded among the seven states. The six Member States had an opposite point of departure. The EEC was a fact, and if the United Kingdom ever wanted to join, it simply had to adopt the ‘acquis’ (as the set of European legal precepts is called). The negotiations were further complicated by the fact that the EEC was permanently evolving and with that evolution the acquis and the conditions that the British had to meet. The never-ending stream of developments in agricultural policy, above all, was difficult for the British to accept. While the negotiators were bridging these major differences step by step, French concerns over nuclear weapons and the Common Agricultural Policy ultimately caused a breakdown. From the very beginning, France had been hesitant vis-à-vis British accession as long as the Common Agricultural Policy of the EEC was not consolidated. On account of the strongly divergent structure of the agricultural sector in the United Kingdom, the French feared that this policy would turn out to be quite a lot less favourable for their own farmers, if the British were also participants at the drawing board. During the negotiations about British accession, therefore, France had put rather high demands on the table concerning agricultural policy. Subsequently, the negotiations were put to a definitive stop when, after consultations with the American president Kennedy, the British prime minister Macmillan announced closer cooperation with the US in the area of missile technology. Providing American nuclear missiles to the United Kingdom went against the wishes of De Gaulle, who was in fact pursuing a more independent ‘European’ policy in this very area of nuclear armament. During a press conference in January 1963, the French president thus unilaterally, without conferring with the five other Member States, declared negotiations with the United Kingdom to have failed. Ireland, Denmark, and Norway subsequently withdrew their accession requests. For the time being the only expansion of European cooperation proceeded via the association treaties that the EEC concluded with its NATO allies Greece (1961) and Turkey (1963). These agreements between the EEC and third countries were oriented toward far-reaching cooperation without (or prior to) membership. In the case of Greece and Turkey, the EEC set forth the intention to form a customs union in these treaties over the long term. Compared to the accession negotiations with the British, though, this process

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only involved a limited form of integration. In 1963, in addition, the EEC concluded the Yaoundé Convention with eighteen African countries. This Convention constituted a follow-up to the association arrangements for the (former) colonies, which had been set forth in the annex to the EEC Treaty in 1957. With the decolonization of these countries, the treaty renewed the arrangements concerning the establishment of a free trade zone between them and the EEC, and the developmental aid these countries were supposed to receive from the EEC. In the Lomé Convention (1975), the arrangements were revised as well as extended to a large number of former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean (the ‘ACP states’). De Gaulle’s press conference in January 1963 concerning British membership in the EEC meant at that moment not only the end of negotiations with the United Kingdom for the time being, but was also a breaking point in the talks concerning political cooperation among the Six. The remaining five Member States were extraordinarily upset about the self-willed actions of De Gaulle. This press conference constituted the starting point of a series of confrontations and crises. The most incisive for European cooperation during the 1960s was the empty chair crisis, in which France withdrew from European cooperation for more than six months, seriously damaging trust in the remaining Member States. Besides being the result of worsened relations between France and the other five Member States it was the result of several disputed questions in agricultural policy. The empty chair crisis called forth the central dilemma of the fundamental opposition between a supranational and a more intergovernmental approach. It was a proposal from the European Commission that triggered this empty chair crisis. Aiming to increase the speed of transitions foreseen in the EEC treaty, the Commission had presented a proposal on 31 March 1965, which linked the financing of agricultural policy to institutional reforms. The most prominent reform concerned the new financial arrangement to replace the existing system of national contributions with permanent funding by the EEC. These funds were to derive from the EEC’s own resources, consisting of import duties on industrial and above all agricultural products at its external borders. Control over this budget would mainly be in the hands of the European Parliament, to the detriment of the Council of Ministers’ powers. The presentation of this ambitious proposal did not proceed very tactically. Contrary to prior protocols, the European Commission f irst presented the plan before the European Parliament and only afterward submitted it to the Council of Ministers. When the Council of Ministers did consider it in June 1965, the French negotiators, above all, proved to be offended by this course of affairs.

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Even without the audacious proposal from the Commission, the financing of the long-disputed and very crucial agricultural policy was a politically sensitive question, especially for France. And yet the failure of negotiations came as a surprise. Rather unusually, the host – France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs – refused to continue the negotiations until an agreement was eventually reached – an accepted European approach. Instead, the French minister reacted to the lack of a result in negotiations by withdrawing the permanent representative and other officials from their positions in Brussels. In so doing, the minister let it be known that the other five had, in his eyes, not kept to the agreement to take definitive decisions concerning the financing of the agricultural policy by 30 June 1965 at the latest. The empty chair crisis thus became a fait accompli – without a French representative, and any possible unanimity, the Council of Ministers could not take any decision at all. Pro-European organisations wondered whether this crisis would mean the end of ten years of successful cooperation. This uncertainty was intensified even further when De Gaulle elucidated the standpoint of his government in yet another press conference in September 1965. He called the crisis the inevitable consequence of the development of the EEC in the direction of a technocratic organization that lacked all democratic legitimisation. With that statement the French president cast himself as the defender of national states, in opposition to the supranationally-minded technocrat Walter Hallstein, the Commission president who over past years had come to adopt a profile that was increasingly more autonomous. In addition to discord concerning the agricultural policy as well as the dissatisfaction concerning the Commission’s proposal, De Gaulle put forth a third, more fundamental reason for France’s withdrawal. The EEC Treaty had set forth that by 1 January 1966, the requirement of unanimity in the Council of Ministers was to be replaced by a qualified majority. This step would limit the independence of Member States and specifically weaken the French negotiating position in the matter of the agricultural policy. Because of this, De Gaulle demanded a revision of this treaty stipulation during his press conference. In the meantime, the other five Member States had continued cooperating, as good and as bad as it was, for the purpose of not conceding too much to French obstruction. In response to De Gaulle’s press conference, they decided to attempt reconciliation. The five proposed to devote a separate discussion to the topic of qualified majority voting, in advance of the regular meeting of the Council of Ministers in January 1966. To that proposal, and different to normal meetings of the Council of Ministers, the five added that

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Hallstein, the Commission president criticised by the French, would not be present. Subsequently it was the French voters who forced their leaders to consider this proposal. In December 1965, De Gaulle had to adjust his anti-European course substantially, when he risked losing the support of farmers and entrepreneurs during the French presidential elections. Once back at the table in January 1966, the Six reached an agreement referred to as the Luxembourg Compromise. It recognised that, on the one hand, the introduction of qualified majority voting would go through, but on the other hand, each government was allowed to pronounce a veto if it was of the opinion that the matter at hand affected a ‘vital national interest’. In practice, the requirement of unanimity remained more or less intact. And yet, as an ‘agreement to disagree’, this curious compromise also signified a victory for supranational cooperation, even if it was only because the EEC had not fallen apart in spite of this profound crisis. After the empty chair crisis, the French leading role in European cooperation had still not come to an end. Together with Ireland, the United Kingdom once again submitted a request to be allowed accession in May 1967. Above all, it was the poor condition of the British economy that had incited the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, to take this step. Denmark and Norway followed with the renewal of their accession requests. In November 1967, De Gaulle once again made pronouncements against such enlargement. The French president justified his veto with the economic problems in the United Kingdom, which according to De Gaulle, was not ready for accession. What was left unspoken was that France still feared for its own position of power, seeing the United Kingdom as a competitor for becoming leader of the EC on the world stage. As a result of its departure from NATO in 1966, France had distanced itself from the United States and was reluctant to take the most important ally of the US into the EC. The French veto against this second British accession request led to a new crisis among the six Member States. This crisis coincided with stagnation in the cooperation process. Namely, with the completion of the customs union in 1968, the road map that had determined the rhythm of cooperation from 1958 on faded away. More distant goals – such as the structural reforms intended by the European commissioner Mansholt in agriculture, or the introduction of the common market set forth in the Treaty of Rome – proved to be less simple to bring about than hoped. At the same time, the favourable economic climate that had pushed cooperation along during the first ten years was in decline. A threatening monetary crisis confronted the Six with a problem – deepening cooperation by taking steps in the direction of a common economic and monetary policy seemed inevitable.

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Otherwise, cooperation in areas that required stable rates of exchange, like common agricultural prices, would be in jeopardy. More cooperation, however, did not appear to be a viable option as long as De Gaulle was in the Élysée Palace. Thanks to his resignation in 1969, new opportunities arose for farther-reaching cooperation.

A Unique Design: Completion, Deepening, … 1968 was the year in which youth protests throughout Europe gave the impression that everything could be different. In the same year, however, the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia showed that relations in a Cold War world had not really changed. In the EC this year of protest constituted the prelude to two important changes in power. In France, De Gaulle was succeeded by his fellow party member Georges Pompidou during the spring of 1969. Pompidou immediately set upon a course more oriented toward Europe. A few months later in the Federal Republic of Germany, Willy Brandt took office as leader of a new coalition of Socialists and Liberals. Brandt distinguished himself from his predecessors in his opening up to the GDR. In order to find support for this ‘Ostpolitik’, Brandt also became involved in more cooperation within an EC context. Together Brandt and Pompidou provided the EC with new élan. This new élan was expressed at a conference organised by the six European Member States in The Hague in December 1969. Here heads of state and government from the six Member States talked about new plans for cooperation. European leaders had not met for consultations of this sort since the talks on a political union in 1961 and 1962. After The Hague, summit talks quickly grew into a permanent custom, which was affirmed with the introduction of the European Council in 1974. Talks took place between European heads of state and government leaders, at which the broad guidelines for European policy were determined at least three times a year. Although the European Council became responsible for strategic choices in European integration from the mid 1970s onward, it was not until 1986/1987 that this Council was mentioned in any treaty for the first time, and not until the Treaty of Maastricht (1991/1992) that its role in the European decision-making process was formalized. Operating at the highest level of decision-making, the European Council was regularly able to push for cooperation in all-encompassing compromises where ‘normal’ talks between Member States, in the specialized substructures of the Council of Ministers, had failed. This situation did not mean that the summit conferences were

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able to solve all problems. In some policy areas they also became obstructions to this very cooperation, on account of political unwillingness at the national level. The type of summit conferences and the shape of the later European Council, as well as the exchange of concerns that took place during these meetings, were typically intergovernmental. As a result of the openings made for new areas and Member States however, these European Council meetings also laid a new foundation for more supranational cooperation. The summit conference at The Hague in December 1969 – the f irst European Council avant la lettre – became the trendsetter for finding such new openings. This shift derived from the exchange of concerns in divergent areas, from agricultural policy to enlargement and from monetary policy to the competences of the European Parliament. The summit talks in The Hague resulted in a final communiqué that brought together three directions for further cooperation under the heading ‘completion, deepening, enlargement’. As described in more detail below, the first aim, completion, made reference to resolutions from the Treaty of Rome. In The Hague, the European leaders decided to definitively settle several subjects that had been on their to-do list since the empty chair crisis. The second aim concerned deepening and referred to plans for cooperating in new areas, including monetary and foreign policy. Enlargement was the third aim and referred to the re-opening of negotiations with the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark and Norway. Under the heading of completion a decision was finally taken in The Hague concerning the permanent financing of the Common Agricultural Policy that France had advocated for so long. This decision made up part of the pursuit to give the European Communities a permanent budget of their own, which would be managed by the Commission. The details of this particular budget had previously led to the empty chair crisis. In The Hague however, it was agreed that the EC’s own budget would consist of import levies that would be generated at the external borders of the EC. In addition, there would be a fixed contribution from the Member States of at most one per cent from the Value Added Tax levied in the Member States. Different to what had been provided for in 1965, the Council of Ministers and, to a very limited degree, the European Parliament, too, were designated as assessors for this budget. The actual auditing of expenditures would from 1975 onwards be carried out by the European Court of Auditors. Regarding deepening, the final communiqué of the Hague summit described two areas in which government leaders aspired to more cooperation: economic and monetary cooperation as well as political cooperation. The first of these policy areas, that of economic and monetary cooperation, had already been explored by the European Commission in the summer of 1969.

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It was above all France that insisted upon this cooperation, as its economy had increasingly come under intense pressure from the German mark. The Commission memorandum described how closer cooperation in this area could help to limit fluctuations in the exchange rates for the currencies of the six Member States. Severe fluctuations in these rates, after all, hindered a steady development of trade within Europe. In The Hague, government leaders signed on to the most significant conclusion of this memorandum – ultimately, the EC would have to pursue the introduction of a monetary union. A separate commission under the leadership of Luxembourg’s prime minister, Pierre Werner, was to give an advisory opinion concerning the way in which this union could best be created. In October 1970, this commission presented a plan for an economic and monetary union (EMU), which could be created in ten years, according to the experts, but which in reality was not achieved until the introduction of the euro in 2002. The Werner Plan described three steps that had to be taken on the way toward an EMU. The first step consisted of rapprochement in economic and monetary policy. Apart from concrete and interconnected measures for this economic and monetary harmonisation, the Werner Plan provided all manner of practical recommendations for the first phase, such as the institution of a Council of Ministers for Finance and Economy and the harmonization of taxes on profits and dividends. Concerning the two subsequent steps the Werner Plan was much less clear. The second step in the plan consisted of fixing the exchange rates of the various European currencies. As a third step, the plan sketched a common central banking system, which was to enter into force from 1980 onward. The plan made no pronouncements concerning the question of whether this system was supposed to go hand in hand with a common currency. According to the Werner Commission, the decision depended so strongly on cultural and political circumstances that it could not be taken until the time was ripe. The Werner Plan was expressly intended to conquer the long-lasting controversy concerning the way in which an economic and monetary union was to be created. Germany and the Netherlands, the ‘economists’ among the Six, believed that harmonization of economic policy must precede the creation of a monetary union. These countries wanted to prevent the possibility of their sound budgetary policy suffering from countries that customarily compensated for their extra expenditures with inflation. Conversely, France and Belgium, as ‘monetarists’, proposed that a monetary union would result in harmonization of economic policy on its own. Moreover, they would be able to profit from the stability of the German mark. The Werner Plan chose a middle path between both approaches, in

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which harmonization and monetary measures ran parallel to each other. Nonetheless, the plan ran into much resistance in the Member States. In the style of his predecessor, the French president Pompidou protested above all against institutional reforms that would irrevocably ensue in the third phase of the plan. The German chancellor Brandt reacted more positively. With support for the EMU, he hoped to acquire support for his Ostpolitik in the other EC countries. In his own country, however, he ran into criticism from the powerful Bundesbank, among others, which was opposed to fixing exchange rates. Nevertheless, it was thanks to economic circumstances that steps were taken towards economic and monetary cooperation. In the summer of 1971, the Bretton Woods system, which had provided for worldwide, permanent exchange rates with respect to the dollar since 1944, fell apart. On account of high American expenditure as a result of the war in Vietnam, the Bretton Woods system had been under pressure since the late 1960s. The collapse of the system in 1971 led to a major risk in existing EC cooperation, including that of agricultural policy with its fixed pricing required stable exchange rates among the currencies of the six Member States. With the absence of a worldwide framework, the roadmap that Werner presented in his report was suddenly extremely necessary, even though a few adjustments were needed. Now there was an acute need for the fixed rates that Werner had not planned for until the second step. The first signs of crisis, which appeared in May 1971, had still led to unilateral action from the six Member States. Lacking agreement concerning a common EC approach, Germany and the Netherlands had decoupled their exchange rates from the dollar, whereas the other countries in fact held onto it. Even with the definitive end of the Bretton Woods system in August 1971, agreement among the six Member States was initially absent. On the initiative of France, the EC countries, together with the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries, made arrangements with the US concerning a maximum bandwidth inside which the dollar and the European currencies would be allowed to fluctuate. Currencies were to fluctuate at a maximum of 2.25 per cent toward the top and bottom of the new dollar parity. As a result, the various European currencies were able to gain or lose value at a maximum of 4.5 per cent with respect to one another. Subsequent to these arrangements, in the spring of 1972, it was agreed that the European currencies would not be allowed to vary more than 2.25 per cent from one another. This so-called ‘snake in the tunnel’ – within the tunnel of the 4.5 per cent the European currencies would be able to move jointly – had to be monitored by the central banks of the European countries, which either by

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asset purchases or by devaluation of a currency were supposed to stabilise its exchange rate. The ‘snake’ was only allotted a short life, however. Even before arrangements were properly determined, the British pound, weakened by speculation, had to leave the arrangement again. One year later, most of the other European countries had let go of the common exchange rate, too. When the economic crisis continued to flare up, those countries gave priority to national solutions in which domestic policy preferences could be more easily given a central role. Whereas Germany put the stability of its currency first, Italy, France and the United Kingdom, gave priority to social policy, under pressure from strikes. As a consequence, the resolve of the summit conference in The Hague to create an EMU in 1980 was still there on paper, but in practice economic and monetary cooperation looked very different. Foreign policy was the second area government leaders aimed to deepen cooperation in 1969. That European leaders wanted to explore this possibility at all constituted a breakthrough in itself. The subject of political cooperation had not been up for discussion since talks on the Fouchet Plan were dropped in 1962. In 1970, ambitions expressed in The Hague resulted in the establishment of the European Political Cooperation (EPC). It left behind most of the grand aspirations of the Fouchet Plan for a political union. So as to prevent debates concerning the transfer of sovereignty, the EPC was limited to voluntary intergovernmental cooperation. The EPC provided for ministers of Foreign Affairs to attend semi-annual meetings of the six Member States, at which they were able to exchange standpoints on current international issues as well as coordinating with one another. This coordination was buttressed by regular consultations among the civil servants of these ministers. In spite or perhaps because of these modest aspirations, the EPC did indeed lead to more policy coordination. For example, whereas the Six generally each conducted their own national course in the United Nations before 1970, afterward they often worked together within international contexts of this sort. Cooperation could readily be seen in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (the CSCE, established in 1973), later renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, from 1995). Thirty-five countries participated in this organization to secure détente between East and West. Additionally, standpoints on apartheid in South Africa were coordinated within the EPC to outwardly radiate more discursive power. Critics of the voluntarily established EPC were proven right, however, when EEC countries failed to succeed in acting jointly in either the fierce Palestinian-Israeli flare-up of 1973, or the oil

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boycott of Arab countries subsequent to that conflict. A more binding form of political cooperation for the EEC countries seemed as far away as had been the case in 1962.

… and Enlargement: Toward a Europe of the Nine The first enlargement from six to nine Member States in 1973 followed the 1969 summit conference in The Hague. To the surprise of many, shortly after government leaders of the EEC had given the green light to accession of new Member States, the Conservative Party’s Edward Heath became prime minister in the United Kingdom. He knew the problems of accession intimately – during the first British attempt at accession between 1961 and 1963, Heath had led negotiations on behalf of the prime minister Macmillan. In 1970 Heath noted that the British economy was deteriorating, with high unemployment figures and an unstable currency as a consequence. Accession to the EC seemed the only way out. Together with Ireland, Denmark and Norway, the United Kingdom therefore appeared at the gates of the EEC once again. Heath realised quite well, however, that he would also have to win the British people over to new developments in the EEC, such as the plans for an economic and monetary union. Conversely, the six EEC states were faced with the dilemma of uniting plans for enlargement with the plans for completion and deepening. In order to secure new arrangements for the EEC budget vital to financing the Common Agricultural Policy, the Six waited until 1971 to open up the official negotiations for accession. To the indignation of the four candidates, the Six had begun to develop a common fisheries policy, amongst others. Their intention was that fishers from EEC Member States would acquire free access to one another’s fishing waters. These unexpected plans struck the candidate countries the wrong way, as the United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway had vast fishing regions, and even Denmark had major fishing waters by way of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Because fisheries were important for the economies of these candidate countries, they demanded adjustments for this intended fisheries policy during their accession negotiations. As the most prominent negotiating partner, however, the United Kingdom was not in the position to make many demands, given its poor economic situation. In areas like agricultural policy, which had caused problems in earlier rounds of negotiations, the British were now able to set conditions only for transitional mechanisms. Butter from New Zealand and sugar from the Caribbean came to especially symbolise trade with countries from the

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Commonwealth where preferential arrangements had applied in the United Kingdom for many years. It was agreed that these preferences would be phased out only in the long term. Additionally, the British contribution to the EEC budget, another sensitive question, was made more acceptable by means of transitional arrangements. Because the United Kingdom imported many agricultural products from outside the EEC and had a relatively small agricultural sector itself, its net contribution to the EEC budget was expected to be relatively high under recent arrangements concerning that budget. After all, a significant part of this budget was generated by way of import levies and was for the most part spent on financing the CAP. The negotiations resulted in an agreement that Britain would incrementally contribute a little more over a period of five years, as a transitional mechanism. At the same time the EEC promised to work on the structural reforms in agriculture that would provide for a reduction in the CAP budget. After summit talks between Heath and Pompidou in June 1971, the negotiations were quickly completed. Only then did the most challenging task begin. British politics was strongly divided concerning the necessity of accession to the EEC, whereby parliamentary acceptance of the accession treaty was far from self-evident. Uncustomary for British politics, the dividing lines cut across the two most important parties. Out of opportunism, above all, the generally more European-minded Labour party took a position opposed to the accession treaty that the Conservative prime minister presented. In October 1972, only with the aid of a number of dissident Labour members of parliament, and after months of debates, did Heath succeed in finding a majority in the House of Commons, before the accession of the United Kingdom to the EEC became a fact on 1 January 1973. In Denmark, Ireland and Norway, referenda gave the people’s seal of approval to the negotiation. Apart from hindrances like the fisheries policy, the negotiations proceeded auspiciously. Accession was still not guaranteed as a result, though, on account of the resistance that existed toward the EEC from the population in each of these three countries. In Ireland, where the first referendum took place, resistance came above all from concerns about neutrality, about its own economic policy and about infractions against the national sovereignty won from the United Kingdom in 1921. In view of the overwhelming agreement that accession found in the referendum, however, it has to be noted that these concerns were nothing compared with the prospect of modernization and economic growth that the Irish associated with their accession. In Norway, sentiment against accession ran deeper. Besides the feeling that they would again lose the independence acquired 70 years earlier, the notion prevailed that above all European

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agricultural policy, social policy and agreements in the areas of fisheries were less favourable to Norwegians than existing national regulations. Given their solid economic position based on national oil and gas revenues, a small majority of the Norwegians (53.3 per cent) voted against accession. In Denmark, too, scepticism towards the EEC was great. Nonetheless, one week following the Norwegian ‘no’, a vast majority of Danes (63 per cent) voted for accession to the EEC. Membership was economically attractive to the Danes, above all on account of their intense trade with the United Kingdom as well as trading opportunities with Germany. With three new members beginning 1 January 1973, the EEC constituted a community of 225 million inhabitants, thus leaving the United States behind in terms of population. During a new European summit conference in Paris in 1974, the leaders of the now nine Member States looked ahead toward the long-term prospects. In the f inal communiqué they stated outright that cooperation would ultimately lead to a ‘European union’, without being exactly clear what that union would necessarily look like. With this ambitious plan – which would be elaborated on by a commission under the leadership of Belgian prime minister Leo Tindemans (1974) – the EEC Member States opened a new chapter in the history of the Community. Smaller plans with regard to further cooperation in the areas of regional policy, social policy, industrial policy, scientific and technological policy as well as environmental and energy policy underscored confidence in deepening cooperation. At the same time the monetary and oil crises of 1973 rather tempered any exceedingly high expectations. Thanks in part to the summit conferences, the EEC had been able to extricate itself from the political conflicts that appeared to block cooperation during the 1960s. When at the end of the 1960s the supranational development of agricultural policy and the customs union gained shape, as provided for in the EEC Treaty, impetus from heads of state and government leaders proved to be indispensable. Intergovernmental talks between the Member States were of major importance for the consolidation, enlargement and deepening of cooperation. External factors, like the economic crisis, were able to provide for pressure and, in that way, instigate more cooperation too. At the same time, problems regarding plans for economic and monetary cooperation as well as the British accession made it clear that conflicts of interest among the Six could substantially obstruct cooperation. For the time being, the framework provided by the Treaties still offered sufficient room for enlargement and deepening of the integration process. The main task faced by the nine Member States jointly forming the European Communities was to translate their ambitions for expansion into concrete plans.

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Intergovernmentalist Theory In 1957 the Treaties of Rome confirmed the establishment of European integration as a new phenomenon in international politics. For many scholars the process of integration justified a unique approach, the neofunctionalism discussed in the previous chapter. Both inside and outside Brussels, the conceptualization of this theory promising a step-by-step development of increasingly more integration, was closely pursued. In the recalcitrant practices of the 1960s, the first ‘tests’ of this theory proceeded rather laboriously, and integration hardly ever developed as automatically as neofunctionalism had predicted. With the debates on British accession as well as the empty chair crisis, integration even seemed to come to a standstill in some instances. As a reaction to these crises an alternative theoretical perspective arose in the 1960s, which did not consider integration to be that self-evident at all. Instead, it viewed integration as derived from the interests of the participating states. This theory became known as intergovernmentalism. The crucial difference between neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism – the divergent importance that both theories attached to states – also left its traces behind in historiography. The crises of the 1960s, in which theoreticians had already come to an impasse, constitute even now a beloved puzzle for historians. Many attempts have been made to reconcile the advance of integration and these various crises. Where theory is inclined to choose only one approach, historiography emphasises the very complexity of this period with analyses of internal conflicts and tensions in the process, and seeks a middle way between the extremes of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. Intergovernmentalism and (Neo)realism: The Central Role of States in Theory The rapid development of the ECSC and EEC during the 1950s put a lot of wind in the sails of (neo)functionalists for the further development of their theory. The neofunctionalists, including Ernst B. Haas and Philippe Schmitter, explained the process of European integration on the basis of spillover that would move like an oil slick from one policy area to the other. When the integration process stagnated in 1965, however, Haas was the first to recognise the failure of this theory. According to Haas, neofunctionalism could not sufficiently explain why the empty chair crisis interrupted the smoothly proceeding integration process. New explanations were necessary. For such reasoning intergovernmentalism offered resolution.

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Differently from neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism views states as central actors in the process of European integration. Negotiations between states determine headway in this process. Whether states want to work together on the integration of Europe depends on the interest they attach to this cooperation. Whenever the interests of multiple states come together, progress can be achieved. Whenever the interests of states diverge, however, integration stagnates or even falls apart. Intergovernmentalism offers an explanation not only for progress but also for stagnation in the process of European integration – something that neofunctionalism could not explain. Yet for intergovernmentalism, integration is far from self-evident. Any ultimate vision – as the functionalists and federalists had in mind – is lacking in this theory. This deficiency is a second important element that distinguishes intergovernmentalism from its predecessors. Rather than a constantly moving or advancing process, it describes only the moments in which a specific balancing of interests takes place. Intergovernmentalists generally concentrate on these key defining moments in their studies. Initially, intergovernmentalism barely comprised the characteristics of any theory. The Franco-American political scientist Stanley Hoffmann (1928-2015) is considered a key figure in its formation as a theory. In 1966, the journal Daedalus published his critical commentary on the theory of Haas and Schmitter entitled ‘Obstinate or Obsolete? The fate of the nation-state and the case of Western Europe’. In this commentary Hoffmann demanded attention be paid to the elements that were lacking in neofunctionalist theory – the differences between states as concerns their national culture, their vision of global politics and the role these states aimed to play on this global stage. Hoffmann opposed these elements to the economic and technical questions that were at the core of integration according to neofunctionalism. According to Hoffmann, it was very likely that in these latter areas of ‘low politics’, states were willing to cooperate whenever it served their interests. However, whenever this cooperation threatened to affect areas of ‘high politics’ – issues of peace and security – then, according to Hoffmann, major cultural differences hindered successful cooperation between these states. Hoffmann explained the various ‘crises’ that had appeared since the beginning of European cooperation in the integration process above all by way of differences among the individual states at a national level. The rise of intergovernmentalism connected closely to actual practice, in which the initial enthusiasm concerning the EEC had made way for concerns about the progress of integration. The actions of De Gaulle especially, seemed to prove time and again that Hoffmann was right. After all, De Gaulle liked to emphasise that French interests and French culture took centre stage

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in his policies. Additionally, debates concerning a political union and the struggle surrounding the first accession request of the United Kingdom had made it clear, as Hoffmann argued, that economic integration could not be seen separately from considerations of power politics and security for the participating states. The basis for intergovernmentalism became even more substantial in the 1970s when, under the influence of the oil crisis, a period of economic protectionism entered and, thanks to the obstinate actions of the United Kingdom, integration stagnated. As a theoretical perspective, Hoffmann’s intergovernmentalism is closely related to realist theory. Between the world wars, Edward H. Carr (1892-1982) developed this theory within the field of international relations, and it was expanded upon during the 1940s by Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980), among others. Like Hoffmann, Carr in his work, was opposed to the idealism of other theoreticians. According to Carr, international relations theory had to explain the reality of global politics and not proclaim any utopian or normative ideals. Carr thought that it was not ideals but the pursuit of power as well as self-interest that in reality dominated relations between states. However, Carr did not present any new theory – it was Morgenthau who did so. Shortly after the Second World War, Morgenthau, building on Carr’s criticisms, developed a theory that – just like theories in the natural sciences – was supposed to make predictions concerning future developments, using a number of objectively determined ‘natural laws’. Central to Morgenthau’s theory was once again the pursuit of power. According to Morgenthau, this pursuit of strategic and economic power always played a central role in the actions of national leaders, even though they claimed to be acting on ideals. The pursuit of a lasting peace was impossible from this cynical perspective; conflicts could at most be temporarily averted when the pursuit of power by various states or blocs of states kept one another in balance. Just as Hoffmann did a few years later, Morgenthau also pointed to the influence of culture, place and time on the actions of states. According to Morgenthau, these elements were of major influence, above all, on the ways in which the pursuit of power by statesmen was expressed. In the late 1970s, Hoffmann’s intergovernmentalism and the realism of his intellectual predecessors was further developed into what was now referred to as neorealist theory. International relations scholar Kenneth Waltz (1924-2013) played a central role in developing this new approach. Waltz’ theory was closely connected to the practices of its era, in which the Cold War determined the vision of global politics. Just like his predecessors, Waltz in his ‘universal systems theory’ reserved a central position for states. However, he differed from his

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predecessors by adding the notion that states were not entirely free to determine their own actions. According to Waltz, all states ultimately made up part of a ‘system’. The characteristics of this system determined in part how states defined their interests. For example, when all states try to increase their power with the aid of armaments, another state cannot easily abandon arming itself unless it is intent on its own downfall. Further, Waltz added that power within the system was unequally distributed among the states. Thus, the position of a state in the global system additionally determined the possibilities of that state to exert power. For Waltz, then, the actions of states were not only def ined by domestic factors, such as national culture that was central to Hoffmann’s theory. Latching onto Hoffmann’s oft-used example of France, Waltz would be able to posit that the stance of France could indeed be determined to a significant degree by how the world was looked at within this country. In the end, however, the French policy was also defined by the fact that its power position in the world depended very much on the US, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other. Given its emphasis on the autonomy of states, variants of intergovernmentalist theory dominated the understanding of European integration process, plagued as it was by many crises from the 1970s onward. Moreover, from the 1980s, these theoretical insights found support in new research based on the study of national archives, which were gradually being opened up for examination. The accounts of negotiations and policy papers found there confirmed that at least within the national political context, the behaviour of states in the European integration process was primarily defined by their interests. Thanks in part to this archival research, new variants of intergovernmental theory were developed, which, contrary to classical intergovernmentalism, understood the key interests of states to be in the economic realm rather than in peace and security issues. This ‘liberal intergovernmentalism’ is dealt with in the next chapter. States, Bureaucrats and an ‘Intermediate Sphere’ in History-Writing The strict dividing lines in the theory between neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism, have also left their traces in historiography. Their traces are visible, among other places, in the many analyses of the crises of the 1960s. After all, the rationale of the integration process itself seemed to have been up for debate during these years. In the historiography concerning this logic, dividing lines in the theory can still be seen as a result of many historians choosing to put the emphasis either on states and crises or on the

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gradual expansion of cooperation by the Brussels bureaucracy. New ideas are now being developed to bridge the gap between both camps. One of these ideas is that of an ‘intermediate sphere’ that appears to have grown between states and European institutions. The idea of an intermediate sphere of this sort was coined by the political philosopher Luuk van Middelaar in his book The Passage to Europe (2013). According to Van Middelaar, friction as well as the informal arrangements resulting from the Luxembourg Compromise made clear above all, to what degree the Member States had become connected with one another even when they were not bound by treaties. Van Middelaar explains this connectedness by introducing the intermediate sphere. It lies in between the ‘outer sphere’, in which states are free to make arrangements in accordance with their interests, and the ‘inner sphere’, in which the rules of the Treaty and the desires of European institutions dominate. The intermediate sphere, must be imagined as a gray zone between states’ and Brussels’ policy rationale. According to Van Middelaar, the Empty Chair Crisis in 1965-1966 was one of the moments during which the intermediate sphere could be observed. During this crisis, France again proposed entering into talks as six independent states, given that the country had now withdrawn from the rules laid down in the Treaty of Rome (and was thus in the outer sphere). A genuine return to the procedures of the Treaty (the inner sphere) was impossible as long as France stayed away, because the Treaty required the presence of all six Member States for the Council of Ministers to operate. Ultimately, though, an intermediate solution emerged. The five remaining Member States decided to continue working pursuant to the rationale of the Treaty, without the rules requiring them to do so, simply because they were used to doing things that way. According to Van Middelaar, this situation demonstrated that, at the European conference table, the ministers of the five Member States proved to be neither completely national ministers nor a fully-fledged European body; rather, they were in an intermediate position between both roles. More generally, the ministers of the EC Member States have been more inclined to solve new problems with one another, because they frequently had sessions there anyway, even though no regulation at all forces them to do so. Van Middelaar’s analysis contests that states are able to make completely independent considerations. However, he is also opposed to the neofunctionalist logic that seems to deny states any autonomous position in the process of European integration. Both points of departure can still be readily seen in earlier historiography, as proves to be the case when the 1960s are again taken as an example.

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Initially, mainly political scientists and theoreticians of international relations wrote retrospectives of these crisis years. These included the aforementioned Hoffmann and contemporaries like Miriam Camps, John Lambert and John Newhouse. They approached the crisis above all as a formative conflict, a struggle between the two dominant conceptions concerning the future of the EEC and dividing the Member States: the nationalism of Gaullist France vis-à-vis the federalism of the five other Member States. In this early historiography, great statesmen played the leading roles. Discussion among scholars revolved above all around how the outcome of the crisis – namely, the Luxembourg Compromise – was to be understood. Some believed that the development of European cooperation came to a standstill in Luxembourg because the right to veto in the Council of Ministers had not really been abolished. Others drew attention to precisely what had been achieved in Luxembourg – after much diplomacy, the crisis was ultimately overcome without major damage to the EEC. It was not until much later that histories of the 1960s would appear written from a more neofunctionalist perspective – with the early exception of the memoirs of key figures like Monnet. This perspective comes to the fore above all in studies on the European institutions and their chief officials, such as the official history concerning the ECSC by Raymond Poidevin and Dirk Spierenburg, The History of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community. Supranationality in Operation (1993), as well as the more recent history of the European Commission based more on interviews, The European Commission, 1958-72. History and Memories by Michel Dumoulin (2007). In addition, analyses of separate policy areas, too, are often in the tradition of the neofunctionalist approach, even though the traces of more recent theoretical trends such as multilevel governance are rather clearly visible in them. The unique analysis of Van Middelaar builds upon recent trends developed in the historiography of European integration policy. These approaches address above all the internal oppositions and tensions within the ‘states’ and ‘bureaucracies’, which previously were often regarded as monolithic entities. Already in the 1980s, attention given by liberal intergovernmentalism to the economic interests behind the grand phrases of states constituted an initial step in this direction. More than previously, within these analyses – which are treated in the following chapter – European institutions like the European Commission were also included as actors. Subsequently, even in historical analysis of the policies and politics of these European actors and the states, room emerged for a complex interplay of interests. Instead of opting for either geopolitical or economic interests beforehand, these

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studies posited that various factors simultaneously played a role in the crisis and its solution. For example, in his The European Community and the Crises of the 1960s: Negotiating the Gaullist Challenge (2006), the British historian N. Piers Ludlow calls attention, among other things, to the position of the five Member States that had been set to one side by France during the empty chair crisis. After studying many archives Ludlow posits that, besides the discord concerning the EEC’s future, the mounting irritation over France’s dominant role had also set relations on edge. Additionally, Ludlow shows that there is barely any talk of unambiguous national positions. Within French politics at the top level, for example, the extreme standpoints of De Gaulle were often compensated for by the more moderate course of his ministers. Van Middelaar adds to these historiographical developments attention to the meaning of certain concepts and theories – how were events during the 1960s coloured by the fact that the leading players themselves were also aware of the theories being developed, not to mention them wanting to influence them? For this reason Van Middelaar opts for a new terminology. The idea of the intermediate sphere requires looking at well-known historical events with new eyes. Thus, for instance, the emergence of the European Council in 1974 – long celebrated or mourned as a victory for the states – can perhaps best be seen as confirmation of the intermediate sphere. Instead of choosing voluntary meetings, government leaders opt for a structure that limits their freedom but, does not bureaucratise. Obviously, Van Middelaar’s perspective of three spheres does not produce an unambiguously, clear image, yet it does draw attention to the complexity that also characterised the history itself.

The Court of Justice From 1958, Brussels became the centre of European cooperation. Along with the European Commission, the various configurations of the Council of Ministers and the Parliament, lobbying organisations, media bureaus and party offices were established there rather quickly. Far away from that commotion, in the capital of the neighbouring country of Luxembourg, the European Court of Justice maintained the headquarters it had occupied since 1952, as the Court of the ECSC. This geographical distance did not take away from the fact that the Luxembourg court still played an important role in the design of European cooperation. By way of its rulings, the Court set forth how the Treaty of Rome was to be interpreted. Additionally, the Court repeatedly provided an impetus for the development of the common

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market when the decision-making process had fallen silent in this regard. This section elucidates how the Court, with the aid of many other parties involved, landed in a role that was not entirely provided for by the architects of European integration.3 The European Court of Justice made a name for itself with two sensational rulings concerning the EEC Treaty in the early 1960s: the Van Gend & Loos ruling in 19634 and the Costa/ENEL ruling in 1964.5 In the first judgement the Court found that certain provisions from the EEC Treaty could have direct effect upon the citizens of a member state. Citizens were thus able to make an appeal before court on the grounds of the Treaty. The second ruling stipulated that EEC law always take precedence over national law. Jointly these judgements underscored the fact that the Member States no longer had the last word in some areas covered by the EEC Treaty. The regulations set forth by the EEC could not be set aside by national laws, not even if those national laws were promulgated at a later date. After all, according to the Court, states had handed over a share of their sovereignty to the EEC. These two cases were quickly seen as ‘constitutionalising’ the EEC Treaty. According to many lawyers, the judgements of the Court meant that the European Treaties were no longer seen as ordinary treaties, which were to be understood as international law. Instead, they regarded the European Treaties as the beginning of a constitutional legal system, which would likely be able to grow into a European state. Through these rulings, the Court of Justice presented itself as the federalist counterweight to the strongly intergovernmental European approach taken by De Gaulle and others in the 1960s. With its sensational, ‘political’ judgements the Court explored the limits of the scope that it had been allotted in the European Treaties. More often than not, the Member States gave a shocked response. They had really not foreseen this development during the negotiations concerning the Treaties. According to the wording of the Treaty, the Court served to ‘ensure honouring the law in the explication and application of the treaty’. Even so, the ECSC negotiators had above all created the Court to control the power of the High Authority. States (and, in the event, also companies involved in the coal and steel sector) could make an appeal to the Court, whenever they believed that the High Authority had gone beyond its competences in its regulatory duty. In the EEC Treaty of 1957, this duty of the Court of Justice had been copied almost word for word, with the most prominent difference being that it now concerned the control of the European Commission. The EEC Treaty gave the Court two other duties, however. First of all, the Member States

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and the European Commission were able to file a complaint whenever a member state did not observe its obligations. This duty did not arouse much interest because the Court could not impose sanctions in the case of any possible condemnation of the member state. In addition, the EEC Treaty introduced the so-called preliminary ruling procedure. This procedure was, in practice, related to the fact that the EEC Treaty was supposed to be interpreted above all by the national courts. Whenever a conflict arose between individual citizens and the government concerning the way in which new ‘European’ regulations had been transposed in national legislation – in the area of import and export duties, for example – such questions were to be put before the national courts. In order to ensure that the national courts would interpret the European regulations in a uniform manner, these national courts could request an advisory opinion from the European Court of Justice – the so-called preliminary ruling – in advance of their own judgement on the case. In the early 1960s, this preliminary procedure constituted the basis for the two above-mentioned, famous judgements. The rulings thus issued from national court cases. Such cases often originated as test cases. Ideas for these kinds of test cases were created and elaborated in the new legal organizations for European law that had been established in the years following 1957. Within these organizations, scholars, lawyers, judges and Brussels officials explored the new possibilities for European law, based on professional interest and also often based on a federalist ideal. As members of such an organization, both the lawyers for the Dutch transport company Van Gend & Loos and the lawyer Costa had already conducted studies on the possible consequences of preliminary rulings for the development of European cooperation. In many instances, the court cases that were started for relatively small issues therefore also had clear additional intentions with a larger scope. The political role that the European Court of Justice assumed for itself in 1963 and 1964 was thus based in part on the opportunity lawyers in the Member States had opened up for such judgements. At least as important was the fact that these same lawyers contributed to the publication as well as the acceptance of these judgements among and by their national colleagues – which was in no way self-evident. In both the Van Gend & Loos case and the Costa/ENEL case the Member States had taken a resolute position against the far-reaching interpretations of the Court. The two doctrines – the direct effect of European law and its supremacy – therefore found only gradual acceptance from national courts. Above all the resistance of the German constitutional court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, is well

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known. In 1974 this Bundesverfassungsgericht found in the ‘Solange I’ ruling that European law could not take precedence over national law in Germany when fundamental constitutional values like democracy and basic rights were at stake.6 Only after the European Court of Justice declared that it took honouring basic rights into consideration in its judgements was the Bundesverfassungsgericht willing to provisionally accept the supremacy of Community law.7 In many other European Member States, too, acceptance of this supremacy did not proceed without resistance. Only in the Netherlands did the courts accept this precedence almost immediately, as a consequence of an exceptional constitutional provision that conferred this kind of supremacy to international law. In most of the other Member States resistance to the ‘constitutional’ interpretation of European law abated only in the 1970s. Yet acceptance of this doctrine was crucial for the continued role of the European Court of Justice in the integration process. According to the preliminary ruling procedure, namely, the Court was only allowed to pronounce judgement on European rules for which an advisory opinion had been requested. It depended on the submission of a request for an advisory opinion from the national courts. Once it had issued its preliminary ruling, moreover, it was up to the national court to make a judgement concerning the case in question. Once the acceptance of the supremacy of European law was a fact, interest groups started testing this preliminary ruling procedure to their benefit. The first legal cases had been primarily in the area of the customs union. The ruling for Van Gend & Loos, for example, revolved around the increase of import levies by the Dutch state. The Court’s scope of activity, however, gradually spread into other aspects of the common market. For instance, the Court made a ruling on the occasion of the issue raised by a Belgian stewardess concerning the unequal pay of men and women.8 In addition, the Court entered into the decision-making process concerning non-tariff import restrictions – notably at a time when the political decision-making process, under the influence of the economic and monetary crisis of the 1970s, was nearly at a standstill. A case concerning the French liqueur Cassis de Dijon signif ied an important step in mutual recognition of product quality requirements that were valid in the various European Member States, and which until then had often limited cross-border trade. German prohibition of the sale of the French liqueur constituted the occasion for the ruling, because according to German regulations its percentage of alcohol was too low to be labelled as a spirituous beverage and could thus pose a risk to public health. The Court considered this prohibition to be

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in conflict with European regulations, however: Member States had to trust one another’s quality requirements and therefore also allow into their own market products that were legally produced and sold in another member state.9 The Cassis de Dijon ruling has become well known for the impact it had on the European Community, which in the late 1970s was going through a phase of stagnation known as ‘eurosclerosis’. The judgement constituted the prelude to plans for the Single European Act in the 1980s. Just as with the judgements of the 1960s, though, the political role of the Court here was made possible to a significant degree by other actors. The occasion for the ruling was once again a test case, for which not only the German trade company starting the case, but also a specialist German lawyer as well as European Commission officials were responsible.10 Crucial for the ‘influence’ of the Court, moreover, was the publicity that ensued following the ruling by the Court of Justice. This publicity was above all provided by the European Commission, which, in addition to legal scholarship, saw in this ruling an important step in the direction of the harmonization policy that had been desired for a much longer time. After the ruling, the Commission almost immediately published a non-binding policy paper (a ‘communiqué’), in which it laid out how Member States could adapt their policy to the judgement of the Court. Additionally, the Commission announced that the judgement would constitute the framework for the new harmonization policy it was to elaborate. In so doing, the Commission provided an important contribution to the acceptance of the Court’s ruling by national courts and policy makers. The Court grew into a political actor to be taken into account both on the ‘constitutional’ level and on the level of the more practical application of European regulations. The number of the Court’s rulings rose rapidly as a result of, among other things, an increase in the number of complaints from Member States concerning European institutions acting beyond their competences especially after the Single European Act, which was supposed to help achieve the common market. From then on, the Court did indeed seem to opt for a less controversial course. The Court acted less and less in direct opposition to the states, whereas the states criticised the judgements of the Court more frequently. After the establishment of the European Union in the Treaty of Maastricht, the authority of the Court remained limited to the internal market, the first pillar of the Treaty. In the subsequent Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, though, the jurisdiction of the Court was gradually expanded as a result of the reassignment of policy areas. The requisite reservations remained in this

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regard, though. Thus, for example, in the case of asylum and immigration policy – which was transferred from the third pillar (Justice and Home Affairs) to the first pillar – only the highest national tribunal was allowed to request a preliminary ruling and, moreover, the European Court of Justice was not allowed to make any judgement concerning measures or decisions that had been taken with an eye to national security. Abolishing the pillar structure, the Treaty of Lisbon also eliminated almost all restrictions in the Court’s jurisdiction. In addition, the Treaty expanded the Court’s scope of activity even further by incorporating the Charter of Fundamental Rights into EU law. In part, this adoption concerned only the recognition of an existing practice. Before the Treaty of Lisbon, namely, the Court had rather regularly taken the initiative to invoke the observance of fundamental rights in its rulings. In doing so, it based its judgements on the fundamental rights in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and those in national constitutions. The Court, though, was able to take such action more easily in rulings concerning national regulations in European Union law rather than in rulings on European regulations. In view of the fact that the EU as such was not a member of the ECHR, the grounds for testing European regulations vis-à-vis fundamental rights were uncertain. In 2000 this lacuna had already been satisfied with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union – an independent document in which the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament jointly declared always to take into consideration the fundamental rights enumerated in the Charter. The Treaty of Lisbon subsequently anchored the Charter in the European Treaties, whereby the Charter acquired the same legal value as any other treaty law. A preliminary test of the possible significance of that heavier emphasis on fundamental rights in European law was provided by the Court in the controversial Kadi judgement of 2008.11 At the time, on account of the violation of the fundamental right to a fair trial, the Court struck down an EU regulation that was intended for carrying out UN sanctions against terrorism suspects. With this sort of controversial judgement, yet above all with the growing flow of less well-known yet significant rulings, the European Court of Justice rather quickly made a name for itself among insiders as the ‘protector of the European Treaties’ – a qualification that had previously been reserved outside legal circles, for the European Commission. In their roles, Commission and Court alike repeatedly went farther than the Member States considered desirable at that time. The Court – supported by the jurists organisations and the interest groups that brought these cases as well as

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by the national courts that accepted the judgements – presented itself as an important European actor that also gave shape to the Treaties.

National Archives Traditionally, the archives of national states belong to the most important sources for the historiography concerning European integration. In particular, the scholarly discipline of International Relations – which studies European integration as the outcome of intergovernmental diplomacy – concentrates on archival material from national governments. However, historians interested in the broader history of integration, such as the interaction between national and European politics in separate policy areas, or even the involvement of non-state actors in European policymaking will find many valuable entries in these archives. While research originally focused on the archives of the highest national entities engaged in European cooperation – the ministerial council, the president or the ministry of Foreign Affairs and its diplomatic representations in Brussels and the various European capitals – more recently also the archives of other ministries have received more attention, as did the archives of ‘executive’ administrative bodies related to these ministries. For all these kinds of research, national archives constitute a rich source of information. The archives comprise official documents, as well as traces of their creation, for example, in the form of official letters and telegrams, draft policy papers filled with marginalia, reports of meetings between ministers of the Member States and memoranda exchanged among their subordinates. Together these documents can reveal much about backroom talks during difficult negotiations and the course of deep crises in the process of European cooperation. The great wealth of material, however, also provides for the usual pitfalls. It is not always easy to find a way into the great amount of material available. In addition, archives often show evidence of multiple hands. Whether and where you find a document is seldom determined by the original producer of that document but much more frequently by the archivist for the department, by restructurings of the archive or by the subsequent producer of the archival inventory. Good use of the tools available is therefore indispensable for recovering how the archives relate to the historical reality. The first step in archival research is obviously locating the archive and obtaining access to it. In comparison to the archives of the EU institutions, which are also available for researchers either in Brussels or in Florence,12

From the Sources

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national archives are generally located conveniently close, in most cases being stored and accessible for research purposes in the national capitals.13 Similar to the archives of the EU institutions, national state archives usually become available for scholarly research after a legally regulated ‘retention period’ of thirty years. Before then, the archival materials are normally still in use by the entity producing the archives, which the researcher will have to contact directly in order to inquire about acccess, which is often either limited or non-existent. On some occasions, before tracing the location of the physical archives, researchers for their initial explorations of the material can make use of printed or digital source editions. These are collected selections of government documents – with or without extra clarification – that have been made available to the researcher. Examples of such source editions are the German ‘Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik’, the French ‘Documents Diplomatiques Français’, the British ‘Documents on British policy overseas’, or the source publication concerning Dutch European policy ‘The Netherlands and European integration’.14 In using these kinds of source publications, the researcher must always be aware that not all of the available archival material is recorded in these publications. Generally the editors have made selections based on source (for example, only documents from the archives of the ministry of Foreign Affairs) as well as content (based on subject, for example, or on the level of decision-making). On top of that, most of the (printed) source publications still date from the heyday of diplomatic history. In this case, then, mainly documents from the highest political bodies more readily come to the fore. For those who take these limitations into consideration, however, the published documents provide an excellent entry into the material, even into those materials not recorded in them. They often provide the attentive reader with a lot of information concerning the official departments involved as well as relevant individuals or subjects that can be pursued in further research. For further exploration of the archival collections for which no such edition is available, researchers often need to accept guidance from archival deposit staff, inventories, ‘finding aids’, or literature about the history of the ministry. In particular, inventories offer an overview of the files preserved in the archival collection, but frequently also provide information about how the collection moved around, what is missing and/or what has subsequently been added. This helps the researcher establish whether the materials uncovered are ‘complete’, and, if not, where further enquiries may lead. Indeed, files may have already been relocated while being compiled, or be lost or preserved in a personal file of the official or minister. In addition,

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archival collections may have been reorganised afterward or – with an eye toward the limited storage capacity in archival repositories – destroyed. Once the documents that are to answer the research question have been located and requested, the tools mentioned above can also be helpful in deciphering the many unknown abbreviations and scribblings on these documents. Knowledge of names and abbreviations is necessary to trace which route a document took within a department and to estimate its status precisely – not every memorandum represents the standpoint of a minister. At the same time, knowledge of the information flows between individuals, bureaus and departments can help establish what is missing from the files, or who was excluded from particular information flows. Initially, this should lead the researcher to further routes of investigation. However, it can also signal conflicts of interest within national states. Dutch Agricultural Interests and the First British Accession Request As an example of how the role of actors other than, say, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can be detected from state archives, a few documents from Dutch policy-making regarding the accession negotiations with the United Kingdom during the early 1960s are discussed here. In January 1963, these negotiations were brusquely terminated when the French president De Gaulle proclaimed a veto on them during a press conference. Prior to this veto there had already been negotiations between the six Member States and the United Kingdom for nearly one and a half years. The Netherlands played the role of a distinct supporter of British accession in these negotiations. This role very well fits the Atlanticist course generally taken in Dutch foreign policy. In particular Joseph Luns, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, maintained a strong pro-British and pro-American line of policy making. Whether this course was supported by all relevant groups in Dutch society is questionable. It is well known, for instance, that the French government allowed its critical position toward British accession to be determined in part by the just as critical attitude from the French agricultural sector. Just as in France, there was much support for the Common Agricultural Policy in the Netherlands, whereas this CAP risked being compromised as a result of British accession. One might wonder whether the ‘threat’ the British accession caused for the CAP also led to conflicts of interest in the Netherlands?15 For this kind of research question, various government archives in the Netherlands may be of use. Firstly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was responsible for coordinating not only European cooperation, and more

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specifically, of accession negotiations with the United Kingdom. Secondly, the matter at stake should have interested the Ministry of Agriculture as well. Thirdly, as we assume a conflict of interest between ministries, the Ministerial Council, in the Netherlands also responsible for coordinating policy, may be of interest. Starting with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the inventory of this archive indicates that for the time period 1958 to 1964 there are already 68 files in chronological order just concerning accession negotiations to be found.16 Limiting the search, then, is necessary. In this particular case, researchers can also turn to a specialistic online source edition, ‘The Netherlands and European Integration, 1950-1986’.17 In view of the types of documents covered by this source publication – in its introduction, the editors explain that they have only selected documents from ‘the highest political levels’ – conducting a search in this database for the subject ‘accession issues’ during the years 1961-1962 yields above all results that play out at the diplomatic level. Indeed, the search produces reports of various rounds of negotiations, memoranda of officials on the preparations for the negotiations and minutes of meetings of the Ministerial Council concerning the Dutch standpoint, all deriving primarily from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Interference from the Ministry of Agriculture does not appear to be present. However, the documents contain some signs that this ministry can be assumed to have been involved in the matter somehow, as they consistently emphasise that agriculture constitutes one of the greatest hurdles in the negotiations. Take as an example the following report included in the online source edition. In this report – entitled ‘Enige opmerkingen over het verloop der onderhandelingen EEG-Groot Brittanië in de periode oktober 1961-augustus 1962’ (A few remarks concerning the course of negotiations between the EEC and Great Britain during the period October 1961 to August 1962) – Piet van Ittersum gave his view on the negotiations until August 1962.18 Van Ittersum was head of the Directorate-General for European Cooperation, the department within the ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for the coordination of European policy. His report stated, among other things, that within all six Member States ‘agricultural groups’ had their reservations about British accession. These were causes of serious concern for the Director General: Within the Six, apart from in France, influential political and economic movements are perceptible, which all issue from one and the same source, to wit, the anxiety that the political and economic development of a smaller Europe shall be weakened by the accession of multiple European countries. Furthermore, as a consequence of the possible accession of at least three

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North-European countries, there is the evident and not incomprehensible fear of disturbing the existing Latin preponderance in the Six. And, as a third element of this fear, there is the barely disguised desire among the, politically speaking, extremely important agricultural groups in the six Member States for achieving completely autonomous development of the agricultural potential in future, unhindered by competition from agricultural areas that can produce cheaply outside the EEC.19

The accompanying letter states that the report by Van Ittersum was intended for the Dutch negotiators, while it was presented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Ministerial Council for their information as well. In the source edition, though, the minutes of the Ministerial Council for this time period are missing. In order to know for certain, whether something was done about these concerns, additional archival research is necessary. First, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive itself offers more background to the case of Van Ittersum’s report. Using Van Ittersum’s report as a more specific indication of the relevant time period, various indications proof that there was indeed interference from ‘agricultural groups’ in determining policy can be found in the archive. A letter from the Chamber of Agriculture that was sent simultaneously to the ministers of Agriculture Economic Affairs and Foreign Affairs, right before the publication of the report is a very explicit indication of such.20 As an umbrella organisation, the Chamber of Agriculture represented the three most prominent Dutch agricultural organisations. In the letter the Chamber of Agriculture was opposed to special regulations for agricultural products from the British Commonwealth. Instead, it argued for liberalising trade in agricultural products at global level as quickly as possible: The Chamber of Agriculture has consistently maintained the standpoint that a solution must be found for the special position of the Commonwealth countries, in accordance with the common agricultural policy of the EEC. In so doing, however, preference is given to quickly achieving ‘global’ regulations, which enable trade in agricultural products between countries without State trading in a non-discriminatory manner.21

While all this confirms the involvement of Dutch agricultural interests in the process of policy preparation, the documents traced so far do not suffice to claim that this actually affected the position taken during the negotiations. However, other documents from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive suggest that the agricultural sector was indeed quite closely involved in

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the negotiations and was also deployed as such. For example, a message concerning a meeting with the British Minister of Agriculture Christopher Soames shows that the Dutch Minister Victor Marijnen impressed upon his colleague that ‘horticulturalists not only in [the United Kingdom] constituted a political force’.22 By pointing to the pressure from agricultural and horticultural organisations in his own country, Marijnen tried to rein in British requests for special regulations. Moreover, as another document shows, Dutch agricultural organisations were not alone in their argument for worldwide regulations. A message from the Dutch Embassy in Washington shows that there was pressure from the United States, too, for such regulations. What is striking about this document is above all the many coloured pencil notations in the margins. Those who know that, in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the blue pencil was always reserved for the minister and the red one for the secretarygeneral (in the event, other colours were often used, for example, by the Directors-General) can conclude from this document that the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself, Joseph Luns, had this encoded message in his hands. His words suggest that he did not yet want to commit to any standpoint, internationally speaking: ‘convey no reaction to W’ton. They will indeed notice what we are doing.’23 Obviously, for a more thorough account of the weight of the Dutch agricultural interests in the 1961-1962 British accession negotiations, further research is essential. Based on these first findings, various archival collections can be considered for such research. First of all, the Van Ittersum memorandum retrieved in the online source collection leads to the Dutch Ministerial Council archive, the minutes of which should give more information on whether and how this memorandum has been discussed. Additionally, one could investigate the archives of the various ministries whether the letter arrived there and, if so, what happened to it. In particular, it would be interesting to see what kind of effect Van Ittersum’s observations had at the Ministry of Agriculture. For that it is necessary to discover how the structure of this ministry was organised – where, precisely, did ministerial council papers enter and on whose desk did they subsequently end up? The inventories of the ministry’s archive might provide a good entry point here. Finally, the letter from the Chamber of Agriculture also points to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Chamber itself as possible resources for further research. As this brief example has demonstrated, national archives constitute an indispensable resource for various kinds of research into the history of European integration. Apart from offering a first-class insight into the

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negotiations between governments on the diplomatic level, these archives also offer countless points of departure for historical research into conflicts of interest within national governments. In all cases, the researcher working with those sources needs to take into account the status of sources, as preparatory memoranda for example do not automatically reflect the position taken in negotiations. For those who know where and how to search however, archival documents can provide a wealth of information – even where this information is actually lacking in the document, or takes the shape of a single pencil strike.

Tindemans Report: European Union

Entry into force of the EMS First direct elections of EP

Accession of Greece

EP acceptance of the draft treaty for establishing the EU European Council of Fontainebleau: British ‘rebate’

Signing of Schengen I Governmental conference: Single European Act

Accession of Portugal and Spain

Entry into force of the Single European Act

1976

1979

1981

1984

1985

1986

1987

1986 1986

1981

3.

What is Europe For?

In the decade following Great Britain’s accession in 1973, Europe was marked by economic malaise, oil crises and increasing political tensions between East and West. In response to the rapidly worsening economic and social prospects national governments rushed into taking measures to protect their home economy. It was only after belief in the benefit of joint crisis management returned that the necessary political will emerged to take up the integration process and achieve substantial reform of the Treaties of Rome. To this end, the prospect of one large common market in Europe was the most important motivation. The Single European Act of 1986/1987 constituted a new basis for economic and monetary cooperation, while also laying a foundation in the area of foreign policy. Beyond the spotlights of the European Council, the European Commission was making grateful use of the growing perception among government leaders that more cooperation required more action-oriented Community institutions. In this regard, the European Parliament also managed to strengthen its position. The first direct elections in 1979 certainly did not change the Community from a Europe of states into a Europe of citizens, but they did give the Parliament more weight in the triangle of power including the Council of Ministers and the Commission. In the meantime, the ambitions of Greece, Spain and Portugal to accede to the EEC also constituted an impetus for more Europe. The economic structural problems of the countries in Southern Europe made a more extensive communautarian policy necessary. It would need to accommodate the new differences in prosperity in the Community as well as not endangering the quality of the project of integration. Thus, for the first time the Community found itself confronted with the connection between enlargement and deepening in the integration process.

‘Eurosclerosis’ and National Reflexes In the mid 1970s stagnation in European cooperation was reduced to one metaphor: ‘eurosclerosis’. This term was thought up to deride the increasing rigidity of the European economic order. After a long period of growth and stability the economic system began to show signs of rigidity, obstructing proper operation of the market as well as the free flow of capital, goods and people. From these years onward, the term ‘eurosclerosis’ would turn up during every economic crisis. The concept was used quickly by proponents

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of further integration and liberalization of the European market, above all, for the overall stagnation of the integration process in the broader sense – the slow progress of enlargement, the impotence of Europe vis-à-vis manifestations of economic crisis and the persistent conflicts concerning the European budget. At the European Council of Paris in 1974, Leo Tindemans, the Belgian prime minister, had been given the charge by his colleagues of reconsidering the grand concept of a European alliance. The all-encompassing nature of this assignment was not a sign of exaggerated ambition but in fact showed that the Member States were willing to bide their time. During a phase of re-nationalization and tense relationships between one another, it was up to Tindemans to find out what the common foundation of the Nine still comprised. Making a tour of European capitals and Community institutions, Tindemans inventoried future possibilities for Europe, both in terms of policy and in regard to institutions. He began his final report from December 1975 by encouraging Member States to continue steadily moving in a federal direction ‘in the spirit of Monnet’. At this time, fervent Euro-federalists were scattered few and far between, yet the Belgian prime minister was one of them. The Tindemans Report distinguished three core goals for realising a European Union – joint activities in relation to foreign and security policy, a joint policy in economic and monetary areas, and the strengthening of EEC political institutions. In line with the intergovernmental trend of the time, the report awarded a guiding role to the only recently institutionalized European Council, comprised of heads of state and government leaders, above all in regard of foreign policy. At the same time Tindemans also argued for greater legislative and supervisory power for a directly elected European Parliament. His proposals for deepening cooperation were the most progressive and disputed. Tindemans wanted to allow the integration-minded countries to work together more closely in various policy areas, without obligating those Member States that were not yet that far along. The British, Irish and Danish – new yet reticent members of the Community – still had to be handled with care, after all. Tindemans’ proposal essentially drafted the option of differentiated integration. By now this option has become a permanent component of the Brussels repertoire – it means preventing the vitality of integration from being restricted to the lowest common denominator of all Member States and, in fact, keeping pressure on the progress of the EU with initiatives for intensified cooperation among a few states. Tindemans’ final report was characteristic of the insistence of the European federalist avant-garde to strike out on new paths. These kinds of forward-looking perspectives, however, were not appreciated by European government leaders in

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their role as commissioners during the mid 1970s. Within the European Council there was insufficient political will to reform the Community fundamentally at an institutional level. Only later would the Tindemans Report prove its worth as an inventory of problems, possible solutions and aspirations. The reticent disposition of the Member States can be explained by a series of rapid changes in the global economy and international relations. From the second half of the 1970s to well into the 1980s, symptoms of economic crisis continued to plague Europe. The monetary crisis in the United States spread across the world and hit the European trade community hard. This crisis incited a reflex to put national interests first and a preference for national solutions over Community policy, in spite of the frequently much higher costs. The EEC was seen at most as a useful intergovernmental forum for discussing problems. At the economic level, Member States continued to give state support to at-risk businesses and sectors, in spite of earlier agreements by the European Commission to reduce this way of distorting competition. In regional and agricultural policy, too, the Member States took matters into their own hands. The aversion to a federal Europe was intensified by growing pessimism concerning the consequences of energy shortages. In the 1970s the Western world experienced the impact of an acute oil shortfall as a consequence of conflicts in the Middle East. In 1973 and 1979 these conflicts caused an intense rise in oil prices. Together with the sharp rise in the value of the dollar, these oil crises led to the deepest economic recession in North America and Western Europe since 1945. For these crises, too, the EEC Member States each tried to formulate an answer separately. Divergent national interests, as well as everyone’s pursuit of trying to come out of the recession in the best possible way over the short term, stood in the way of a joint economic and energy policy for the longer term. This attitude also affected the European Political Cooperation (EPC) programme. This development became clear in the absence of a joint European reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979, whereby the Cold War again flared up in all its fervour. The same thing occurred in 1981, after the harsh, repressive measures against Solidarność (Solidarity), the oppositional, independent trade union movement in Poland. Voices of disapproval sounded everywhere in Western Europe, but the EEC did not succeed in speaking unanimously. The Nine did not show themselves to be capable of jointly tackling the problems in economic and political spheres. The inclination among the Member States toward going alone, therefore, was the most important concern for the ‘Committee of Wise Men’ (composed of the former president of the European Commission, Robert Marjolin, of

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France; the former British prime minister, Edmund Dell; and the former Dutch prime minister, Barend Biesheuvel). They had been appointed by the European Council in 1978 to make proposals for improving the consultation and decision-making structure of the EEC, above all with an eye to future enlargement. Before the Committee got around to these institutional problems, it underscored the incapacity of Member States to keep the vitality of the integration process going by determining joint positions to be the most fundamental problem for the EEC at that moment. This finding, however, did nothing to diminish the laborious way in which Community institutions functioned. The Committee of Wise Men conducted an incisive analysis of the institutional shortcomings of the EEC after the first enlargement in 1973. It reached the verdict that European cooperation at institutional level gradually risked getting stuck in its own bureaucracy. The EEC had devolved into a hulking ensemble of technical regulations, distribution models for incomes and expenditures; possible measures for dismantling economic and trade barriers were inventoried, to be sure, though not realized. It was in this respect that the flip side of the Monnet method of gradual, apolitical integration appeared – without larger goals and the political will to provide a farther-reaching perspective, the Community apparatus remained trapped in stagnation. At the centre of this Community apparatus was the European Commission. The arrival of three new commissioners while policy competencies remained the same had done the weight of individual portfolios no good. With respect to government leaders, the president of the Commission had a weak position both institutionally and politically – certainly if this president was a less dynamic individual, as was Luxembourg’s Gaston Thorn at the beginning of the 1980s. Whether the Commission succeeded in bringing new initiatives forward depended more on the perseverance of individual commissioners than on the entity as a whole. Once conceived as a trailblazer for a European government, the Commission had landed in the second tier as a result of the intergovernmental mood in Europe. It had been reduced to an executive secretariat for European government leaders and the Council of Ministers. This weakening of the Commission’s role also had its impact on the European Parliament, which, after all, was only allowed to provide the Council of Ministers with advisory opinions concerning the proposals of the European Commission. Over the course of years the Council of Ministers had been divided up into more and more specialist Councils, one for virtually every larger policy area. The most prominent included the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs and that of the Ministers of Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN).

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During these years the Council of Ministers manifested itself in its various configurations chiefly as a platform for the Europe of the states. It operated without a clear common course and showed itself to be rather indecisive. The Council of Ministers was still being held hostage by the Luxembourg Compromise, which had in effect provided Member States with a right to veto and seriously obstructed majority decision-making. In addition, the institutionalization of the European Council had negative consequences for decisive action from the Council of Ministers. The European Council had begun to function as a court of appeal. All the issues that the specialized ministers could not or would not agree on were further referred to government leaders. Given prospective enlargement (Greece, Spain and Portugal), at the end of the 1970s institutional reforms intruded as unavoidable agenda items in Brussels and Strasbourg. Reports like those by Tindemans and the Committee of the Wise Men, however, had as yet only signal value (and often a strikingly forward-looking view). As for radically improving the function of the Commission, decision-making procedures and power relations within the Communities – in short: as for giving further shape to a political union – most Member States felt no enthusiasm. The institutional problems of the EEC were therefore not the most prominent concern for the nine government leaders. Their attention went above all to the laborious relations within the European Council itself. The proponents of more integration viewed the reluctant attitude of the other Member States as the greatest hindrance for guaranteeing the future of the Community. With the accession of each successive group of states, the variation in positions and interests within the Community would only increase. In the process, the persistent pursuit of unanimity heavily mortgaged the decision-making process, whereby resolving issues and opening up new policy areas would become increasingly more difficult. At the time of the southern enlargement, the EEG envisioned deepening and widening as a parallel process. In later years however, particularly the decade after Maastricht, this aim was unsustainable. Prioritizing appeared to be inevitable, making the question whether to favour enlargement or deepening integration a downright dilemma.

Widening without Deepening From 1979 to 1984 European Council meetings were dominated by bitter debates concerning the formation and finance of economic cooperation. In these items, the biggest differences of opinion did not occur between

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France and Germany but between the United Kingdom and the Member States on the Continent. London, followed by Dublin and Copenhagen, set a strictly intergovernmental course and showed itself – frequently together with the Netherlands – to be averse to farther-reaching supranational integration. There was no other Member State that surpassed the renewed ‘splendid isolation’ characterising the United Kingdom under the leadership of its Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990). In effect, London was focussed on negative integration. All barriers to the free movement of goods, people, capital and services had to be eliminated to advance economic development in Europe. European regulations and protectionist intervention, such as the Common Agricultural Policy, were only market-disrupting mechanisms in the eyes of the British government. For France and Germany this sort of market regulation constituted, in fact, the most prominent driving force in European cooperation. The British had major objections to the distribution of their own EEC budgetary resources across policy areas, not least of which to the calculation model for apportioning these costs across the Member States. From the first negotiations concerning the accession of the United Kingdom, the ‘British budgetary question’ had proved to be a real headache for the European Council and the Commission. The British started agitating against their position as a ‘net contributor’. According to the existing payment plan, as a major importer of food products from outside the Community – especially from its former colonies – the United Kingdom provided a large contribution to the European budget derived from import duties. That contribution was matched by relatively little direct EEC spending in the United Kingdom. In particular, because the island had a small agricultural sector, it scarcely profited from the extensive agricultural subsidies. The Community budget was already a politically sensitive item even in the initial days of the EEC, the Community budget was a politically sensitive item. The Member States regularly entered into negotiations with one another concerning the financing of Community activities and their institutions. Until the end of 1970, the EEC had covered the costs of its increasing policy interventions with a permanent contribution from the Member States. In 1971 the Council of Ministers introduced a completely new, differentiated payment model to finance the EEC budget. The annually determined payment consisted of three sources of income: an import duty on agricultural products from outside the EEC, plus a duty on sugar; import duties for additional trade with countries outside the EEC; and a share of at most one per cent of the VAT revenues from the Member States. In 1975 this scheme yielded the EEC nearly 12 billion euros, rounded off, for its own

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financial resources. In 1980, it amounted to around 20 billion. Over the years, however, the leeway in allocating this budget became increasingly limited, above all on account of the permanently rising expenditures for the Common Agricultural Policy. Apart from the budgetary effect, the introduction of this payment plan had important political significance. The Member States transferred their say on their government revenues to Brussels, after all. Even though it had to do with indirect taxes, the EEC had taken a first step in levying taxes supranationally. On top of that, thanks to its own financial means, the European Commission was able to operate more independently. Directly after taking office in 1979, Margaret Thatcher, out of aggravation over rising costs for the European agricultural policy and concern over the second oil crisis and the economic recession, made revising the payment plan into the primary objective of her European policy. Opposing financial solidarity as the point of departure, the British government put the accounting principle of ‘juste retour’ – every member state should be able to profit directly and proportionally from the money it put into the EEC. Imbalances would have to be compensated by a ‘rebate’. In Thatcher’s words: ‘We are simply asking to have our own money back.’ This principle of course completely bypassed the indirect political and economic benefits from a stronger EEC as well as the internal market. Over the following years, this British demand crippled the meetings of government leaders and poisoned their relations with one another. A solution did not come into view until around 1984, when the issue became part of a larger package of budgetary negotiations concerning, in particular, spending on agriculture as well as increasing the budget of the European Commission. By threatening vetoes, the British government ultimately forced France and Germany to yield to its desired plan for financial compensation. London’s obstructionist strategy was an extreme example of the intergovernmental mood during these years, which reduced cooperation in the EEC to a bookkeeping account of profit and loss. Not until 1984 at Fontainebleau, when the European Council came to a compromise concerning an annual reduction in the net British contribution, did reform initiatives have any chance of succeeding again. First, though, a second enlargement of the Communities would push aside the vision for deepening the integration process. Greece, Portugal and Spain sought accession to the EEC rather quickly after it grew into nine Member States. As a consequence of their dictatorial regimes, accession was out of the question for a long time, but that situation changed when the three countries each cast off their yokes, respectively, of the Regime of

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the Colonels (1973), of Salazar (1974) and of Franco (1976). That democratic reforms were a hard and fast condition for entry into the Communities spoke for itself. For the countries in Southern Europe themselves this condition was an important motivation as well. A ‘return to Europe’ would bring them out of their international isolation and signify a shot in the arm for their democratic governance. In the process, they hoped for help from the EEC in modernising their own national economies. All three candidate Member States were struggling with economic structural problems that were of a different order of magnitude than the economic crises in the EEC. In multiple respects, European aspirations in the three countries constituted a challenge for the course and policy of the EEC. Certainly beginning with the applications from Portugal and Spain in 1977, the European Council started to realize what implications this kind of Southern enlargement could have. To begin with, for the first time a considerable difference in prosperity would arise within the Community. This imbalance between Northern and Southern Europe would directly influence the most important economic sectors. France and Italy foresaw consequences for their competitive position in the area of agriculture. Even just the addition of Spain increased agricultural production within the EEC by a quarter. The Irish, British and Danish foresaw a similar development in the fishing industry, the other Northern European countries in the steel industry and shipbuilding. Conversely, there was concern that the Mediterranean countries would not be able to manage competitive pressure from the European internal market. On top of that, the economic recession at the end of the 1970s sharpened the fear of a massive influx of cheap labour, a politically sensitive point in times of high unemployment in North-West Europe. To accommodate the consequences of this social and economic inequality the Member States set conditions for various transitional regulations and more detailed safeguards. In so doing a precedent was also created for subsequent enlargement, above all as concerned vulnerable economies and low-wage countries. During the 2004 and 2007 accession of former Eastern Bloc states as well as former Soviet Republics in the Baltic, the EEC would again set conditions for transitional regulations and for compensation regarding these socio-economic consequences. This reaction issued forth, on the one hand, from a similar fear of large-scale labour migration as well as the withdrawal of companies to new Member States with much lower labour costs and, on the other hand, from concern over the needed financial support for modernizing the national economies of the acceding Member States. The Southern enlargement also had consequences for the expenditure pattern of the EEC. During the accession negotiations at the beginning of the 1980s, it had become painfully clear that the EEC’s agricultural policy

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had brought it to the brink of financial abyss. This situation was a direct consequence of the inability of the Community to rein in the two connected problems of overproduction and explosive cost increases at the end of the 1960s. In essence, the EEC policy revolved around two market-disrupting mechanisms. On the one hand, it protected the European agricultural market against external imports and, on the other hand, it guaranteed the European farmer permanent sales at a (high) product price. The EEC neglected, however, to tie the product increases stimulated by this pricefixing to a maximum limit. As a result of this omission, the butter supply for instance, nearly reached an extent that exceeded the annual consumption of the global population. Meanwhile, the EEC was left guaranteeing the costs of both the sales as well as a stable price level in Member States. With the prospective Mediterranean enlargement images of wine lakes, immeasurable fruit tree acreage and olive oil overproduction loomed. Reforming the EEC budget could not be avoided. These risk factors considerably delayed accession negotiations with the Southern states. The EEC tried to get a grip on the economic implications of the enlargement by way of specific and detailed transitional regulations. In so doing, the Communities seemed to gain time to adapt their institutions and decision-making procedures and to solve a number of acute cooperation problems, beginning with the issue of the British ‘rebate’. In the end, nearly three years of negotiations had preceded the admission of Greece, much longer than the previous enlargement. A new record was achieved with Spain and Portugal. It took more than five years before both countries were able to accede to the Community on 1 January 1986. Greece, as the most recent member state, was to blame for the delay in the last phase of those negotiations. During the initial years of Greek membership, under the leadership of the Socialist Andreas Papandreou – who had only recently entered office and was not very pro-integration – the Greek government assumed an attitude that seemed to be inspired by the British disposition. It made its approval of the admission of the Iberian countries dependent on the granting of European monies to support the Greek economy and jobs creation. Papandreou had set his sights on two funds that were instituted by the EEC for the purpose of this sort of structural development. Since the 1960s, the EEC had conducted an aid policy for promoting job creation in economically weaker regions and sectors via the European Social Fund (ESF). After the first enlargement, it had created an even more powerful instrument for reducing economic disparities via monies for structural development as well as for promoting social cohesion, namely, the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRD).

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The Greek claim on fund monies not only made the enlargement of the Community more difficult but also hindered the Council and Commission from being able to deepen cooperation in other areas. At the beginning of 1985, the European Commission ultimately managed to eliminate this obstruction for which the Greeks had a substantial share, by setting up an integrated development programme for the Mediterranean Sea region. After intensive talks the Member States agreed on the thorny questions surrounding this enlargement. In the process, these discussions revolved above all around measures for regulating increased competitive pressure in agriculture and fishing. Joining the Iberian Peninsula to the European alliance was subsequently endorsed by the European Council in the spring of 1985. In the same year, from a similar rationale of self-interest, Greenland went down the opposite path and left the EEC – the first country to do so in the history of European integration. The island had entered the Community as a province of Denmark, yet experienced above all the negative consequences of that entry. Free access for other fishing fleets to Greenland’s waters, which had become part of one major European fishing area had worsened the competitive position of its own fishers. At the end of the 1970s, after the island had succeeded in establishing more autonomy and economic self-governance from the mother country, the population, by a narrow majority, opted in a referendum for a departure from the EU beginning in 1985. After complex negotiations the EEC agreed that Greenland should remain associated as an overseas territory, with specific provisions concerning a duty-free import of fish from Greenland. With the completion of the Southern enlargement, the number of Member States had doubled in thirteen years. The EEC had become the largest market as well as the potentially most important trading power in the Western hemisphere. Yet the Community had also become considerably more heterogeneous in socio-economic respects. The consequences of this development for the project of integration in the long term were not unambiguous. More Member States and divergent national interests made grand plans for further deepening integration more difficult to realize. At the same time, the vitality of integration was stimulated by those mechanisms created by Brussels for making regional and socio-economic differences smaller. Behind these mechanisms lay the conviction that joint policy and mutual solidarity demanded a large measure of homogeneity. This ideal of homogeneity led to a strengthening of competencies for Community institutions and of cooperation between the Member States.

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Democratization of the European Communities With the increasing importance of the European Council, the institutions of the EEC experienced difficult times at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. Cautiously – so as not to distance themselves any farther from the Council and the most sceptical Member States – the Commission and the Parliament, each in its own way, made attempts to take the wind out of the sails of intergovernmentalism. The EP, in particular, went through a transition during this time, intensified by increased attention to the democratic substance of the EEC in public and political debate. Since the beginning of the 1970s, during new plans for transferring policy competencies to Brussels, Member States had been asking the question more and more emphatically whether ‘Europe’ still needed democratic legitimacy. Both this debate itself as well as the way in which the European Council ultimately responded to the dilemma would strengthen the role of the Parliament in the process of integration. During the first phase of European integration in the 1950s, those setting up the ECSC and the EEC had been rather anxious about democratising an institution that was still under construction. On top of that, in the phase running up to Paris and Rome, the dominant notion was that the Communities were about functional, economic projects that had to be organized above all to suit the purpose. Regulations for the common market seemed to be limited and technical in nature, in such a way that democratic control mechanisms would add little and only have a counterproductive effect. Above all, those partners, who were intergovernmentally disposed saw this situation as an excellent argument for limiting the role of the Parliamentary Assembly to that of acting as a supervisory board that gave advisory opinions and held debates. For that reason as well, its mandate according to the Treaty of Rome to ‘draw up proposals for elections by direct universal suffrage’ did not commit to anything and was not connected to any time frame. This reticence did not mean that there were no concerns about parliamentary supervision over supranational cooperation. Certainly the federalists harboured the desire to achieve a ‘true’ European representative body that had full authority to audit as well as to legislate. For functionalists, however, the creation of a European alliance was primary. For such cooperation quite a lot of resistance in the participating countries had to be overcome, even without a directly elected countervailing power with concomitant competencies. For the time being, national parliaments were better equipped to audit the process of European integration.

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From the very first day of its existence, the Consultative Assembly of the EEC would strive to bring about change in this situation. Just like the national parliaments, the European Assembly also wanted to acquire a voice in determining the budget, creating the Commission and promulgating European regulations. First and foremost, though, the Assembly pursued the introduction of European elections in accordance with the role given in the Treaty of Rome. As concerns democratic legitimacy, after all, the EEC still had the nature of an international organization, with a parliamentary assembly that was composed of representatives from national parliaments with a double mandate. In 1960, the EP had already presented an initial proposal for elections to the Council of Ministers, which subsequently kept that plan under consideration for three years. For De Gaulle and his ministers, a democratically legitimized parliament at European level was an unpalatable infringement on French sovereignty. In spite of persistent attempts by the EP to force a breakthrough, it was only after the departure of De Gaulle that the matter went forward. President Giscard d’Estaing, a more liberal figure who entered the Elysée in 1974, clearly gave a different shape to French interests. He was less opposed to a directly elected parliament, not least because he had the institutionalization of the European Council in mind. In December 1974, heads of state and government leaders cleared the way for direct general elections for the European Parliament. The EP expeditiously went to work with a draft treaty, yet once again had to watch how the Member States dragged the matter out in the Council of Ministers. The biggest point of contention was the apportionment of seats. After it had been decided once and for all to allow the EP to grow from 198 to 410 seats, the question arose as to how to apportion these seats over the nine Member States and their very starkly divergent numbers of inhabitants. It was decided to deviate from the democratic ideal that each delegate represented the same number of citizens. A weighted apportionment of seats was chosen on the basis of degressive proportionality. That is to say, the largest countries (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) counted the most delegates by far in terms of numbers, but a delegate from Luxembourg represented fewer citizens than his German colleague. A strictly proportional composition would have yielded an impracticably large parliament, or would have completely marginalized the position of the smallest Member States (three of the original Six among them). From 7 to 10 June 1979, the citizenry of the nine Member States – together an electorate amounting to a good 192 million people – was allowed to go to the ballot box for the first European elections. In reality, however, the elections could barely be called ‘European’. They did not take place on

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one specific day and – different to what the Treaty of Rome had suggested – did not proceed according to the same rules. Each member state voted according to national voting procedures, using electoral systems either of party-list proportional or of majoritarian representation, with or without an electoral threshold. National political parties, above all, and domestic issues dominated the elections. In countries like France, Denmark and the United Kingdom some parties conducted a pronounced anti-European campaign. The turnout at 62 per cent across Europe, did not disappoint. Within that turnout, however, substantial contrasts stood out, from the compulsory voting of the Belgians (at 91 per cent) to that of the British (at 32 per cent) as extremes. The reasoning behind the elections essentially lay in the democratic legitimization of the European Parliament. Although the new group of directly elected European parliamentarians had barely any more authority than their predecessors, they operated with much more awareness and assurance. This nature was expressed in growing parliamentary activism. From the end of the 1970s forward, the EP emphatically tried to put forth its own economic and reform-oriented agenda by way of hearings, inquiries, motions, particular commissions and reports. In this respect the entry of the British was not insignificant, bringing as they did their strong culture of parliamentary debate into Brussels’ melting pot of parliamentary traditions. In spite of their fundamental intergovernmental attitude, the British put their own stamp on the modus operandi of the EP with the introduction of a Question Time session. Combined with the new stature of the EP as the only democratically elected body in the Community, this activism resulted in an informal power shift in the triangle of Parliament, Commission and Council of Ministers. In 1980, recognition of this power shift ensued with a pronouncement made by the European Court of Justice. In the ‘Isoglucose Case’ the Court affirmed the Council’s obligation to wait for the advisory opinion of the parliament before taking a decision whenever the Treaty of Rome prescribed that the EP had to be consulted (the consultation procedure). Besides the fact that with this ruling allowed the EP to delay the execution of proposals, the pronouncement was above all an important moral victory. By issuing this judgment, the Court defended the fundamental principle that citizens should be able to exercise influence on the government by way of an elected representative body, at European level. In the following years, the European Parliament would develop more and more initiatives to strengthen its authority to audit and legislate as well as its position within the Communities. More than 25 years after the

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establishment of the ECSC, the Parliamentary Assembly of Europe still did not display, many characteristics of a fully-fledged, supervisory and legislative countervailing power. In contrast to national parliaments, the European Parliament lacked the right of initiative, among other things, and its authority in codecision in relation to legislation and the budget was very limited. The EP had little to no control over the income and expenditure pattern for the EEC, and it did not have any effective instruments at its disposal for influencing legislation initiated by the Commission. Between 1970 and 1986, two fundamental adjustments to institutional procedures would strengthen the supervisory and co-legislative position of the EP. In 1970 and 1975, the EP had acquired some expansion of its authority to audit with the introduction of a new budgetary procedure that made the Council of Ministers as well as the Parliament jointly responsible for determining the annual budget. This democratization was intended to compensate for the consequences of the EEC’s new budgetary model, which had somewhat affected the say of national parliaments over the budget for Member States. From that moment forward, the EP had the authority to propose modifications within budgetary frameworks, or to reject the budget in its entirety. Being granted a budgetary right, however, was above all symbolic, because the procedure did not apply to the most important fixed budget items, including those for regional development and agriculture (three quarters of the total expenditures). More substantive was the legislative authority that the EP managed to extract during the mid 1980s. For the most important treaty articles, the consultation procedure remained the prescribed method for executing the proposals made by the Commission; decision-making in the Council lay primarily with the Member States themselves, and the EP had only an advisory voice. Amendments to the treaty, which was supposed to occur via the Single European Act in 1986, introduced the so-called ‘cooperation procedure’ for a number of articles. The EP acquired authority equivalent to the Council over three quarters of the policy areas. Henceforth they were allowed to submit amendments and had the first right of approval or disapproval in reaching decisions with the Council. In regard of the accession of new Member States and international agreements, too, the EP acquired rights equal to the Council. Based on this authority, the EP was able to call itself cautiously a co-legislative parliament for the first time in 1987, when the Single European Act entered into force – a step in the direction of the Community system at the expense of the intergovernmental method. In line with this formal democratization of the EEC came the promotion of a European sense of identity among the population of the

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Member States. Over the course of the 1970s, this pursuit acquired more and more attention in all bodies of the Community. Backed by direct legitimization from the European voter, the EP claimed to be the best institution to tackle the democratic shortfall or deficit, a term that came into vogue for problematizing the gap between citizens and EEC institutions during these years. Cooperating with the Commission, the EP was oriented toward enlarging the public visibility of ‘Europe’ during this period, to which European leaders gave the decisive impetus. After determining that even the second direct election of the European Parliament in 1984 had roused disappointingly little enthusiasm among citizens, these leaders decided to charge a commission with promoting a common cultural heritage and shared identity among the Member States, so as to advance the cultural integration of Europe as well. The responsibility for enacting these measures lay with the Commission. Educational, athletic and cultural projects – like the Erasmus Programme for student exchange and the selection of the European cultural capital of the year – were supposed to make the citizens of Europe more aware of their interconnectedness. With that same goal in mind, the EEC would adopt symbols of European identity. The blue flag with twelve stars as the off icial emblem of the institutions, Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ as the European anthem and, in addition, the standardized passport, driver’s licence and number plates for cars all contributed to a shared European (sub-)consciousness and were thus important tools for creating support for supranational European cooperation.

New Perspectives In the transition to the 1980s, determined not to give up in the face of the scepticism dominating the Member States, the Commission stubbornly continued to work on solutions for putting wind back into the sails of the integration process. Under pressure from an unfavourable economic tide, the Commission’s attention went above all toward policy initiatives for monetary stability, industrial development and the free movement of goods, people, services and capital, while also moving toward the EEC’s institutional infrastructure. The Commission knew it was supported by the EP in those goals, which after 1979 also profiled itself as an instigator for deepening integration. In retrospect, this activism meant that both institutions laid down an important foundation for restoring the vitality of the integration process during the second half of the 1980s.

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From the very beginning of the global monetary crisis, one of the problems high on the agenda was the vulnerable position of European currencies. Given the political reality after the failure of the Werner Plan for an economic and monetary union, as well as the loss of the ‘snake in the tunnel’ exchange rate mechanism in 1970/1971, any rapid implementation of a joint monetary policy was an illusion. However, under pressure from the economic recession and fluctuations in the exchange rate between the dollar and European currencies, Member States did not evade new attempts to keep at least the course fluctuations of their currencies within acceptable proportions. In 1979 Germany and France embraced the initiative of the British president of the Commission, Roy Jenkins, to launch a European Monetary System (EMS) for promoting the stability of the exchange rate. In effect it concerned fine-tuning the earlier ‘snake in the tunnel’. Participants once again agreed not to allow the exchange rate of their currency to fluctuate upward or downward more than 2.5 per cent. What was new was the use of the ECU (European Currency Unit) as a unit of account. The ECU was a so-called ‘basket currency’, put together from the values of the participating national currencies. In this system each currency had a weighted share, dependent on the quality of the economy of the country concerned. Countries with strong currencies like Germany could intervene with the purchase and sale of currencies to see to it that all currency exchange rates remained within range. In exchange, financial reforms were required of weak economies, like the Italian and the French, in order to consolidate the position of the lira and the franc with respect to the German mark. The EMS was a modest success, both as a result of its direct monetary effect and on account of its significance for the integration process. The EMS did actually stabilize exchange rates in the EEC and helped rein in inflation. The basis for the exchange rate mechanism was intergovernmental – Member States voluntarily committed to a few monetary and fiscal arrangements. Greece, Spain and Portugal did not take part in the EMS until the end of the 1980s. Just like Italy, the United Kingdom was compelled to leave the system temporarily after a brief time (1990-1992), because it could not keep the exchange rate within the prescribed range. Without a basis in treaty, the EMS was still a fish out of water in the EEC’s configuration at that time. Later such forms of differentiated integration outside of the Treaties would find acceptance more frequently. After failed supranational initiatives, the EMS also constituted an initial start to renewed Franco-German leadership in Europe as well as an indication for the willingness of Member States to achieve harmony again in economic and monetary policy. During its first years the EMS showed the

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Commission, above all, the possibility for further institutionalization of joint monetary decision-making. In the second half of the 1980s government leaders went along with this process, in spite of substantive differences of opinion concerning the best economic and monetary strategy. The Member States hoped that their economic priorities would converge of their own accord, thanks to further monetary coordination over the long term. Additionally, this hope would continue to constitute an important driving force in the case of subsequent decisions for monetary integration during the 1990s, as well as at the beginning of the new century. At the beginning of the 1980s, results achieved in stimulating technological innovation, an economically relevant but politically less sensitive policy area than, for example agriculture, were significant too. During this period the idea took shape that Western Europe was falling further and further behind Asia and the United States in the global battle for developing innovative technology. The Commission saw this situation pre-eminently as a joint European challenge to turn the tide, with itself in the role of trailblazer. In 1982 it succeeded in enthusing representatives of industrial enterprises and universities about the first major European research programme, ESPRIT (European Strategic Program for Research and Development in Information Technology). Via this programme, the Commission invested in scientif ic research and development projects, specifically in strategic economic sectors. Even without groundbreaking technological innovations the programme was considered a successful example of intellectual and strategic cooperation at a European level. The popularity of the programme brought some functionalist élan back to Brussels, in the hope and expectation that other policy sectors would follow this example. Attempting to improve the competitive position of Europe in research and product development was directly related to the pursuit of unobstructed economic cooperation within the EEC, an objective that the Community had set for itself already in the Treaty of Rome. At the end of the 1970s the Commission had committed to a goal of levelling non-tariff (technical and administrative) trade barriers inasmuch as possible. It was encouraged in this objective by a European Court pronouncement, which revolved around the free trade of goods within the EEC (the ‘Cassis de Dijon Case’ in February 1979). On the basis of the Community principle of mutual recognition of national regulations, the Court judged that products that were legally produced and brought into trade in one member state also had to be allowed on the market in other Member States – a judgment with far-reaching consequences.

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With this ruling in hand, the Commission managed to effect an initial breakthrough in realising the common market. This act of jurisprudence not only made it possible to work toward harmonising the rules for the free movement of goods without treaty modification; it also provided the motivation to again give priority to the expansion of a common market. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Commission drafted a large number of proposals for liberalising trade, harmonising taxes, making technical standards uniform and enabling European public procurements. Representatives from the European business world were the first to applaud this new vision for a barrier-free trading community. At the beginning of the 1980s, it had become clear that national investment campaigns and protectionist measures offered little consolation for the various sectors in the face of crisis. Slight economic growth that stood out in a few Member States was thanks above all to a small increase in global trade after the oil crisis. The business world in Europe attached much importance to going at global competition jointly and stimulating economic recovery via deregulation at European level. On this front, the Commission managed to find support from a circle of leading industrial concerns like Volvo and Philips, which were conducting an active lobbying policy as a self-appointed ‘European Round Table’ from 1983 onward. During the early 1980s, a feeling of urgency was growing in the more integration-minded Member States. For them the EEC needed to be made more action-oriented in a political and economic sense. In spite of waffling government leaders, there were often calls for allowing the Community to function more democratically. In addition, and above all, national governments demanded an alliance more suited to its purpose. Necessary institutional adjustments frequently included letting go of the unanimity principle in favour of decision-making with a qualified majority. Expanding the authority of the EP was often mentioned as well. A 1981 initiative from Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German minister for Foreign Affairs, and his Italian colleague Emilio Colombo additionally testified to such demands. Building further upon the Tindemans Report, they urged the Member States to commit to a ‘European Union’ by means of strengthened Community entities and more efficient decision-making procedures. A joint foreign and security policy was pivotal to their proposal. On account of the worsening relationship between East and West, this duo made a plea for breathing new life into the European Political Cooperation programme of 1970, arguing broadening its area of competency to include security issues. The Member States were divided over the desirability of this plan, which would mean moving past NATO as a consequence. Again, a non-binding arrangement to

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reach a coordination of standpoints proved to be the most readily achievable agreement. Yet the solemn nature of the Genscher-Colombo Plan was unable to eliminate the reservations of government leaders. At a summit in Stuttgart in June 1983, the European Council got no further than a declaration of intent for closer cooperation. With a strengthened sense of self-worth, the European Parliament took initiative, too. Under the leadership of Altiero Spinelli, an Italian federalist from day one, a group of Europarliamentarians conceived the plan of drafting a European constitution. This semi-official plan for a constitution rapidly grew into a broadly backed agenda for the EP. In 1983 a commission for institutional affairs completed a Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union, which took as its point of departure a Community system with strong federal and democratic elements. The draft also spoke out in favour of the quick completion of the internal market and expansion of the EMS. In February 1984, the EP accepted the treaty proposal by a large majority. Of course, a unanimous Parliament offered no guarantee of acceptance in the European Council, where national interests and considerations counted more heavily than the visionary rhetoric of the plan for a constitution. Nonetheless, it did heighten the pressure on government leaders to formulate an answer to stagnation in the European project. Additionally, the driving force of the fourth power cannot remain unnoticed here. Beyond those institutions separated into three independent powers, a multiplicity of supporting official services and commissions with outside experts had developed over the course of years. They provided continuity in the process of integration while understanding, interpreting and carrying out EEC decisions in daily practice. Thus, for example, during the second half of the 1970s an extensive intergovernmental network had formed to support the Council, too. This network included scholars, officials and technical experts from the various Member States. Intergovernmentalism and supranationalism were much more strongly intertwined at this level than the familiar positions of Member States suggest at the time; these specialists generally looked farther than national self-interest and not infrequently worked together in concert with Community institutions. During their regular summits in the first half of the 1980s, government leaders pushed aside these kinds of initiatives from the Commission, Parliament and individual Member States as premature or too progressive. Still, that fact could not conceal the contribution that ‘integration activism’ was making to the emergence of a dynamic for getting European integration out of the doldrums. It was no coincidence, either, that Community entities and the more federalist-minded ‘founding fathers’ came to a comparable

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impetus for a supranational union at the same time. In many respects the intergovernmental course had not proven to be a fruitful method for confronting the economic and political problems in and around Europe. From this realization government leaders moved toward taking a leap forward in the integration process. Disappointed by economic stagnation and high unemployment compared to other nations outside the Community, as well as frustrated by recurrent impasses in the European Council, they became attached to the idea that the EEC could be more than a forum for discussion. The most remarkable representative of this forward-thinking insight was François Mitterrand, the French president. Upon entering office in May 1981, Mitterrand had still engaged in classic Socialist and protectionist policy, in which a Keynesian approach predominated by way of strong government incentives through higher wages and benefits to boost consumption. Within two years Mitterrand’s dirigiste policy brought the French state to the brink of bankruptcy, and the position of the franc within the EMS became endangered. Also in jeopardy was the relationship of trust it had with Germany, where monetary stability was sacred. In order to remain in the EMS, France had to make drastic budget cuts and seek to fit in with the neoliberal, market-oriented course of the rest of Western Europe. Mitterrand made this about-face in 1983, in the direction pointed to by the Minister for Finance, Jacques Delors. Mitterrand made a no less striking about-face in his view on the European alliance. Convinced that French interests lay in Europe, he exchanged traditional French intergovernmentalism for a more supranational orientation. Mitterrand came to see it as his personal mission to deepen European cooperation as well as improve it qualitatively. In the first half of 1984, he seized the six-month presidency to begin clearing away the most serious obstacles – the British ‘rebate’, the question of agricultural expenditures and Southern enlargement. Mitterand’s May 1984, speech before the European Parliament became famous; in it, he underscored the necessity of new objectives: ‘A quoi sert l’Europe?’ (What is Europe for?) Mitterrand spoke out whole-heartedly in favour of the EP draft treaty for the European Union and called for far-reaching institutional reforms and more intensive efforts on the part of the Communities in domestic and foreign policy, from environmental protection to defense. Mitterrand found a like-minded partner in the German chancellor Helmut Kohl. A powerful impetus for Franco-German leadership in the EEC emerged from a shared idealism, rooted in a recognition of their self-interest in European cooperation. After years of stagnation European government leaders were swept up in a new enthusiasm for communautarian solutions during the mid 1980s. A combination of international developments and continuing initiatives from a few Member States, yet above all from the European institutions, lay at

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the foundation of this change. In the mid 1970s and early 1980s, nonetheless, the signs had been extraordinarily negative. At the beginning of the 1980s, the second economic recession had overshadowed every prospect for real improvement. Seen in retrospect, though, even in those years small steps had been made that would prove to form a basis for the subsequent recovery. In the face of opposition the European Commission and the European Parliament continued to provide for continuity, supported by the administrative apparatus as well as the European Court, the silent engine of European cooperation. The relative success of the EMS kept the belief in deepening economic and monetary cooperation alive. In the end the government leaders of larger Member States played the chief role in breaking through the obstacles around 1984, just as they had done more than a decade earlier when those barriers had emerged.

Back to Rome: the Internal Market and the Single European Act The final Council summit under the French presidency, at Fontainebleau in June 1984, was crucial for setting the process of integration in motion. To this end, improved Franco-German relations were essential, and a cautious upturn in the economy formed a favourable context. With Mitterrand and Kohl taking the lead, Member States showed themselves willing to break through the budgetary impasse, to reduce expenditure for agricultural policy and make an arrangement to compensate the United Kingdom. Furthermore, government leaders decided once again to put an advisory commission to work on making concrete proposals for improving cooperation within the EEC, regarding both the economic and monetary area and the political coordination of foreign and security policy. Under the leadership of James Dooge, the former Irish minister, this ad hoc committee of experts was instructed to deal with the institutional barriers that stood in the way of smooth decision-making in the Council of Ministers as well as in the operation of Community institutions. The Dooge Committee was an intergovernmental body, of experts acting on behalf of Member States, in the company of only one representative of the European Commission. It was consciously modelled after the Spaak Committee that had prepared the Treaties of Rome at the end of the 1950s. The decision to appoint Jacques Delors, the French minister for Finance, as the new president of the Commission beginning 1 January 1985, proved to be at least as meaningful. As Mitterrand’s right hand, Delors was convinced that the socio-economic problems of the 1980s demanded a joint approach.

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Delors had developed a vision in regard to the EEC that displayed the traits of a model for European society – a social welfare state, based on a mixed economy and modern industrial sector. In contrast to that of Monnet, Delors’ integration strategy was based on visionary projects for convincing government leaders. Over the long term he had grand plans for European cooperation – a joint monetary policy, an integrated economic and social policy, and joint foreign and security policy. While these reform projects were already a goal for Delors, he was also sketching the contours for a future European Union, in the hope of providing new political verve for the process of integration. In this regard Delors differed from Monnet, who had tried rather to formulate practical goals that did not touch upon ‘big politics’. In view of the fact that his reform agenda was not particularly undisputed, Delors focused in the first place on the project with the broadest base of support – the completion of the common market. Delors encouraged his Committee to draw up a so-called ‘white paper’, a technical and substantive document that contained a guide for completing the internal market. This white paper was unique at the time in terms of the EEC. It formulated approximately 300 concrete steps and measures for eliminating all tariff and non-tariff obstructions. Even London could not easily oppose this form of negative integration. The point of contention was whether completion of this sort should be laid down in a treaty together with other institutional reforms. Thatcher had clearly spoken out in favour of farther-reaching integration in economic areas at Fontainebleau, though she preferred to see that integration realized through intergovernmental arrangements than treaty modifications. In order to keep the British favourably disposed, Delors presented the internal market as a limited process that had already been implemented much earlier. “Just as the customs union had to precede economic integration, economic integration has to precede European unity,” the argumentation in the white paper went. The white paper presented the completion of the internal market as only a next step on the path that had already been so clearly outlined in the Treaty of Rome. With the establishment of equal import and export tariffs for the entire EEC, the customs union reached formal completion in 1968. By the very nature of the matter, the common market including the free movement of people, services, goods and capital, as well as the phasing out of non-tariff obstructions, was a process that could never entirely be completed. Beginning with the white paper and the Single European Act, Delors preferred to speak of an ‘internal’ instead of a ‘common’ market, so as to emphasise the acceleration of this long-running process and the target date for the end of 1992, in spite of the startled reaction that it brought about in the British, in particular.

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In March 1985, while the European Commission concentrated on economic harmonization, the Dooge Committee completed its report with both short and long-term objectives for the EEC. The committee advised transforming the EEC into a European Union with an internal market, strengthening the monetary system and jointly acting on global issues in a more intense manner through coordination in the EPC. In institutional respects the report argued for a broader application of decision-making by way of a qualified majority, for limiting the number of commissioners, strengthening executive competencies of the Commission and decisionmaking authority in the EP. These same issues would define the agenda again and again at governmental conferences in Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice during the 1990s. In the end, the European Council meeting in Milan in June 1985 marked the breakthrough a year after Fontainebleau and shortly after reaching agreement concerning the Southern enlargement. The ten Member States embraced the proposed measures of the white paper. At the end of 1992, an internal market would supposedly have to be created in which the free movement of goods, people, services and capital (the so-called ‘four freedoms’) was guaranteed. The Dooge Committee’s advice to transform the EEC into a Union proved to be much more political in nature. It touched upon divergent national interests as well as varying degrees of willingness to commit to majority decision-making at a European level. The British, Danish and Greeks refused to assent to the proposal for calling together a major governmental conference or Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) to elaborate treaty reforms. In order not to get caught in an impasse once more, Italy dared to break with the unwritten rule of unanimous decision-making in its sixmonth presidency. The Italian prime minister, with support from Mitterrand and Kohl, forced a regular vote over the implementation of an IGC. This action broke the spell of the Luxembourg Compromise of 1966. The United Kingdom, Denmark and Greece protested heavily, though they proclaimed no veto. On account of the vision for the internal market and because there was no immediate threat of a major infringement upon national interests, they decided to continue working together for the time being. The Intergovernmental Conference that started in September 1985, was a new phenomenon in the EEC. Above all the scope of the agenda was unprecedented. The IGC had a threefold mission to set in motion the completion of the internal market, institutional reforms and implementation of European foreign and security policy. Earlier governmental conferences had always been limited to a specif ic, strictly demarcated area. The IGC was an innovation, even regarding its modus operandi.

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European institutions: the Single European Act (1986/1987)

Its tasks were distributed across working groups made up of high-level official representatives who came under the supervision of the ministers of Member States, yet were given substantive input by the Commission. The European Parliament, in contrast, stood completely on the sidelines. In the mid 1980s, few in Brussels suspected that in subsequent years the IGC would become the normal and regularly recurring approach for undertaking treaty amendments. Interaction of supranational and intergovernmental factors saw to it that the first IGC achieved results. After months of preparation by their officials in the IGC, the government leaders reached the decision to amend the existing Treaties of Paris and Rome with the so-called ‘Single European Act’ in Luxembourg, at the end of 1985. To an important extent, the creation of this Act came about thanks to the strategic combination of reforms by

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Delors and his Commission. The prospect of completing a European market also eliminated the resistance from reticent Member States towards intended institutional adjustments. In order to quickly and effectively complete the internal market it was necessary to replace the unanimity rule with majority decisions for this area. The Commission committed the economically weaker (future) Member States in Southern Europe to the new Act with financial support for regional development. The creation and elaboration of the Single European Act was advanced by the activities of lobbyists, as well as multinationals, and bankers who exerted their influence on official mechanisms for consultation. Independent of the notions of their national governments, they argued for deepening the integration process from their own economic, financial or regional perspective. By way of such advocacy they heightened pressure on the negotiators not to allow the amendment of the treaty to fail, and they contributed to successful implementation of the proposals. In the end, however, the Single European Act was above all the result of negotiations characterized by compromises by the twelve government leaders. No lofty federalist principles but rather their own particular and shared interests had been the point of departure economically, monetarily and geostrategically. At the moment the Act was supposed to acquire its definitive shape, Member States for the most part took up their familiar positions again. Ambitious aspirations for reform, democratization of decision-making procedures and farther-reaching monetary cooperation foundered on such stances. In contrast to the proposals of the Dooge Committee – let alone the advisory opinions of Genscher and Colombo, and the draft treaty initiated by Spinelli for a European Union – the outcome of the IGC in 1985, therefore, was meagre. The end result was a brief and not very inspiring document, the maximum number of reforms acceptable to all Member States. In a number of respects, the Single European Act has been important for the development of the European project. First among them was modification of the treaty provided a new perspective to the process of completion and deepening. The Act broke open the existing, limited framework for integration and created more room for deepening cooperation in future. The agreement comprised nine substantial treaty amendments in the end. For the sake of a uniform foundation among the Communities, the drafters had given up on a series of separate texts to amend the treaty. On the one hand, these adjustments concerned the communautarian EEC and, on the other hand, the coordination of foreign policy, for which an intergovernmental approach without majority decisions continued to apply. The English name

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‘Single European Act’ was supposed to emphasise the fact that all agreements were part of the same treaty framework. The Single European Act made one Community out of the EEC with objectives that reached further than just economy and trade. The most substantive innovation was the independent basis in treaty that the EPS received. At the same time the European institutions acquired a say over components of social policy, socioeconomic cohesion and in matters concerning technology, the sciences and the environment. In contrast, not much remained of Delors’ efforts to commit the Member States to achieving a monetary community, except for a declaration of intent guaranteeing the degree of convergence necessary for economic and monetary policy. Supported by Germany and the Netherlands, the United Kingdom had rejected any farther-reaching proposals. In the second place the Act strengthened the communautarian character of the EEC. In this regard a breakthrough in the decision-making process of the Council of Ministers was essential. Thenceforth, concerning measures regarding the internal market, the Member States waived their veto and the Council began to take decisions by a qualified majority; except in the case of a number of sovereignty-sensitive issues, such as indirect taxation. The Act created an important condition for realizing the internal market, without placing this objective itself front and centre. Though the Commission did not acquire any more formal authority, it did enlarge its sphere of influence with the expansion of the EEC’s range of operations; Delors and his followers were able to take the initiative themselves on several issues. The European Parliament, mentioned by this name for the first time in the Treaties, finally acquired new possibilities of exerting its influence on legislation. Even though it was for a limited number of policy areas and in accordance with a strongly stipulated procedure, the EP was thenceforth able to amend proposals and have a voice in the final decision-making process. Perhaps the greatest significance of the Single European Act, though, was in the improvement of relations among the Member States. Going-it-alone approaches and mutual distrust had made way for a belief in the added value of cooperation. The intergovernmental policy of self-interest was in no way weakened yet took place more and more expressly within a European framework. For example, the European Council of heads of state and government leaders acquired the formal status of a European institution in the Single European Act, ten years after the introduction of the permanent sequence of summits. After a decade of reticence, the amendment of the treaty closely connected to plans for the internal market, put the wind back in the sails of the European integration process. The Belgian prime minister, Wilfried

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Martens, concludes his memoirs with the remark that the Community was cured of its ‘eurosclerosis’ by the Single European Act. In this new dynamic, a Community free of trade barriers and border controls also acquired symbolic significance – that of a step on the way toward a fully-fledged European society. In order to make that aspiration real, Delors and his Commission still faced a large number of complex issues.

Liberal Intergovernmentalism and the Economic Perspective The division between politics and economy is always artificial. Politics creates prerequisites for economic activity and, conversely, national interests and politicians’ options for action are influenced by the business world and social groups. This condition applies to the nation state and also to the European Union as a new political entity with its own common market. From the Treaty of Rome (1957/1958) to the accession of the United Kingdom (1973), the integration process was above all a political affair. It revolved around securing power relations between the Member States and the position of the European institutions vis-à-vis the Member States, whether jointly or individually. In the decade that followed, this Europe grew out of political power struggles into potentially the largest economic power in the world as well as an epicentre of economic policy. The time period discussed in this chapter ended, after all, with the Single European Act (1986/1987), which constituted the overture for completing the common market and the new ambitious project of the Economic and Monetary Union. Given the consolidation of political power relations and institutional structure, the economic dimension of the integration project became notable during this time period. That was true for both the policymakers at that time and the theoreticians and historians. Market interests and economic developments – and not politics – seemed to propel the project of integration along. There was talk of an emancipation of the economic dimension, which had previously been seen above all as a means for cooperating and peacemaking. Not only on a European level did economic policy acquire a central position, but also in most of the Member States. After the German ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ and the economic prosperity across all Western Europe during the initial decades following the war, the first oil crisis in 1973 marked the beginning of a long-lasting economic malaise in Western Europe. Growth figures fell while inflation and unemployment rose. This economic cycle was amplified by the rise of Asian economies with low wage costs as well

Theory and Historiography

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as by the second oil crisis in 1979. Together, the oil-producing countries of OPEC were able to drive up the price as they wished, accompanied by all the economic and social consequences of that caprice for the EEC Member States. On the whole, the crisis turned the economy into a public issue. Citizens who were experiencing the consequences of the crisis first-hand, started to become interested in economy and, along those lines, in European integration as well. The continually recurring question during this period was whether the EEC constituted an important framework for joint measures against this crisis, or whether it in fact crippled effective national policy. In part as a result of the crisis, the business world, the media and social interest groups increasingly intervened in defining government positions during negotiations in Brussels. This interference made the decision-making process even more complex – parties with national interests or ‘stakeholders’ started to join in the discussion more and more emphatically, and government leaders or ministers became aware of their constituencies to an increasing degree during the negotiations of the Nine. Liberal intergovernmentalism (LIG) These developments and new insights, the priority of economic policy and increasing public interest also had their impact on theory. Scholars began to give more weight to economic factors in the integration process and to the role of ‘stakeholders’ in the creation of national negotiating positions. The neo-realists or intergovernmentalists of the preceding period had emphasised political dimensions, above all. On top of that, they took the result of internal negotiating processes within each member state to be a given and a point of departure for negotiations between the states at a European level, just as their name states. This new liberal intergovernmentalist (LIG, or LI) school emerged in the 1980s. With the American historian and political scientist Andrew Moravcsik as its visionary, the school analysed European integration more broadly (the economic dimension) and more deeply (also within the Member States) than its predecessors. In the 1990s the euro and the Maastricht criteria would only further strengthen the importance of the economic dimension in the process of European integration. Partly as a result of that intensification the possibilities and need for the business world and social groups to influence politics increased. Ever since, the theory of LIG and of its founder Andrew Moravcsik has begun to dominate the theory of integration in political science, certainly as concerns the classic question into the motives and

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factors involved in integration. An important advantage of LIG is that it is able to deal both with the increasing complexity of EU structures and with the ‘economization’ of the European project. Politics and theory developed in a strikingly synchronous manner. In the 20 years between the Merger Treaty (1965/1967) and the Single European Act (1986/1987) the political architecture of Europe experienced no substantial reform. Only afterward did it turn out that precisely during these 20 years of apparent standstill the foundation had been laid for the ambitious projects of Jacques Delors as Commission president (1985-1995). At first sight the stalemate between intergovernmentalists and neo-functionalists also persisted in the development of theory. It was only afterward, precisely within these theoretical frameworks, that it turned out research had already been conducted in terms of empirical political science and history. Those investigations went into the economic aspects of the integration process and its concomitant decision-making as well as into the archives and egodocuments – made accessible in the meantime – from the earliest phase surrounding the Schuman Plan and the Treaties of Paris and Rome. Given this sort of archival research, the foundation was also laid for LIG as an ambitious new theory. Andrew Moravcsik and others viewed the new élan for integration in the SEA and in Delors not as reconfirmation that the neo-functionalists were right but, rather, as proof of the unbroken power and commonly shared economic interests of the Member States. Moravcsik judged the Single European Act not primarily as the result of supranational involvement on the part of Commission and Parliament with the support of European multinationals. He considered it, rather, as the product of converging German, French and British economic interests. According to Moravcsik, the Commission was dancing to the tune of Bonn as well as the British government weakened by the economic crisis. Taking as its point of departure that integration only takes place if the interests of Member States are being sufficiently served by it, LIG has chosen the side of the intergovernmentalists. Moravcsik and his disciples do show more willingness, however, to recognizing that the integration process also has a certain dynamic of its own, one that is comparable to the neofunctionalist notion of spillover. In that respect, LIG surpasses the stalemate in the classic opposition between the theories of neo-functionalists and intergovernmentalists. In contrast to these two theories, LIG and related approaches – like constructivism or ‘multilevel governance’ – no longer have the pretense of completely and conclusively explaining the process of European integration from one single principle. Certainly from the Single European Act (1986/1987)

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onward, the ensemble of European institutions’ policy and decision-making became more and more complex. In the development of theory, too, it turned out that various scholarly explanatory models and approaches needed to complement rather than exclude one another. As a result of this development, the theoretical debate concerning European integration had, after an isolationist phase, again become embedded in more general scholarly debates concerning international relations, international organizations and government systems. Moravcsik’s study The Choice for Europe. Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (1998) is the key publication for LIG. In it Moravcsik analyses the directions chosen in the process of integration, from the initial plans for establishing a European Economic Community during the conference of Messina in 1955 to the absorption of the EEC into the three-column model of Maastricht (1992/1993). The book cover presents a model of his vision – Europe as a windjammer with billowing sails in the form of national flags. In Moravcsik’s view, European economic cooperation and transfer of sovereignty could not be explained by common security interests and geopolitics, nor by the diplomatic genius of Monnet, nor by the particular dynamic of Brussels’ technocrats. Rather, it was to be explained by the sober calculations of national politicians as well as by the mutual dependence of the major European economies upon one another. Moravcsik, just like his predecessor Alan Milward, combines theory concerning the integration process with solid historical evidence on national and European decision-making based on diverse archives. However, Moravcsik was also a man of his time. His economic explanatory model was convincing for the select moments of the Single European Act and Maastricht, yet far less so for Rome, the Common Agricultural Policy of the 1960s or the European Monetary System of the 1970s. The theory of LIG distinguishes three steps in European decision-making and for each of these aspects recommends a specific point of departure for the analysis. The first step concerns the national decision-making process preceding the negotiations between Member States. LIG – as its name states – takes a ‘liberal’ point of departure in the analysis of how national positions are determined. The liberal theory of international relations posits that the international action of a state is determined, above all, by the internal order of that state (democracy) and the aggregation of economic and social interests into one national standpoint. It is perhaps clear that the theory of LIG reduces the complexity of European decision-making. The formation of national opinion and decisions certainly does not stop when intergovernmental negotiations begin. When the initial standpoints or preliminary results from negotiations in Brussels

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are made known, interested parties and opinion makers will try to get the government to think differently, to move it toward a more stringent or, in fact, more conciliatory position. They can also try to exert their influence on the decision-making process in Europe through other channels. Intergovernmental negotiations taking place on the basis of these national positions, constitute the following step. Just like the intergovernmentalists, LIG theoreticians take the dominance of the Member States in this rational though rigorous negotiating process as their point of departure. According to their findings, the influence of supranational entities like the European Commission is very limited. Seen in this way, the ‘intermediate sphere’ is closer to classic international negotiations between unconnected states than to a Europe as a new political unit substantially restricting the freedom of states to act. In this picture, instead of cooperation and idealism, ‘Realpolitik’ stands front and centre with vetoes, horse-trading and ‘package deals’, and forced compensations. Subsequent to the first step of determining national positions, the states act internationally as unitary actors in this model. Only when government leaders or ministers have taken strategic choices and a compromise is on the table, is the Commission back in the game, according to the theory of LIG. The third step concerns the establishment of the European institutions. The theory of LIG explains the existence and operation of supranational institutions with the convergence of rationally determined national interests of Member States and not with transnational actors and spillover effects. In order to consolidate their common interests the larger Member States choose to use Europe as a means toward this end. They urge the smaller states to participate and to transfer well-considered, specific competencies to supranational bodies in Brussels. If there is talk of spillover in some areas, then that is only because the larger Member States consciously commence and control this process. Institutional choices are therefore only made after substantive compromises have been laid out. Developments in the integration process since the 1990s have raised a number of points in the case of LIG as the dominant theory for analysing the EU. The rapid succession of institutional reforms with the Treaties of Maastricht (1992/1993), Amsterdam (1996/1999) and Nice (2001/2003) suggested that the European institutions were more than a pliable instrument in the hands of London, Berlin and Paris. Additionally, the growing number of institutions with increasingly broader competencies seemed to be at odds with the theory of LIG. This theoretical school, however, proved to be flexible enough to process new developments in the actual political situation and to integrate academic criticism as well.

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Constructivists provided a critique comparable to the point of departure in the first step. They emphasised that even ‘determining national positions’ was not an objective and rational process that played out exclusively before European decision-making, isolated from European norms and rules. In their view this internal process can therefore also not be analysed and explained only in terms of ‘interests’. Interaction permanently takes place outside politics, too, for example through transnational actors like multinationals and international interest groups beyond the control of national government. Academic criticism of the second and third step in the LIG model came from institutionalists who were not willing to go along with Moravcsik’s assumption that the presence of all these European institutions and (un)written rules of play changed next to nothing in the course and outcome of intergovernmental negotiations. According to them, formal treaties and procedures, and also historically developed conventions from decades of European cooperation in the intermediate sphere, indeed restricted the leeway for Member States to act. On top of that, political scientists and historians accuse Moravcsik and his disciples of selecting empirical case studies in such a way that the dominance of national economic interests was the predictable outcome. All the case studies, after all, concerned ‘high politics’, namely, crucial intergovernmental negotiations in the Council on economic issues. For the less political issues and decision-making with a qualified majority, which made up a large part of Europe’s actual functioning, the theory would yield less convincing results. After all, the theory ignored both the role of the Commission and the Court as well as that of the smaller Member States. In view of this criticism, in addition to the open nature of LIG theory, some critics speak of an ‘approach’ and not a ‘(grand) theory’ in the strict sense. LIG hardly seems falsif iable and can be combined with various other views. The liberal intergovernmentalists, though, have provided two important breakthroughs. First of all, the dogmatic and unproductive stalemate between intergovernmentalists and neo-functionalists has been overcome by strengthening open and broader empirical research into the integration process. Secondly, founded on archival documentation, this modus operandi in political science has also built bridges with up-andcoming historical research. Historians and the Common Market With the exception of a handful of historians who allowed themselves to be carried away in the euphoria of the Treaties of Paris and Rome as well as the European ideal, European integration constituted a subject for diplomatic

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historiography, well into the 1970s. Around 1980 there were some signs of movement in this intergovernmental and one-sided political perspective of historians. Just as in the case of political scientists, interest increased in the economic dimension of the integration process as well as in (the history of) European policy. Four developments explain this trend. As a result of the malaise the 1970s as well as the realization of the common market, there was talk of a genuine intensif ication of the economic dimension of the integration process. Even more important was the release of more and more archival material, which put historians in the position of being able to write the first studies concerning the initial phase of integration based on primary source material. Third, it was no coincidence that authors central to the theoretical debate (such as Alan Milward in the 1980s and later on Andrew Moravcsik) were writing essentially historical studies. Finally, the 1970s also marked the rise of the subdiscipline of socioeconomics in general historical sciences. Though this economic turn brought the historiography of the EU into contact with political science and sociology, EU historians remained an exception within general historical sciences. Areas of overlap existed only with specific approaches in political science, among them liberal intergovernmentalism. Model-based ‘rational choice’ theory and classic narrative history, on the other hand, had little to say to each other. During the 1980s a number of specialized historians began to write studies in which social and economic issues stood at the forefront as aspects of the European integration process. The American John Gillingham was one of the first in his work Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe 1945-1955 (1991). Whereas the European Union was a monstrosity of overregulation according to Gillingham’s neoliberal verdict, the socialist-oriented historian Tony Judt accused the EU of offering up its social ideals of redistribution to unbridled market forces and the capitalist pursuit of profit. Because the EU has remained above all an economic organization surrounding the internal market, the number of studies concerning national economic interest groups and transnational economic networks still continues to increase. Authors like Michel Dumoulin from France and Antonio Varsori from Italy can be mentioned in this context, and certainly also Britain’s N. Piers Ludlow. Generally speaking, even textbooks concerning the history of integration written under the influence of this ‘school’, have gone on to pay more attention to economic issues and policy. The work of the British political scientist and historian Desmond Dinan is an example of that economic focus.

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In the 1980s, historians became more interested in policy history, which on a European level meant above all economic policy. The Common Agricultural Policy set the most pens in motion, with coal and steel easily in second place. It was in these areas that the lion’s share of the European budget was allocated, and it was also the most complex policy area of the EEC in terms of administration. These historians of policy were neither interested in fundamental theoretical debates, nor were they exclusively oriented toward the economic dimension. Different to Moravcsik, they did not look toward major intergovernmental moments; instead, these historians examined the functioning of the European institutions that had to put into practice the policy decided there in a complicated interaction with national organizations. This policy history was not so very indebted to the theory of LIG but well connected above all, to the new question in the 1990s as to the functioning of ‘multilevel governance’, that is, the negotiating process between governments on various territorial levels – supranational, national, regional and local. At the same time policy history provided more room for gradual processes of integration and the autonomous role of supranational entities, upon which the (neo-) functionalists had previously fixed their hopes. What it did have in common with LIG was the interest in national stakeholders who exerted their influence on the determination of governmental positions prior to international negotiations. On the basis of policy documents and the analysis of decision-making, historians have shown that these processes were in essence more complex than any obvious ‘national interest’, taken uncritically as a point of departure by intergovernmentalists. Typical examples of this kind of particular historical contribution to scholarly literature on the EU are Peter Weilemann’s study on the history of Euratom and Ann-Christina Knudsen’s monograph on the Common Agricultural Policy.1 This approach meant that historians were no longer able to concentrate on the political decision-making of one member state, but that they needed to include multiple national archives as well as that of the European Commission in their research. Even though classic political history continues to predominate, since the 1980s interest in the economic dimension has become a permanent component of historical literature concerning the EU.

European Political Parties The Other Europe

With all the attention that goes to the struggle between Member States and Community entities in any history of European integration, it is easy to forget that Europe is also an arena for party politics. Since the beginning of integration, the EU’s political institutions were supported

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by party politicians, from the High Authority of the ECSC to the subsequent Commission and the Council of Ministers. The members of the first not yet directly elected Parliamentary Assemblies were also united in transnational political associations. In this early stage of integration various scholars, among them Ernst Haas, saw national and transnational parties as ‘crucial supporters’ of European cooperation. The 1978 quote from David Marquand, the British historian and EU functionary, is famous: the European Community would only be able to democratize if it would shift its foundation from a ‘Europe des patries’ to a ‘Europe des partis’, so that the struggle of party politics, rather than intergovernmentalism, provided direction.2 In the present day, in any case, European political parties formally constitute the most important representative expression of the Union, as intermediaries between the electorate and the political institutions. The parties bring together the will of European citizens in order to execute those desires subsequently in Strasbourg or Brussels. In this section, the development and meaning of such political unity on a European level stand front and centre. What have the parties meant for the ideological tone of Europe and for its democratization? To what extent do their roles differ from those of the modern national party, in formal respects and in practice?3 The Origins: Separate Contact Institutions and Parliamentary Factions Transnational party-political cooperation has two different sources. Even before 1945 representatives of like-minded political parties maintained contacts in transnational associations with varying degrees of intensity. The shining example for this cooperation was the Socialist International, established in its original form in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1947 the Christian Democrats organized as the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales and the Liberals as the Liberal International. However, neither of these latter party associations, ever acquired a solid structure and remained above all only slightly mandatory organizations for networking where ideological issues could be discussed. Serious pan-European party formation did not occur until the mid 1970s, after the announcement of the first direct elections for the European Parliament. A decisive role in that creation was set aside for the factions in the European Parliament that had the (financial) means to facilitate party formation at the European level. Two decades earlier, at the beginning of activities of the Parliamentary Assembly of the ECSC (1952), these European

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factions had been formed along ideological lines. The three largest factions were those of the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and – quite considerably smaller – the Liberals. In 1958, attempts to reach further institutionalization of the cooperation of European factions with their transnational party associations had still not yielded much of a result. On the eve of establishing the EEC and Euratom, the Socialists set up a liaison office that maintained contacts with the Eurofaction and also served as a liaison for the associated national parties. However, little came, of the desired more substantive and coordinating function. Practically speaking, the Christian Democrat and Liberal factions were at an even greater distance from their transnational platforms. The tipping point in the intensification of transnational party-political cooperation was the prospect of direct elections for the European Parliament. For the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals there was a need for more action-oriented organization, not just for the election campaign – they needed a candidate list, after all, and a campaign agenda – to strengthen the organizational and programmatic connection between the cooperating parties and support the related factions in the EP. In the mid 1970s the dominant movements in Europe began to set up more fully developed party-political federations. In 1974 the Socialist parties transformed their cooperative association into the Federation of Socialist Parties in the EC – ‘the Federation’, for short. In 1976 the Liberals followed suit with the – politically heterogeneous – Federation of Liberal and Democratic Parties in the European Communities, and the Christian Democrats with the establishment of the European Peoples Party (EPP). Between these groups and at the margins of the party-political spectrum there were diverse, smaller movements. From the beginning of the 1970s, a number of them began to organize more intensely as well. The accession of the United Kingdom and Denmark brought a group of Conservatives into the European Parliament, which entered into their own party-political association – albeit an extremely loose one, in accordance with their intergovernmental nature – after failing to join with the EPP in 1978. In 1981 a few parties oriented toward regional autonomy united in the European Free Alliance, including the Flemish nationalist Volksunie (People’s Union) and the Fryskje Nasjonale Partij (Frisian National Party). In 1984 left-wing alternative, green parties successfully participated in the elections with a newly founded European Coordination of Greens. There were also groups represented in the EP that never created any European party association, on account of their purely national orientation (such as the Gaullists in France) or on account of their overly great ideological divisions. The latter

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was the case both with the Communists, who secured seats for the first time in 1973, and with the right-wing extremist parliamentarians, who formed an autonomous faction between 1984 and 1989 as well as for a short time in 2007 and again 2014. From 1979, in spite of diverse name changes and combinations the partypolitical landscape at European level broadly speaking kept these contours. The most striking adaptation occurred in the European Peoples Party during the 1980s and 1990s, when they opened up to non-Christian conservative groups. The ‘hardliners’ among the associated parties – specifically the Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) – had managed to prevent this change during the party’s initial establishment. They would gradually have to lose out to an intense, expansive push from within the EPP. The German Christian Democrats wanted above all, to expand in order to enlarge the party’s position of power in relation to the rival Socialist bloc. The EPP would develop more and more into a broad centre-right party over the course of years with the entry of secular parties, including Spain’s Partido Popular and Italy’s Forza Italia. In 1992 the conservative British-Danish formation joined. Part of them, led by the British Tories, would leave again in 2009, forming an Alliance of conservatives and reformists. A second important change took place in the rise of fundamentally Eurosceptic parties. At the beginning of the twenty-f irst century, this movement gained a serious foothold in Brussels, after the EP had already had to deal with a completely anti-European-oriented faction for the very first time in 1994. Their ascent was closely related to the implementation of an EU party statute and an accompanying independent subsidy rule for European parties in 2003. Until then parties were nearly entirely dependent on their like-minded EP factions in terms of organization and finance, and as a consequence non-represented movements hardly received any financial support or opportunities. Within a short time this independent subsidy rule led to the establishment of five new Europarties with a predominantly Eurosceptic bent. In spite of their anti-European disposition these parties contributed to greater variation in the European political landscape and, thus, to a stronger representative character for the EU. Genuine Political Parties? Were they also genuine political parties? Certainly not yet in the 1970s, according to any classical standard. The European party federations did try to execute duties that had been assigned to parties for a long time, but time and again ran aground on the autonomy of the parties in the Member States.

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Their most classic responsibility – that is, recruiting and selecting political elites – primarily took place within the national parties. The same situation applied to formulating a common election programme, as an expression of the shared desires and beliefs of the European electorate. In spite of sometimes fervent attempts, not one European party succeeded in achieving a substantive programme that was subscribed to by all associated national parties. Just as between the Member States, there were great differences of opinion between the parties, too, concerning the foundation, composition, and goal of this cooperation. In the case of the Social Democrats the struggle during the 1970s was above all about the extent of supranationality in the party association; the Christian Democrats argued on the question of which groups belonged and which did not. The national parties chiefly conducted election campaigns with their own programmes. Contact and coordination with the transnational federation was no high priority, unless it was for a chance at having a photo-op together. With the passage of time some change did occur in this subordinated position. The subsequent elections for the EP in 1984 and 1989 advanced connections for most of these federations, to begin with in terms of organization. The formal recognition of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992/1993) was of symbolic significance for the parties as an ‘important factor for integration’. ‘They contributed to the formation of a European consciousness’, as the rhetoric of that era put it. Given this description that they themselves desired, the European parties – perhaps even more emphatically than national political parties – were given the task of socializing the European citizen. How that was to take shape remained vague, but its basis in treaty provided in any case direction and legitimization for expanding the intermediary role of European parties. Gradually they tried to present themselves more self-consciously as supranational ‘parties’, both in name and in deed. In conjunction with supranationally strengthening the European institutions, they concentrated more emphatically on influencing the political agenda and their most important success proved to be institutionalizing meetings between national party leaders and like-minded EU functionaries in the run-up toward European summit meetings, so as to coordinate standpoints in advance. 4 These supranational tendencies do not take away from the fact that the parties from the Member States continue to dominate within their organizations. The European party associations consist almost exclusively of members from national parties; individual membership is out of the question or amounts to nothing. In the allocation of political offices in Brussels and Strasbourg the European parties do not play any role worth mentioning – not

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even in drawing up the candidate list for the EP. In nearly all movements the faction in the EP subsequently determines the political direction. Party-political integration is hindered further by the political infrastructure of the EU and the complex Community-wide decision-making procedures. As a result, the larger parties in the European Parliament are always doomed to seek consensus and form coalitions. Additionally, the leadership of the Community in the hands of the Member States and not of a ‘European government’, supported on a parliamentary foundation of a specific political signature – puts the brakes on developing parties into dynamic transnational groups with an autonomous political and representative role at European level.5 The question remains, however, whether this judgement based on classic standards does justice to the role of European parties within the complex layered nature of European cooperation. Their relevance becomes more readily noticeable when the European political party system is seen as a power uniting three components, as Simon Hix, a political scientist specializing in party politics, argues. The national political parties in the Member States are in direct contact with society; the factions in the EP and the extraparliamentary European party associations provide the framework from which the European decision-making process can be influenced. Together, they carry out the most important functions of a modern political party, each one with its own constituents. Moreover, riding the waves of Euroscepticism, their role has become more relevant. After all, political parties are in a much better position than national governments to represent divergent beliefs – even those of citizens who do not recognize themselves in ‘the national interest’ that their government proclaims on the Brussels stage. This party relevance increases to the degree that the national government sees its position decrease as the defender of national interest, as a result of delegating authority to these supranational institutions.6 In spite of the presence of the most important political movements on the European stage and the growing representative role of the Europarties, the political course in the EU is characterized to a strong degree by ideological convergence. The direct elections of the EP yielded above all consolidation of the two power blocs along the left-right axis, just as those had already been formed during the first Assemblies: the party of the European Socialists – renamed the PES in 1992 – and the Christian Democrats of the EPP continued to divide more than half the seats. Between 1979 and 1999, the Socialists were the largest faction; in the four most recent sessions, the Christian Democrats are in the majority. Since its beginning the EP has been dominated by the collaboration of these two power blocs as a ‘grand

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coalition’. The period of 1999 to 2004 constitutes an exception when, after its success in the elections, the EPP entered into a centre-right collaboration with the Liberals. Even this exchange of partners, however, pointed to a strong preference for a broad base of support in the party-political arena and the desire to please the most important political movements. Where does this inclination come from? Four explanations can be found in scholarly literature. To begin with, in regard to European cooperation, participants in the political arena display above all ideological similarities. The Socialists and Christian Democrats together with the Liberals comprise more than 90 per cent of the prevailing centrist parties in Europe. Most of these parties are pro-European and do not fundamentally differ from one another in their views on the European integration process. Two further explanations are related to how the EU has designed its institutions, and have already been mentioned in interpreting the relatively subordinated role of the party federations. Within the institutional triangle vis-à-vis the EP, there is no power that is dependent on its political confidence. The Parliament is not responsible for keeping the guiding institutions – that is, the Commission and the Council – in power, and is virtually unable to dismiss either of them. On top of that, political preferences are squelched rather than fought out in these entities. The fact that the national arena determines which political leaders act in these institutions has seen to it that all the major party families are represented in the highest European offices. In contrast to most national political systems, no one major party assumes the role of the opposition. Given this circumstance, the factions and parties have a clearly collective, institutional interest in defending the position of the EP A party-political strategy focused on operating as a united front, in order to enlarge the chance for parliamentary influence on the Commission and the Council ensues from this position.7 Additionally, the historical focus of the EU on consensus and the greatest possible majorities compels the parties to seek agreement in compromises that keep to the middle of the left-right spectrum. For the most important stages of the decision-making process, the rules prescribe the approval of an absolute majority, which the parties can only obtain together. A fourth explanation for coalition formation lies in strategic interests in relation to smaller political groups. The common front was also an exclusionary mechanism. Socialists and Christian Democrats established – however heterogeneous in and of themselves they might be – a certain hegemonial political culture, whereby smaller groups could exert their influence on the workings of parliament only with a lot of difficulty. For example, In the procedures for awarding presidencies and speaking time, both parties were

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united in a method that was to the advantage of the larger factions. The election for the president of the European Parliament has also become a game of divide and conquer. Between 1989 and 1999, and again in 2004, the PES and the EPP always united in splitting up the term of the presidency into two and a half years for one party and two and a half years for the other. In the 1999-2004 session the EPP concluded this pact with the Liberals instead. After 1979 the European Community became unmistakably a Europe of the parties, too. The idea that they would provide direction for democratic and substantive development of the integration process in their struggles with one another has not as yet fully become reality. With the growth of the EP’s power, the simplification of the rules for decision making after Lisbon and the growing internal and external differences of opinion concerning the EU’s future, it seems a cautious trend has set in as regards more competition. For the time being there are still those forces seeking a middle ground, which issue from the dominance of the most important party families and their strategic interests in working together. In spite of this cooperation the input of European party politics has become an element to be taken into account. The EU can no longer permit itself to focus solely on the interests represented exclusively by Member States.

Opinion Polls In 1974, in order to acquire a better view of the beliefs among citizens concerning European cooperation, the Commission launched a systematic, regular investigation into public opinion in the Member States. This ‘Eurobarometer’ constitutes a unique yet also problematic source in the history of European integration. The polls were to create insight for the EC institutions into the attitudes of citizens but also to provide that population with information concerning ‘Europe’. In spite of its scholarly purpose, this opinion research was and is a tool in the hands of the Commission. As a source of information but above all as a means for political communication, the Eurobarometer has its own particular role in the process of integration. The Eurobarometer The Eurobarometer constitutes the core of European research via opinion polling, which has expanded intensely above all in the last two decades. The Eurobarometer is designed as a longitudinal study with a permanent corpus of questions, with which trends can be compared and predicted over the

From the Sources

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long term in and between each of the Member States. These opinion polls are carried out by national bureaus among approximately 1,000 representative inhabitants per member state. The Eurobarometer comprises two categories of questions. One part is about the attitude of the respondent in regard to his own life and society as a whole. In addition, a few socio-demographic questions are included concerning the person himself. The second category of questions is more specifically oriented toward the European integration process, the institutions, the common market and other areas of cooperation. Many questions are about concrete measures that ought to be taken (in a national or European context) in order to solve current social, economic or political problems. In addition, the respondent is also presented with more value-specific questions concerning personal well-being and confidence in society, democracy and the rule of law. Social scientists are particularly interested in the value-oriented part of the research, and make regular requests to have specific topics included in the Eurobarometer poll. Of course, the questions that provide insight into the course of and appreciation for the integration process are paramount for European politics. The Eurobarometer makes it possible for politicians and policymakers to anticipate the changing beliefs of citizens in the various Member States. From the end of the 1980s, as a supplement to this standard Eurobarometer, ad hoc polls on special subjects, relevant at that moment from the perspective of Brussels in terms of politics or policy have also been regularly conducted. Among others, polls have been taken concerning developments in the environment, nature and technology; personal and regional identity; generational issues; social security and the euro. The increase in this type of polling reflected the expansion of competencies in Brussels in certain cases such as, an investigation into animal welfare, as well as political topics of the day. Because these sorts of surveys took less time than the standard investigation, they immediately yielded information for the EU concerning possible voting changes among the population. Sometimes they were intentionally implemented in a limited number of Member States. For example, a separate investigation was carried out in 2005, regarding the motives behind the ‘no’ to the European Constitution given by the Dutch and French citizens.8 In the 1990s the European Commission also developed a regular investigation for Central and Eastern Europe in order to monitor the economic and political reforms in these former border regions of the EU. In 2001 it launched a separate Eurobarometer for candidate Member States.

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Aspects of Public Opinion Research Public opinion surveys like the Eurobarometer can be studied on various levels. The analysis of empirical outcomes from the research is the most obvious. How do citizens think about one another, their pensions, the economic crisis or democracy? The Eurobarometer has been polling these kinds of social and political beliefs twice a year in all Member States since 1974. As the longest-running, internationally comparative public opinion research, the Eurobarometer has grown into one of the most important data archives for social and political scientists.9 On account of the longer time series, the Eurobarometer is also a valuable source of information for historians. A critical evaluation of its research methods and results is required, though. After all, no single public opinion survey reflects the beliefs of citizens ‘objectively’. As in all other research, it takes as its point of departure certain presuppositions that have an impact on the choice of subjects for discussion as well as on the formulation of the questions posed. Those who are more interested in the particular role and significance of public opinion research look further than the results and focus their analysis on the use of these polls. By and for whom is this instrument conceived? Who goes over the selection of subjects and the questions? And to what ends (institutional, political and ideological) do the administrative bodies make use of the research results? The Eurobarometer provides a multiplicity of data, which is often susceptible to multiple interpretations and applications. This makes it relevant to examine to what extent the data analyses lead a life of their own outside the scholarly domain – in policy debates, political discussions and the media. For this kind of examination, a report that is created based on these opinion polls will need to be studied. In the first place, namely, the official survey reports that are composed semi-annually by the communications department, and which interpret the data sets.10 In addition, media reports, policy papers and publications by think tanks or political movements are to be considered. An analysis of this kind should be oriented both toward the selection of results and toward the logic with which these results are interpreted. In the process, it is important to realize how providing information is never neutral – institutions always have an intention in the message they relay. Taking the abstractions one level higher, the existence of opinion polls can be studied as a phenomenon in and of itself. In the case of the Eurobarometer the accent lies on the ideas behind launching a public opinion survey in relation to the unification and democratization of Europe. The very fact that an opinion poll is conducted presupposes that there is value awarded to the opinion of citizens. Polling endorses fundamental principles of popular

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sovereignty, democracy and representation – and, especially in the case of the Eurobarometer, the concept of ‘Europe’ as well. The analysis of opinion polls can also be directed toward this discursive power and demonstrate how the practice of polling and the distribution of results contributes to strengthening the political representation of citizens.11 Despite the massive use of Eurobarometer data in the social and political sciences, these last two aspects receive very little attention in scholarly literature.12 A number of examples below will make clear how public opinion surveys like the Eurobarometer acquire more and more significance when set against the backdrop of the history of European integration. Exploring both the ideas behind and the substantive development of the Eurobarometer will bring to the fore to what extent this measuring device has been conceived and functions in a political context. From a Source of Information to Formation of Opinion It is no coincidence that European-wide opinion research got off the ground precisely at the beginning of the 1970s. The desire of Community institutions to acquire more insight into the European sensibility of its citizens fit with a growing concern over the democratic calibre of the Community. In view of the economic and political challenges that confronted the EC during this time period, the Commission and the EP possessed the requisite interest in being ensured of public support. For acquiring the definitive answer about such support, the Commission assigned the execution of further research into the beliefs regarding the activities of the European Community.13 From the very start the aspirations for public opinion surveys reached farther than just gathering and providing information. The first Eurobarometer report from 1974 emphasises the importance of the poll for European policy makers ‘to observe, and to some extent forecast, public attitudes toward the most important current events connected directly or indirectly with the development of the European Community and the unification of Europe’.14 However, the Eurobarometer had an even deeper significance for the Commission and the media and information specialists involved. Sum and substance could literally be given to the European public sphere through public opinion research. A parliamentary working group of the ECSC had determined the importance of that content in 1956 already:15 No politics is viable if it does not correspond to the current reality of public opinion […]. What is more, the formation of public opinion is incumbent upon us. After having created a beginning for Europe, we are in need of Europeans.

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From the conviction, that policy was only viable if it corresponded to public opinion, the European political elite bore the responsibility of forming this opinion. ‘After having created a beginning for Europe, we are in need of Europeans’, so the saying went. In line with this motto, those taking the initiative with the Eurobarometer hoped that public opinion research would contribute to mutual understanding among European citizens and, as a result, to greater involvement. For the first time citizens from various Member States could become aware of one another’s beliefs. The Eurobarometer created, as it were, European public opinion and the realization that this opinion mattered. This pursuit of actively forming European public opinion gradually, yet increasingly, gained the upper hand. This can be seen in the expansion of the Eurobarometer programme in the run-up to Maastricht at the end of the 1980s. The transformation of a Community oriented toward economic integration into a political union magnified the pressure to find – and, if necessary, to create – a base of support among the European population. The Delors Commission (1985-1995) perceived a role set aside for the Eurobarometer in this process. Changes in the survey and professionalization of its presentation pointed to the instrumentalization and politicization of public opinion research. Additionally, the Eurobarometers employed a few years later especially for the candidate Member States testified to such a shift. These ‘extraordinary’ polls not only yielded valuable policy information for the EU, they also had a diplomatic and ‘Euro-socializing’ function. The research at least made citizens in potential Member States better aware of the EU and ideally advanced their mental preparation for participation in the Union. The Eurobarometer grew from a carrier of information into a tool for evaluating community activities and, with the help of public consensus, for creating legitimization of ambitious political projects. A new appreciation of public opinion research ensued at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this time cast in the light of the democratic shortfall in the European Union. As a result of the European Constitution being blocked, the Commission became convinced that its authority depended to a significant extent on openness toward feedback from society. The Eurobarometer was assigned a role in a strategy for active communication, witness a 2005 plan of action made by the Commission:16 The research function will be the fundamental element of the ‘listening process’, through the analysis of Eurobarometer and other surveys’ results, as well as media (particularly audiovisual) monitoring and political reporting by Representations, feedback from contact centres and information relays, as well as from consultation processes.

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The Eurobarometer has developed into an indispensable tool in the day-today policy work of the EU and as a political means for interaction with the citizenry. Just as those taking the initiative with the Eurobarometer had already recognized and hoped, the research itself influenced the image that shaped as a result and by way of ‘the’ public opinion of Europe. Monitoring the Impact In order, to lay bare the effect of this influence as researcher, it is necessary to look critically at the substantive development of the Eurobarometer, both of the survey and the manner in which the outcomes have been processed and interpreted. This analysis is directed toward the politically oriented portion of the survey. The more importance the Commission awarded to the Eurobarometer, the greater the need to monitor the impact of the research results. This situation is easily illustrated on the basis of a few questions that were posed from the very beginning (the so-called ‘trend questions’) concerning the general appreciation for the European Community. To gain more insight into support for the process of integration the respondents were asked point-blank in 1975: “All things considered, are you in favour of the unification of Europe, against it, or indifferent?” The image and results emerging from the report show that a great portion of public opinion was positively disposed. By adding the first two response levels together (very much and somewhat in favour), the report was able to determine that seven out of ten Europeans (69 per cent were proponents of European unification. The finding that this support was not heart-felt, however, would have been just as justified. If vacillating respondents (somewhat in favour) had been added to the indifferent and negative reactions, a less favourable image would have emerged. Seen from this perspective, 58 per cent of the respondents were not whole-hearted supporters of unification.17 This case represents only one example of the way in which the official reports try to present the base of support for the integration process as favourably as possible. In general the EU communications department follows the strategy of drawing attention away from negative or neutral reactions and non-responses. This inclination has grown stronger since more time and money has been spent in making Eurobarometer opinion research more accessible in the 1990s. From this perspective the significance of apparently small changes applied in later surveys to the type of question cited above also has to be recognized. So as to reduce the political implication, the term ‘unification’ disappeared.

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The respondent was no longer asked if he was ‘in favour’ but, rather, if he thought it was a ‘good thing’. In order to lessen the chance of partial answers – as a result of which it might seem that support was fragile and susceptible to multiple sorts of explanation – options for answering were lowered from five to three. In doing so, the remaining trend questions for measuring support were clearly less confrontational: ‘Generally speaking, do you think that membership in the EU is a good thing, a bad thing, neither good nor bad?’18 Recently, however, even this question has not yielded the politically desired, indisputable proof of support from a large majority of Europeans. In the spring of 2010, the number of positive reactions fell below 50 per cent. In the very next survey the question was subsequently omitted. In 2011 it returned, but this time the answers were only published online and not recorded in the official publication, again on account of lower than expected scores. In the autumn of 2012 only the – generally more pro-European – inhabitants of candidate Member States had the question put before them.19 Such adjustment does not take away from the fact that enough questions remain to make growing scepticism noticeable in regard to the usefulness and necessity of the EU. On account of this eurosceptical trend the reports at present seem to be dealing more cautiously with the presupposition that citizens support the process of integration in principle – even if they indeed do not harbour any strong feelings for Europe. At the same time the EU still feels it is necessary to offer a counterweight to anti-European movements, which by using the Eurobarometer and other public opinion research try, in fact, to present the appreciation for integration as unfavourably as possible. For this reason the inclination toward adding nuance to the negative answers remains noticeable, as with the ‘no’ to the Constitution in 2005, in order to emphasise that resistance toward European policy does not have to be immediately qualified as resistance to European cooperation as such.20 Questions that yielded politically controversial outcomes received even more cautious treatment. The questions that laid bare or could arouse tensions among the Member States were the most sensitive. In 1975, and again in 1984, the question was put to respondents as to which of the countries mentioned they preferred not to have as a member state of the European Community. In spite of the general support for unification measured, the answers brought the intergovernmental opposition during this time period into view as sharp as a pin. In 1975 large portions of the German (33 per cent), Luxembourg (38 per cent) and French respondents (41 per cent) preferred not to have the United Kingdom in the EU, while in 1984 no less than 47 per cent of the Danish and 28 per cent of the British mentioned their own country. Since that time the question has no longer been posed.

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The tension between increasing political control and the preservation of independence from which the Eurobarometer derives its reputation, was quite clear in an incident in the autumn of 2003. The occasion was an ad hoc poll concerning Iraq and world peace. Asked to give a ranking to fifteen countries listed that constituted a threat to world peace, approximately 59 per cent of the EU respondents placed Israel at the top. That is to say, before North Korea, the U.S. and Iran (53 per cent) and also before Iraq (52 per cent) – the hotbed of conflict that the survey was primarily directed toward, on account of the recent overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Other potential aggressors like Syria, Libya and Somalia scored lower still, between 37 and 16 per cent.21 This result – and actually the fact that Israel was recorded as an option at all – clearly embarrassed European political leaders. The Commission, therefore, tried (in vain) to keep this diplomatically displeasing part of the survey out of the public eye.22 Incidents such as this illustrate increasing political sensitivity to the outcomes of public opinion research. The Commission continually has to monitor the balance between unprejudiced polling and drawing attention away from potentially sensitive or counterproductive information. This interest influences the purpose of research and the presentation of its results. A researcher using the Eurobarometer as a source of information always needs to take that influence into account. Those who look at European research into public opinion from a distance, within the context of the integration process, subsequently acquire a better understanding of the kind of tools that the European institutions have created over the course of time to provide direction to European cooperation.

Aid programme for Eastern Europe (PHARE)

First phase of the Economic and Monetary Union

Signing of the Treaty of Maastricht Signing of the agreement for the European Economic Area

Copenhagen European Council: Accession criteria

Accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden

Agenda 2000: eastern enlargement Signing of the Treaty of Amsterdam

Resignation of the Santer Commission Helsinki European Council: membership candidacy of Turkey

Signing of the Treaty of Nice

1989

1990

1992

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

1995

1995

1995

4. From Community to Union In the process of European integration the time period between the Single European Act (1986/1987) and the Treaty of Nice (2001/2003) was clearly more dynamic than the preceding phase. Historic events like German reunification, the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia provided new challenges. One of the most important of these was entering into new relations with the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe. Absorbing these countries into European integration had major consequences for the effectiveness of European institutions. Relations had to be built up with countries that were not admitted as well, if only because their instability constituted a potential danger. For a community that had been focussed on itself for a long time and had brought forth little in the way of foreign policy, that was no easy task. At the same time the seventies and eighties brought forth ambitious plans for even closer cooperation in the market and economy. In four successive intergovernmental conferences, Member States attempted to find compromises for these disputed issues and for changes in the European institutions and decision-making processes that were necessary as a result of these new plans. Certainly, the Treaty of Nice entailed the necessity of another kind of European Union. The main challenges were the imminent ‘big bang’ enlargement, the responsibility on the EU’s part for peace in Europe and the increasing scepticism of European citizens. The grand projects set up by Member States – either for economic and monetary union or for foreign and security policy – were now complemented by greater attention to the needs of the citizen. European governance at the level of Member States or regions became at least as important as high politics in Brussels. The achievement of the common market and, later on, of the Economic and Monetary Union demanded a high degree of cooperation and direction at European, national and regional levels.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Rise of a New Europe After the establishment of the ECSC and the Treaties of Rome, the Treaty of Maastricht (1992/1993) was the most important turning point for European integration. The ECSC and the Treaties of Rome marked both a farewell to ambitions of idealistic Europeanism that had encompassed the Council of Europe, and the rise of a functionalistic, technocratic Europe. The Treaty

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of Maastricht was the definitive breakthrough to a ‘political’ Europe. For a long time the European Community had limited itself to its common market. The Treaty of Maastricht introduced new policy areas, such as the founding elements for a common currency, a domestic policy and a foreign and security policy. These major changes can be explained by a series of factors, entailing global politics as well as the European project’s own dynamics. Picking up any history book, it might seem self-evident that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991 were defining moments for drawing up the Treaty of Maastricht. Even so, two other important explanations are located further back in time, in the eighties. First of all the most important European leaders were deeply aware of the necessity of further cooperation in these years. In spite of their ever-present mutual suspicion, the ties between the French president François Mitterrand and the German chancellor Helmut Kohl became the engine for further cooperation. In addition, and at least as important, there was the unbridled ambition of the European Commission and its French president Jacques Delors. Delors set into motion a process that could not easily be stopped. The fall of the Wall, the Franco-German engine and Delors’ presidency of the Commission explain why the Treaty of Maastricht can be called both the last treaty of the Cold War as well as first treaty of a new European era. Two of these factors have to do above all with rapprochement inside Western Europe and with the unique development of the European Community. Subsequently, the end of the Cold War merely provided for extra urgency for the Treaty. Within ten years of the Treaty of Maastricht two more treaties ensued, indicating that the European Union of Maastricht was far from complete. To be sure, this Treaty was a milestone in the history of Europe, yet the opposing interests, above all, of the United Kingdom, France and Germany had led to many compromises. Specifically, the common European currency, which had indeed already been set in motion, but still needed to be considered and negotiated. It would take a few more years before the consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall became clear to Western Europe’s leaders. The consequences of any possible accession of former Communist countries, as well as the threat that issued from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, increased the growing calls both for alterations to strengthen EU institutions and common policy. The Treaties of Amsterdam (1997/1999) and Nice (2001/2003) had to fill in the holes that Maastricht had created, though they did so with only limited success. On 19 August 1989, a playful meeting took place between Hungarian opposition leaders and Austrians on the Austrian, Hungarian border. Though

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the idea had originated on the Hungarian side, what was striking was the participation of Otto von Habsburg, the elder successor to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, and honorary president of the Pan-Europa Movement. Started immediately after the First World War, the Pan-Europa Movement was the most important predecessor to the idea of European integration. The meeting, which became known as the ‘Pan-European Picnic’, was a reaction to Hungary’s cautious opening of borders in connection with the influx of migrants from Romania at the beginning of that year. The picnic and the opening of borders were noticed by East Germans, too, who travelled to Hungary in a long motorcade in order to reach West Germany via Austria. The picnic itself was not decisive in the fall of the Wall, but the event indeed illustrates how strongly interwoven bringing down the Iron Curtain was with Europe and European unification. In 1989 the Communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria fell. European government leaders reacted more quickly than they had in any other earlier crises. In December 1989, the Strasbourg European Council had to deal with the European market, social agreements as well as the European monetary union on the agenda. On 11 November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall changed the priorities of the Council meeting. Already in July 1989, an aid programme (PHARE: Poland and Hungary Assistance for Re­construction of Economy) from the European Community, under the auspices of the European Commission, had been created for the reconstruction of the economies of Hungary and Poland first, which was expanded later to the remaining states. The quick and tense reaction of Western European leaders had a lot to do with the division of Germany. With the Wall gone, the division of Germany – the foundation of post-War Europe and European integration – was also put up for debate. Developments around German unification subsequently proceeded at a mad pace. In March 1990, the first elections took place in East Germany, followed within four months by a monetary union with the Federal Republic, and complete reunification on 3 October 1990. That union automatically gave membership to East Germany, the first former communist territory within the European Community. Individual Member States, such as the Netherlands and initially the United Kingdom, were opponents of unification and absorption into the European Community, though they quickly gave in. Changes outside Germany followed in rapid succession. First of all, the consent of the Soviet Union was necessary for the unification of both Germanies, because East Germany had made up part of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. Internal tension in the Soviet Union, financial guarantees

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from Germany and good personal relations between Helmut Kohl and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made this hurdle relatively easy to overcome. For Poland there was the question concerning the eastern borders of Germany. The Oder-Neisse border to the west of the pre-war borders, which had been imposed on the Germans after the war, had never been formally recognized by the Federal Republic. In September 1990, the so-called ‘2+4 Treaty’ between the victors in the Second World War (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France) along with both Germanies, upheld the border, and with that confirmation, the Second World War was finally over. These events brought an end to the Cold War, too. Against this backdrop, Kohl and Mitterrand drew up a joint letter to the European Council in April 1990. It included an explicit call for the establishment of a European political union. According to Kohl and Mitterrand, the ‘profound changes in Europe’, the ‘establishment of the internal market and the realisation of the economic and monetary Union’ made such a union necessary. This political union would supposedly already be in force on l January 1993. The European Council accepted the invitation and initiated two intergovernmental conferences, one concerning a political union and the other concerning a monetary union. As a result of the experiences of the Second World War and half a century of European division, both leaders were prepared for the necessary rapprochement. The symbolic gesture of Mitterrand and Kohl holding hands at the war graves in Verdun in 1984 is the most well-known example of their willingness. The history of the United Kingdom was less intertwined with Germany, and the British population had also been less directly affected by the Cold War. Margaret Thatcher protested against both further integration and German unification, and was supported in the latter by Italian, Polish and Dutch concerns, yet she was unable to do anything but reluctantly go along with the plans which had abhorred her from the first day as prime minister. In the end the position of the United Kingdom was too isolated to be able to block the dynamics of European integration during these years. Thus, political and monetary union were accelerated by the end of the Cold War and this particular generation of European leaders. The shape and content of the Treaty of Maastricht were also determined by other factors. For example, the first ideas about a political and monetary union date from the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties. As the European Parliament gained autonomy with the first direct elections (1979) – its clearly federalist approach being the consequence – and, later on, with the Single European Act (1986/1987), the foundation was laid for some of the most important new elements in the Treaty – political union, shared

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decision-making by the Council of Ministers and Parliament (the ‘co-decision procedure’), and foreign policy. In addition, plans for a common currency were older, going back to the seventies. Most plans, however, were without results. The SEA was successful in the the market and especially in the role of the European Parliament. As for foreign policy or a common currency, however, the SEA had remained a disappointment. The impetus for further European integration at the end of the eighties, no longer came exclusively from the Member States themselves but found its origin within the European institutions, and in particular the European Commission. As commission president, Frenchman Jacques Delors constituted the decisive link in that relationship. Against the background of tiresome issues – such as the veto right in the Council of Ministers, the whinging attitude of the United Kingdom or the lack of any joint voice in the world – the European Commission had gradually been able to take initiative upon itself. In 1985, parallel to preparations for the Single European Act, the European Council had charged the European Commission with establishing the European market. The free movement of people, goods, services and capital from the Treaties of Rome had not automatically resulted in a market free from restrictions. After lifting trade taxes, many physical and technical limitations continued to exist. Delors took on the job together with Lord Arthur Cockfield, the European Commissioner from Britain, and set out a roadmap that was to be completed in 1992. Keeping in mind the ideal of a market between Member States and without any barrier of any shape or form whatsoever, Delors spoke of ‘completing’ the internal market as finishing the long process of ‘communitising’ that market. The resulting White Paper was of major significance in later treaties for several reasons. Being miles away from the ideological notion of integration that made so many politicians anxious, this White Paper was rather technical in nature. At the same time, the programme of action was ambitious, with major consequences for the functioning of the European Community. At least as important was the fact that this roadmap allowed Delors to make the role of the European Commission important again. Since the High Authority (of the ECSC) from the fifties and the European Commission from the beginning of the sixties, the Community’s centre of gravity had come to be located in the Council of Ministers. Delors was able to regain momentum for the European Commission and make a supranational body out of it with the aid of non-political, technocratic reforms. He created a Community that again recalled the spillover mechanism of the fifties and sixties. Integration would strengthen the necessity of further integration.

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The market would lead to uniform monetary and social policies and to regional development. Type of integration

Content

Treaty

Free trade zone

Elimination of mutual taxes and quotas Elimination of mutual taxes and quotas Customs union plus free movement of people, goods, services and capital, as well as dismantling of non-tariff trade restrictions (access granted EFTA to the internal market) Internal market plus common economic and monetary policy (fiscal policy)

(EFTA 1960/1960)

Customs union Common or internal market

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)

EEC Treaty 1957, concluded in 1968 EEC Treaty of 1957, called an ‘internal market’ beginning with the Single European Act of 1986/1987 as the completion of ‘communitisation’, concluded in 1992 (EEA 1992/1994) Treaty of Maastricht of 1992/1993, concluded in 1999 (introduction of the euro in 2002) (fiscal union in 2012/2013)

Economic, monetary and fiscal integration

Delors was responsible for a second major contribution to the integration process. He took a decisive step in developing both the roles and the scope of the European Union budget. The two most important instruments in this process were social policy and above all cohesion policy. For a long time social policy was limited to joint agreements on driving back injustice and inequality in the European market. This focus translated into agreements on safety in the workplace as well as gender equality or labour rights. National preferences and the desire to maintain the sovereignty of Member States continued to make social policy a thorny issue. For a long time the United Kingdom, lodged complaints against what would become known as the ‘social chapter’ in the Treaty of Maastricht. Delors and like-minded politicians and Commission representatives used the common market to justify new policy areas. Such action also applied to cohesion policy. Cohesion policy can be defined as reducing the developmental differences between Member States or, rather, between regions of Member States by investments in regional development. Cohesion policy was initially disputed as well. The immediate context of Delors’ initiative was the accession of the poorer Mediterranean states of Greece, Spain and Portugal. Regions acquired the right to cohesion subsidies if the per capita income of the population was lower than 75 percent of the EEC average. A number of

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Member States initially had major concerns on account of the risk that these subsidies would come at the expense of agricultural subsidies (France and Germany) and the danger that the European budget would rise (the United Kingdom and Germany). In the end, it was Germany, and in particular Helmut Kohl, that made the effort to break the impasse by securing the British ‘rebate’ on its contribution to the budget (1988). Cohesion policy would come to develop into the second largest line item in the European budget and into the Commission’s pre-eminent instrument for integrating Europe. Using his knowledge and ambition, Delors came to pull all the strings of the European integration process. Because he, as president of the Commission, attended monthly consultations with the presidents of the European national banks, he was also the person designated to be present at the talks for the monetary union, which started once again in the European Council in 1988. Without German unification and the French desire to keep the Franco-German balance in Europe in place, the monetary union would probably not have come about. At the same time, the fact that the union was an attainable option has a lot to do with the European Commission and with Delors’ role as a policy entrepreneur.

Maastricht: Treaty Negotiations Started in December 1990, negotiations for the dual package of monetary and political union could not be finished under Luxembourg’s presidency of the Council of Ministers in the first half of 1991. Ultimately the agreement would have to wait until the Council in Maastricht in December 1991, by then under Dutch presidency. Compared to Kohl and Mitterrand’s ambitious plans in their joint letter of 1990, the Treaty can for the most part be characterized as a failure. This images dominates historiography and was also the common perception at the time. Looking back, however, Maastricht is nonetheless a watershed event as a result of the introduction of the monetary union, foreign policy and the cautious attempt at a political union. Member States manoeuvred so cautiously that the Treaty could probably not have been concluded if the common impression had not been that the sharper edges were removed and that European leaders subscribed to a stripped-down Treaty. In spite of major opposition it was the plan for monetary union that came out of the negotiations most intact. That the United Kingdom and, later on Denmark, after negative results from a referendum, chose not to participate did not change much in that regard. There were three important

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causes behind the success. First of all, the monetary union was seen as the best instrument for anchoring Germany in Europe, even in the future, and for keeping the German mark from acquiring any hegemony in Europe. In addition, this plan was the most well-prepared and also had the longest history, one that began with the Werner report of 1969. Finally, the plan could be phased in, with room for alterations as well as moments for exiting. A three-phase plan set down by the European Council had already been developed prior to the Treaty. In the first phase, the economic and monetary policies of the Member States were to be aligned. This alignment specifically concerned policies for combating inflation and for the budget. Phase two meant the establishment of the European Monetary Institute (the precursor to the European Central Bank), with the subsequent introduction of the common currency as the final phase. This last phase could only be started if the so-called ‘convergence criteria’ (also known as the ‘criteria of Maastricht’) had been met. The United Kingdom stipulated that countries be allowed to go from one phase to the next but were not obligated to do so, thereby setting down an explicit exit strategy. The final product, too, was a compromise. France was the most ardent proponent of the monetary union. Initially hesitant, Germany was won over with the concession that the union would be set up according to the German model, that is, with an independent, supranational Central Bank. In the words of André Szász, executive board member of the Dutch central bank, it was ‘a French plan carried out by Germans’. The political union was much more complex. Even in the run-up to negotiations it was never clear what precisely that union would come to entail. A political union had unmistakable associations with federalism. Although a number of countries, like the United Kingdom, had fundamental objections to the idea of federalism, looking back it is remarkable how federal solutions could be openly talked about up to the negotiations at Maastricht. Delors, for example, on the occasion of events in Eastern Europe (in which he very optimistically saw an ‘acceleration of history’) spoke out explicitly for a federal future, which he assumed would be achieved by the year 2000. In a speech before the European Parliament at the beginning of 1990, he portrayed the European Commission as the European government and the Parliament and the Council of Ministers as a bicameral model for this federal union. In the British press Delors increasingly became the target of British euroscepticism. When the first draft of the Treaty spoke of a ‘federal objective’, that goal was categorically rejected by British political and public opinion. Luxembourg, during its presidency of the Council of Ministers in the f irst half of 1991, put a politically less sensitive plan on the table, which kept to the middle ground between the grand design of a union and

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European Council

instructs

Heads of state and government of the Member States

Council of Ministers Ministers of the Member States ses advi

con t ad rols vis es

sures advis es

initia tes m ea

v is es

s ise

ad

v ad

Representatives of local and regional governments

es vis ad

Committee of the Regions

ol s res u contr roced val p appro r orteu rapp

Nominated by the Member States, appointed by the Council of Ministers

n and

Representatives of interest groups of the Member States

n ltatio

European Court of Auditors

ecisio , co-d

European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)

Directors of the national banks of the Member States

consu

Nominated by the Member States, appointed by the Council of Ministers

European Central Bank

r orteu rapp

European Court of Justice

initiates legislation

European Commission

European Parliament controls

Nominated by the Member States, appointed by the European Council, confirmed by the European Parliament

Deputies from national parliaments (dual mandates)

European institutions: Treaties of Maastricht (1992/1993), Amsterdam (1997/1999) and Nice (2001/2003)

the former sector-based functionalist integration. Three domains were proposed inside each of which different competences and decisionmaking processes would apply. These domains concerned economic and monetary matters f irst, legal and domestic affairs second and, f inally, foreign affairs. The last two policy areas were new and comprised, for example, migrant policy, cooperation in combating organized crime (the establishment of Europol), combating terrorism and a start in taking action abroad. These domains would be mutually connected with one another by a joint treaty, which Mark Eyskens, the minister of Foreign Affairs for Belgium, spoke of as a temple model: three columns or pillars and a roof.

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As subsequent Council president, the Netherlands introduced a proposal that proved how unclear the desires and possibilities for a new treaty were. It followed the federal line again, and was imagined as a tree with one stem and policy areas branching off separately, as opposed to the less centralized temple model. The temple model kept the various policy areas of the union largely separate. According to the Dutch model, the political union had solely supranational policy areas, including foreign policy and a monetary union. This plan broke with the functionalist or sector-oriented approach that had characterized European integration since the ECSC – one treaty, one union. On the day of judgement only Belgium, Greece and the European Commission itself proved to be genuine supporters. Although a number of countries, like Germany, remained reasonably neutral, it were above all the United Kingdom, France and Denmark that blocked the proposal outright during the Council in Maastricht, on what became known as Black Monday. Having lost face, the much too ambitious Dutch negotiators had to return to the Luxembourg option of the temple and, thus, to a middle way between union and sector-oriented integration. An important step made possible by the temple structure in the Treaty of Maastricht was that foreign policy, too, finally acquired a basis in treaty. Apart from the ingloriously failed European Defence Community of the fifties and the cautious attempts at political cooperation in the EPC from the seventies onward, barely any initiatives had been developed. The implosion of Communism in Eastern Europe made it impossible for Western Europe not to act. With the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact it initially seemed that NATO, too, would lose its raison d’être as an organisation for collective security. Developments in Eastern Europe, moreover, sketched an uncertain future. The first tensions in the Balkans were already noticeable in 1990, and one day before consultations began in Maastricht in December 1990, the Soviet Union definitively fell apart and was replaced by a loose Commonwealth of Independent States. The most important point of debate in foreign policy was the question as to what extent the EU should also be able to develop its own defence initiatives. The United States was opposed to this idea because it would create a new power bloc. For that reason the transatlantic-oriented Member States dropped out quickly, though the possibility was kept open in the Treaty of Maastricht. Foreign policy concerning organisation or instruments, did not have much substance to it. In fact, only the authority for ‘joint action’ emerged. The where and the how for that possible action was still left open. Nevertheless the possibility of foreign policy solidified the image that the European Union was more than just a common market and common currency.

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The catch in the Treaty came in the decision-making processes within policy areas. In addition to the introduction of monetary and foreign policy, the co-decision procedure in decision-making was the most important innovation. Building further upon the larger role for Parliament in the Single European Act, this role was definitively validated at Maastricht with the rule that legislation had to be approved by both the Council of Ministers as well as Parliament. Disappointment in the treaty, however, had to do with that very same innovation. This co­decision procedure was only to apply in the first pillar, and even within that pillar a few policy areas like agriculture remained the sole domain of the Council of Ministers. In this way, the pillars also led to an extraordinarily complex situation in regard to the treaty’s legal nature. The Treaty of Maastricht actually consisted of two treaties – on the one hand, the revised former Treaties of Rome as the ‘Treaty establishing the European Community’ (the first Community pillar), and, on the other hand, the new ‘Treaty on the European Union’ (TEU), which comprised the roof of the temple and the intergovernmental second and third pillars. Whereas the concept for the European Union before Maastricht was generally associated with some form of federalism, the European Union achieved at Maastricht was more of an explicit recognition of intergovernmentalism. In that sense it also became the institutionalization of what has been called the ‘intermediate space’ – the space between the national state and supranational institutions that leaves sovereignty and power relations untouched, yet at the same time stimulates solidarity and cooperation. The lasting importance of the Member States was validated in the Treaty by explicitly incorporating the fundamental principle of subsidiarity in the case of initiating policy. Subsidiarity means that decisions are taken at the lowest possible level of administration. For instance, policy areas like education, healthcare and culture were defined expressly and exclusively as competences of the Member States. The new Committee of the Regions was to carry out the test for subsidiarity. This body was to consist of representatives, such as mayors or administrators of regional governments, from all European regions. In addition to subsidiarity the Committee was to advance proximity as well (that is to say: decision-making and policy need to take place in the closest relationship to the citizen possible) and was to advance the cooperation between regions and various important higher administrative levels. After a preliminary agreement in December 1991, the Treaty of Maastricht could was signed the following February. It was not until November 1993, however, that the Treaty entered into force. Depending on the member state,

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ratification proceeded via the parliament or via a referendum. The first referendum, – in Denmark in July 1992, – signified immediate stagnation. The Treaty was voted down by 50.7 per cent of the population. It then had to go back to the drawing board, certainly when the French referendum in September had only narrowly produced a positive outcome. The result was a decisive step in the integration process. Although the United Kingdom had already managed not to commit itself to the EMU and social policy during negotiations, it was now decided, for the first time, to make an ‘opt-out’ possible on specific parts of the treaty text. This stopgap was used again in the Treaty of Lisbon later on. After Denmark had received explicit promises in the Edinburgh Agreement for not having to participate in the monetary union and in any possible future defence policy, the Danes voted for the Treaty after all.

The EU and International Relations The decade after the Treaty of Maastricht was marked by three challenges, which also formed the backdrop for the Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and ultimately Lisbon as well. The first and certainly not least important was responding to the questions left open by the Treaty of Maastricht. In addition to this, the former Warsaw Pact countries were also in anticipation of an accession strategy from the Union. Accession demanded enormous alterations, both in policies and institutional structure and would potentially bring national conflict in the Union. Finally, the consequences of the end of the Cold War were still unclear at a global level. As a result, Europe’s position in the world had changed from one day to the next. Outside Europe the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union was breached. This radically changed international relations from a ‘bipolar’ to a ‘unipolar’ world order. While European leaders were occupied with negotiating and ratifying the Treaty, the world outside was changing from day to day. The United States had affirmed its hegemony with the Gulf War (1990-1991), and the Soviet Union had imploded. One of the most tangible results of the fall of the Soviet Union was the independence of the Baltic States, which almost immediately oriented themselves toward the European Union. The political fragmentation extended right to the borders of the European Union, with Czechoslovakia’s velvet divorce (1993) and the Balkan wars as prime examples. The genuine escalation of conflict within Europe took place on the Balkan Peninsula. Slovenia and Croatia as well as Macedonia had declared their independence from the Yugoslav Federation in 1991, followed by

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Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. The secession of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina resulted in bloody wars, the ethnic mix was unable to result in undisputed borders. Many Serbians lived in eastern Croatia. Bosnia-Herzegovina was even more complex because large groups of Serbs and Croats lived there alongside Bosnian Muslims. In addition, though, there was no strong common national identity. The Balkan wars lasted until the Dayton Agreement, enforced by the United States, was able to reach a ceasefire at the end of 1995. The war had resulted in scenes recalling the Second World War and – as a result of the ethnic cleansing around Prijedor and Srebrenica, even evoked reminders of the Holocaust in Europe. These wars and civil wars in South East Europe were of crucial importance to European integration. Not only did they make it clear that political fragmentation and bloody wars were possible even within Europe, but it was now clear that active intervention was possible and necessary for democratisation in the East. New foreign policy developed by the European Union acquired an intensely ethical and humanitarian dimension as a result of the ethnic cleansing. The policy instruments created for foreign policy by the Treaty of Maastricht were still too limited to play any important role during the wars in Yugoslavia. In addition there was barely any political culture among European leaders that would make joint action possible. These deficiencies were amplified even more by the reticence of a number of Member States concerning the recognition of national independence for the South Slavic peoples of Croatia and Slovenia. Member States with ethnic minorities of their own were anxious that the precedent of national self-determination would have consequences in their particular countries. Therefore, beginning in 1992, it was NATO that became militarily involved, at first cautiously and, less than two years later seriously – in the violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and was thus also able to regain its raison d’être. At the same time, NATO was seeking out rapprochement with East-Central European countries. Those pursuits resulted first in expanded cooperation by means of the Partnership for Peace programme (1994), which comprised defence agreements and aid to the armies of these countries. The first round of NATO expansion ensued in 1999, with Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The impending genocide in Yugoslavia, as well as good personal contacts between the leaders of these three countries, was decisive for this expansion. After the fall of the Wall, Eastern European countries were still reluctant concerning NATO as a product of the Cold War. For a short time these countries sought out support above all in more ‘European’ solutions such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE),

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which had also supported Eastern Europeans in their struggle against Communist dictatorships during the Cold War. The consultation structure of the CSCE was later transformed into a true Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and continued to play a role in maintaining human rights and monitoring elections and the media. Nevertheless these European organisations, including the European Union, were incapable of taking on tasks of defence. The countries of Eastern Europe realised quickly enough that genuine guarantees of security with respect to any possible new threat from Russia could be given only by the United States and NATO.

Challenges in the East Though the Eastern European states made appeals to the European Union almost immediately, the next enlargement was of an entirely different nature. In 1995, in what has been labelled the EFTA accession, Finland, Austria and Sweden acquired membership to the Union. During the Cold War, Finland, Austria and Sweden had enjoyed a neutral status. For political reasons, these three countries had never become members of the EU and had therefore joined the free trade organisation EFTA. Shortly after the end of the Cold War, an association had been established between EFTA and the EU (1992), which from that moment were to constitute the European Economic Area (EEA) together. The EEA put non-EU Member States in the position of benefiting from the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital, on the condition that they would adopt a portion of EU regulations. The 1995 enlargement was unproblematic from the standpoint of the European Union, in contrast to the ‘big bang’ eastern enlargement of 2004 and 2007. These three countries had strong service economies, including an average per capita income for their population that at that time was at 103.6 per cent of the EU average. They would then, not put any strain on the cohesion funds or the agriculture subsidies and would therefore leave the EU budget unaffected. Nevertheless the process did not go entirely smoothly. Finland and Austria sought out rapprochement with the EU as soon as the Soviet Union, that had always demanded their neutrality, collapsed. In addition to Austria and Finland, however, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland also entered the negotiations process. Their primary consideration for doing so was more pragmatic, though. They were above all dissatisfied with the limited advantages that the EEA would provide as a cooperative association between the EFTA and the EU. Membership meant that these countries would have to adopt EU regulations without

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being able to influence the decision-making process concerning those rules. Additionally, these countries were not able to benefit from all the advantages of the European internal market. Switzerland dropped out rather quickly as a result of the negative outcome of a referendum on the EEA. Norway completed negotiations, yet ran into major difficulties in talks about the regulations in the fishing sector. Whereas the majority of the political elite remained in favour of accession, the population rejected further rapprochement with the EU in a referendum in 1994. In the end, Sweden did indeed enter the EU, though here, too, a few complicated dossiers were left lying on the table. First of all, political neutrality was deeply rooted in Sweden, where this principle had become part of the national political culture since the nineteenth century. For that reason, questions of sovereignty, currency and foreign policy were of essential importance for Sweden. The country did not acquire any explicit ‘opt-out’ regulation as had the United Kingdom and Denmark regarding the common currency, though it did strategically choose not to meet the conditions for participation in the euro. From the EU perspective, the dossier on foreign and defence policy is a more interesting issue. On the one hand, Sweden spars with its promises and emphasises the voluntary nature of its contribution to missions; on the other hand, Sweden has become an active player as a member state. The Swedes are especially committed to cooperating with the UN and promoting the humanitarian and peace-keeping features of foreign policy. With such willingness, Sweden is a good example of how enlargement can not only have an influence on the power relation or decision-making process of the EU, can also influence the direction of EU policy. The integration of former Communist countries into the European Union turned out to be more complex. The per capita GDP of their population was less than half the EU average upon accession. In addition, a much larger group of countries were now involved. Their accession meant the EU grew by about twenty per cent in terms of inhabitants. In 1989, partially as a result of the rapid response from the European Community, expectations were high for the Eastern Europeans. The PHARE aid programme for Poland and Hungary was quickly expanded to other countries in the region and ultimately comprised nearly all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. In July 1993, even before the Treaty of Maastricht entered into effect, the Copenhagen European Council laid down the preconditions for accession. Criteria were rather succinct with an eye to the scope and complexity of this eastern enlargement: ‘stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities’; ‘a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competitive

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pressure and market forces’ and the capacity to ‘take on the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union’. After these conditions the final declaration stated resolutely: ‘the European Council today agreed that the associated countries in Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the European Union’. At that time there was not so much concern about what would later be called the absorption capacity of the European Union – the capacity of integrating new Member States effectively into the Union’s policies and decision-making processes. The countries concerned were those that had concluded European Association Agreements with the EC, which in 1991 and 1992 already contained trade agreements. It involved the so-called ‘Visegrád countries’ of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (all of which had concluded a regional cooperative association for trade in Visegrád), as well as Bulgaria and Romania. Beginning in 1995, the Baltic States followed on account of their delayed independence (1991) and sensitive relationship with Russia. As initial leaders in the transformation process, Poland and Hungary submitted their membership applications in 1994. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia followed in 1995, and the two most prosperous, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, which were more certain of accession and pursued a more independent course, followed a year later. All the same, the accession process went fitfully in the nineties. Germany was the major engine behind the new association treaties that were to replace the earlier Europe Agreements from the beginning of the decade. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German minister of Foreign Affairs, repeatedly expressed the desire even before the Treaty of Maastricht that the countries of Eastern Europe ought to become members ‘as quickly as possible’ and ‘before the end of the decade’. Germany not only had to defend a long boundary with the Central and Eastern European states but, as a neighbouring country, also had major economic interests in the region. It pained France to see this German expansion. German companies established themselves in these countries with low wages (for the time being) and trained labourers and steadily strengthening the German position in European affairs. And yet for a long time the process did not acquire any real momentum. Its haphazard nature had two causes. First, these countries were transitioning from dictatorships and planned economies toward democracies and market economies. Czechoslovakia fell apart, and Slovakia grappled with right-wing authoritarian regimes. The economic shock therapy used in Poland, in particular, provided for a standard of living that fell deep below its pre-1989 levels. The Baltic States developed with relative prosperity but

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had to manoeuvre cautiously in their rapprochement with NATO and the EU, so as not to evoke any harsh reaction from Moscow. In Romania and Bulgaria the Communist elite remained in power to start with, whereby reforms quickly stagnated. On top of that, in the years following the realisation of the Treaty of Maastricht, the Union was still busy reforming its own institutions. For that reason, at the beginning of the nineties distressed or critical reports could be heard from Central and Eastern Europe. Václav Havel, the Czech president, who had great moral authority given his past as a leader in the struggle against Communism, found the Treaty of Maastricht too technical and lacking in pronouncements concerning the meaning of European culture or the nature of a common future. Later on, he even expressed his hunch that the countries of Western Europe may well have wished again for the days of the Cold War, when everything was still well-defined and easy to oversee. The ‘return to Europe’ by Central and Eastern Europe, as he called it, was running up against formal criteria and bureaucracy. The Copenhagen criteria and the initial show of support for accession, however, would leave its imprint on later attempts at enlargement. A crucial development in the accession process for Central and Eastern European countries was that the European Commission came to play a central role in the elaboration of the accession criteria stipulated in Copenhagen, as well as the supervision over those standards. Germany had made a start by initiating the association treaties, which were subsequently worked out by the European Commission. As a result of this development, the European Commission also took on an important role for itself when the official negotiations began in 1998. This greater role for the European Commission, led to the process becoming increasingly bureaucratic and technical, and less of an exclusively political issue. Initially negotiations began with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia, along with Cyprus, but they were expanded a year later to Malta and the remaining five former Communist states of Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia. The European Commission conducted the negotiations and drew up progress reports. Even the final decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers was taken on the basis of an advisory opinion from the European Commission. Certainly in the accession countries themselves there was the impression that Günther Verheugen, the European Commissioner for Enlargement (1999-2004), had the deciding vote in matters of accession. At the same time, the European Commission lost influence in many other areas after the departure of its president Jacques Delors, who was succeeded by the less dynamic Jacques Santer from Luxembourg.

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Access to the negotiations table for the f ive less-developed, former Communist countries (Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia), had a lot to do with the lack of stability in South East Europe. With the NATO bombing of Serbian targets as a reaction to the offences in Kosovo by the Slobodan Milošević regime, the situation in former Yugoslavia had again reached a low point in 1999. There were fears that conflict in the region would escalate. Furthermore, the bombing had begun just a few weeks after Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary had become members of NATO. Being co-responsible for this military intervention by NATO took considerable getting used to on the part of the Czech Republic and Hungary. The war in Kosovo was not the only explanation for opening negotiations with the states that struggled in their transition, in view of the fact that the Baltic States were also involved in these talks. The accession policy was also used to enforce further reforms and democratisation. Such enforcement was of major importance in the Baltic countries, because internal stability would offer genuine protection against the threat from Russia. The idea was that good prospects for accession would increase efforts at reform. The European Union had promised membership at an early stage and had also appealed to solidarity and historic injustices, whereby it became more and more difficult to conduct any restrictive policy in regard to accession. Formal control from the perspective of accession criteria was at odds with the idealistic words frequently spoken by European leaders and diplomats. Eastern European leaders, such as Václav Havel, repeatedly demanded attention be paid to those double standards.

Maastricht’s Open Questions Changing international relations as well as the consequences of a Europe with increasing numbers of Member States and candidates for Europe’s institutional structure made new treaty reform necessary, as had already been laid down at Maastricht, specifically for foreign policy. A Reflection Group was set up in 1995, with representatives from Member States and the European institutions. These representatives were not only ministers or diplomats but also former politicians or specialists. The broad nature of the Reflection Group, set the tone and the final report was somewhat more liberal than that of the negotiations between the European leaders. The Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference on amendments to the treaties started a few months later in March 1996.

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In the Treaty following that meeting in June 1997, vitally imperative institutional modifications, with an eye to the approaching enlargements, remained undone despite long negotiations. The decision-making structure had been developed with the small EEC of the Six in mind. The ‘old’ Member States were loath to give up the rights they had acquired to a European Commissioner and vetoes. An important position was adopted on the item of the possibly larger number of Member States in the future. Looking back at the negotiations concerning the monetary union and the accession of EFTA countries, the Reflection Group further brainstormed concerning the possibility of a ‘lead group’ within the European Union. Klaus Kinkel, Helmut Kohl’s minister of Foreign Affairs, wondered whether the ‘convoy’ should be held back by the ‘slowest ship’, or whether more developed or more integrationist countries should have the opportunity of gaining a competitive edge. The final amendment to the treaty managed to prevent impending fragmentation, in the form of a Europe with two speeds or a two-tiered membership. The Treaty of Amsterdam allowed for these possibilities yet at the same time was able to keep or integrate as many European activities as possible within the EU Treaty. For example, an attempt was also made to connect other treaties and organisations, like the Schengen Area or NATO, with the EU. Negotiations concerning a new distribution of the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers were much less successful. The number of European Commissioners, which was at risk of becoming impractical with respect to enlargements, proved to be similarly closed to discussion. What was indeed successful was the transfer of a number of policy areas to the first pillar and, with that transfer, to the co-decision procedure, of which the most important was migrant policy. Additionally, the number of policy areas, within which decision-making occurred by majority vote in the Council of Ministers, was somewhat expanded. As far as institutional reforms were concerned, the Treaty of Amsterdam achieved only baby steps. The Treaty of Amsterdam is remembered, above all, as the treaty in which foreign policy acquired legal instruments and in which issues of security and border policy came up for discussion. The most striking change was the introduction of a High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), who supported the Foreign Affairs Council in international crises had previously been in the hands of the country that held the presidency of the Council of Ministers, for the most part in the form of a troika (the president, his predecessor and his successor). This marginally satisfactory situation was now moderated by a High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. The selection of the first representative was very telling.

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The Spaniard Javier Solana had just served a term as secretary-general of NATO and now transferred to the EU. The European Commission still had no mandate to act on foreign matters because the policy area had remained intergovernmental. Yet from the first European Commission there had always been a European Commissioner whose portfolio included external relations. In that case it involved for the most part external trade or specific issues, such as relations with enlargement countries. The foreign and security policy was to be developed in addition to and in cooperation with NATO, which was the urgent desire of the United Kingdom and, to a lesser degree, Germany too. For the United Kingdom it provided a way to anchor its trans-Atlantic preferences more strongly and not allow Europe to take a competing route of its own. For historical and political reasons, Germany was reticent to develop military competences. When European leaders decided to support the United States in its plans to bomb Serbia in 1999, so as to prevent any further catastrophe in Kosovo, fierce debates broke out in Germany. It would be the first time since the Second World War that German military forces were deployed in acts of war, and several political parties were of the opinion that Germany should no longer give any show of arms on account of that war, or for reasons of pacifism. Entirely in accordance with this dual ambition of developing defence possibilities, yet at the same time continuing to lean on NATO, the intensified cooperation of the old Western European Union and the EU came about as well. That collaboration had already started with the Treaty of Maastricht. The WEU (1954) – consisting initially of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – had resulted from the Treaty of Brussels in 1948, and was intended to guarantee Western European security. It had always stood in the shadow of NATO but could now develop into the operational entity for NATO Member States in Europe. Given the identity crisis of NATO after the end of the Cold War, the possibility existed for a short while to use the WEU as the nucleus for a new European security structure. For that purpose the WEU Member States laid down the so-called ‘Petersberg tasks’ in 1992, which were an attempt at demarcating the cases for which a security mission could be deployed. Both NATO and the WEU treaty comprised a key article that enforced solidarity in the case aggression by a third party. After the end of the Cold War, the immediate relevance of that threat had become more limited, and it were rather security risks and humanitarian catastrophes outside the NATO area that demanded attention. Certainly within NATO, intervention outside the convention area was a hot-button item. The three Petersberg tasks involved ‘peace-keeping’ missions, ‘peace-making’ missions and humanitarian missions. In the

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Treaty of Amsterdam, these tasks also became the foundation of foreign policy of the European Union. The gradual absorption of the WEU into the EU ultimately resulted in the formal termination of the WEU in 2011, when the original treaty expired. While the emphasis was on the Petersberg tasks, the accent of the EU’s cautious steps taken in the area of security policy came to lie less on the conventional military instruments for safeguarding national security. The collective defence of the EU Member States remained for the most part with NATO. EU missions were above all to be oriented toward keeping armed parties away from each other and less toward participating in defence actions. When tensions in the Balkans mounted again over a year later, it was France and the United Kingdom that wanted to force a breakthrough outside the European Council. Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia did not want to address the secessionist movement of the Albanian Kosovars. With the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the back of their minds, European action was demanded. The combination of France and the United Kingdom in the persons of President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Tony Blair was most remarkable. The United Kingdom was by tradition intensely transAtlantic. France, on the other hand, had not been a part of NATO’s defence structure since 1966. Regardless of that contrast, both leaders achieved a compromise at the French spa town of Saint-Malo in December 1998. In a declaration of intent they agreed that the EU should be able to undertake ‘autonomous’ actions as well as have the ‘military capacity’ for doing so. These plans were elaborated during the ensuing European Council meetings in Cologne and Helsinki (in June and December of 1999). At Helsinki a concrete structure was developed with the ‘Helsinki Headline Goals’. These stated: the Union ought to be able to mobilize 60,000 men within 60 days and for at least a year. The military steps taken against Serbia for protecting ethnic minorities, however, were carried out in the name of NATO, and led again to a loss of face for Europe. A final important step at Amsterdam was integrating the Schengen Agreement into the EU Treaty. The Schengen Agreement had been concluded between the Benelux countries, France and Germany in 1985, and was to lift border controls between these countries in the long term. In principle, the countries in this Schengen Area had open internal borders and bore joint responsibility for the external borders. In a certain sense, these countries ran ahead of the rest of the EU, because Schengen was above all, at the service of the internal market. Certainly because questions of border control and migrants were increasingly considered important EU competences for the future, the adoption of the Schengen Agreement was an important step.

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Here, too, the message of the Treaty of Amsterdam was clear. In spite of the fact that the Schengen Area did not comprise all EU Member States (and also included some not belonging to the EU, such as Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland), it was an attempt to cut back the forest of various European treaties and organisations. Despite the limited steps in revising the decision-making processes and institutions, the tone set by the Treaty was, one of centralising and creating unity. Although the Treaty achieved little in terms of the dossier for institutional alterations, further steps were indeed undertaken to prepare Europe for further enlargement in another way. At the summit in Madrid at the end of 1995, it had been agreed, that the European Commission would draw up a plan for new challenges parallel to plans for a new treaty. The result was the Agenda 2000 ‘for a stronger and wider Union’, which was presented by the European Commission approximately a month after the signing of the Treaty of Amsterdam. Agenda 2000 included an extensive revision of the agriculture and cohesion policy, because those two areas would come under pressure most intensely during the accession of the poorer, agrarian states in Eastern and South East Europe. The plan for the reforms was officially accepted in 1999. Apart from the content of the plans, the process was good at again laying bare the distribution of roles in the institutions. The European Council mandate and the treaty negotiations enabled the European Commission to propose expanded technical alterations to policy that are frequently more decisive than tiresome treaty amendments.

The Treaty of Nice and Euroscepticism The Treaty of Nice just like that of Amsterdam, had already been announced at the conclusion of the preceding treaty. On the one hand, that had to do with the deadlocked dossiers that every round of negotiations left over. On the other hand, it was symptomatic of the way in which European leaders thought about integration well into the years following the millennium, as an ever evolving process owing to the nature of the matter. European cooperation was always seen as a project oriented toward the future. As the Treaties clearly show, that certainly did not mean that the European Member States were always pursuing more integration, but rather that almost everyone continued to see the EEC and, later on, the EU as an unfinished project. There was much at stake during the negotiations for Nice. In the years after the Treaty of Amsterdam, the status of the Union was already damaged by hesitation on the international scene (Kosovo), but above all by a major

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scandal surrounding European Commission expenditure. The whistle-blower Paul van Buitenen, a Dutch employee of the Commission, had brought to light wrongful expenditures and attempts to hide these at the end of 1998. The European Parliament took the question very seriously and refused to approve the budget. Although in the end the complaints were directed above all towards the European Commissioner Édith Cresson, the former prime minister of France, after considerable consultation President Santer tendered the resignation of the entire Commission – for the first time in the history of the European Commission. After a brief interim Commission, the Italian Romano Prodi was appointed head of an entirely new Commission at the end of 1999. It was a major victory for the European Parliament and a recognition of the power and importance of the Parliament, yet it was disastrous for the appreciation of Brussels bureaucracy by the European citizen. Increasingly, an image set in that the European Commission was built on self-aggrandisement, indifference and lack of oversight. Against this awkward backdrop and to make matters worse, extraordinarily complex and technical reforms had to be negotiated. In Nice, for example, decision-making procedures, were high on the agenda in light of the candidacy of Member States from Central and Eastern Europe. Until negotiations began under Portugal’s presidency during the first half of 2000, there was barely any discord between the Member States concerning the need for reforms. Nevertheless, nearly no concrete steps were taken, in spite of a marathon meeting at Nice lasting for days in December of that year. The most important items for negotiation were the expansion of policy areas to be voted on by a qualified majority in the Council of Ministers, as well as the weighting of votes in that procedure. The United Kingdom again uttered objections against majority decisions in matters of security and taxation, while Germany again made comments and questions in the case of supranational migrant policy. As concerned the qualified majority, they got not much further than determining that subsequently a majority of votes would be insufficient (Member States had weighted votes on the basis of the size of their population), and that now a majority of the number of Member States and a majority of the number of citizens represented also had to be obtained – the notorious triple majority. The question of the number of European Commissioners was more disputed. In this case, some cautious success was achieved. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain made a major concession by handing in the right to have two European Commissioners. With the Member States from Eastern and South East Europe at the door, the new rule of one European Commissioner per member state would quickly become unworkable,

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yet in this regard they got no further than postponing the problem. Not until there were 26 Member States would they switch over to a system of rotation. Something comparable occurred with the total number of seats in the European Parliament. The number of seats stipulated at Amsterdam was raised to a maximum of 732. Just as the ‘social chapter’ in the Treaty of Maastricht remained outside the main text and was added only as a protocol because it was unacceptable to the United Kingdom, there were arguments in Nice concerning the status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The idea of a separate document on fundamental rights was controversial because it evoked the illusion of constitutional principles and would open up a series of new policy areas and obligations. The Charter gave a foundation to the EU appeal for human rights and a European constitution. It also provided an incentive to rapprochement or even competition with the European Court of Human Rights at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Resistance toward the provisions was too great to enter them into the text of the treaty itself, nevertheless they were added as a Charter to the Treaty. Following the analogy of the ‘social chapter’, the unofficial, unclear status of the Treaty would constitute the basis for further expansion of competences later on. The European Court of Justice soon made reference to the Charter in rulings, whereby the status of the Charter became steadily more substantial. The decade of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice was marked by successes as well as fiascos and decreasing popularity. During this period unique steps were taken in post-war European relations. The long-awaited monetary union was created along with a European foreign policy. The new decision-making structure with greater power for the European Parliament and the everincreasing expansion of the number of policy areas subject to it ultimately proved to be even more important. On the other hand, relations between the Member States were characterized time and again by a powerful appeal to national interests and impasses. The European Commission’s role of directing and initiating, that little by little, came under fire during the nineties was also characteristic in that context. The European Commission did acquire many more tasks and grew as never before, but the leading role it had had in the days of Delors gradually disappeared. Delors had an important share in the realisation of the market, the establishment of the monetary union and the initiation of new policy areas. As from the 1990s it was either the Council of Ministers or the European Council that worked in an executive fashion. This alternate position of the Commission was symbolically confirmed by the vacancy and

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renovation of the Commission’s Berlaymont Building during that decade. Paradoxically enough, that did not mean that the Commission would shrivel up or lose importance. The new policy areas of cohesion policy and accession negotiations, demanded for example, extensive technical support and that provided the Commission with new influence. lntergovernmentalism and supranationalism thus went hand in hand. The fall of the Berlin Wall was decisive for this ‘European’ decade. Both proponents of a federal Europe and adherents of a Europe of sovereign nationstates were obliged to put their solutions within a European framework. While the end of the Cold War was felt elsewhere in the world as well, the EU was initially intensely focussed on itself. In spite of that orientation the European spirit vanished little by little from the end of the Cold War. That this disappearance did not go unnoticed was evident in the ambitious though forced attempts after Nice to breathe new life into the spirit by means of cultural policy. This undertaking showed that apolitical European integration was increasingly more difficult to keep up. The citizen and public opinion became steadily more important. The most important engine of integration during these years was ultimately the approaching enlargement of the EU to the East. That expansion opened up the call for revising the decision-making process and created the need for security policy, democratisation policy and support for the reform of economies. Through these endeavours the EU persisted in one of the oldest strengths in the process of integration – both the breadth and depth of integration exist in their strong, positive interaction with each other.

Multilevel Governance and the Rediscovery of the Institutions The tone set by many historical analyses concerning the realisation and results of the Treaty of Maastricht has been critical, or outright negative. A strong emphasis on national interests can be traced back to utterances from Margaret Thatcher or François Mitterrand in the run-up to the Treaty and have been eagerly recorded as such by historians. The appreciation for the treaty, however, is intensely dependent on perspective. Whenever the stance of ministers and government leaders is studied, for example, the researcher may come to other conclusions than when researching the reaction of the directorates-general in Brussels, or of the citizens in Europe. For that reason, many scholars have looked much more than previously at players other than diplomats and government leaders alone since the Treaty of Maastricht.

Theory and Historiography

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Regardless of whether ministers and government leaders or the Brussels institutions are looked at, the nature of European integration during the 1990s changed radically. That transformation has also led to fundamental changes in the theory of European integration. First of all, the number of policy areas and the scope of European policy increased to an unprecedented level, with the Economic and Monetary Union and the external policy of the European Union being the most far-reaching examples. One of the defining consequences of that shift was that the administrative apparatus in Brussels increased substantially and, as a result, also became more independent from Member States. Since the Treaty of Maastricht, integration theory has not only been concerned with the ‘why’ but also with the ‘how’ of integration. At least as important as events at the level of Member States and institutions was the fact that the world outside the Union also changed dramatically. The biggest international changes played out on a more abstract and structural level. Sparked by economic globalisation from the beginning of the eighties, and intensified by political changes, the world became more profoundly interwoven. Scholars have also tried to place European integration in that new perspective. Institutionalism Until the Treaty of Maastricht, theorising about European integration came mainly from the angle of International Relations, the doctrine of relations between states. Most scholars who worked in integration theory came from the f ields of history or political science. Although political scientists did most of the theorising, points of departure and the analyses of historians and political scientists were fairly comparable. Since the Treaty of Maastricht, social scientists and political scientists studying International Relations, have developed an interest in European integration as well. They include public administration experts, sociologists or political scientists interested in state institutions. The most important new theories no longer come from the f ield of International Relations but concern, rather, the functioning of people within institutions, or relations between institutions with one another. In the integration theories since the Treaty of Maastricht, the European Union is not just seen as an institution governed by states but, rather, as a governing organisation itself, or as a political system. Scholars now focus on the ‘governing apparatus’ of the European Union (its officials, departments, administration). For a long time researchers within International Relations limited themselves for the most part to heads of state and government

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leaders and to the small diplomatic circles around them. Authors outside that field have been generally more interested in governance, networks or institutions. This approach had always been there, but as a result of the increase in the number of policy areas and civil service personnel in Brussels, social scientists have acquired more and more research material and relevance. These new studies focussing on governance, networks and institutions have produced two important new perspectives on the process of integration: supranational and new institutionalism, and ‘multilevel governance’. Both perspectives distance themselves from the point of departure focussing on government(s), as taken by conventional theories concerning European integration. The most important lesson of the nineties is that the integration process was not only led by Member States and government leaders, as seemed to be the case, for example, during the intergovernmentalist sixties of De Gaulle. Surrounding the Treaty of Maastricht, rather, there were two other factors that proved to be decisive. First, there was the international context, with the fall of Communism, German unification and the end of the Cold War being the most important events. In addition, and at least as important, European institutions themselves played an increasingly bigger role. In this analysis scholars again returned in a certain sense to the actors who had been so important in the fifties and early sixties. At that time it turned out that a major role had been set aside not only for government leaders but also for technocrats and experts, as had also come to the fore in the theory of neofunctionalism. There were two important differences, though. In the fifties and early sixties, the major role for technocrats and experts was a consequence of the desire to depoliticize cooperation. In order to prevent political escalation, at that time a solution like the ECSC was chosen, with a supranational High Authority, as well as the EEC in which politics and politicians played as small a role as possible. In contrast, technocrats, specialists and above all off icials were at work alongside politicians, rather than under them in the preparation of the Treaty of Maastricht. Another difference was that governance then revolved less around visionary individuals or a group of professionals but, much more around the institutions in which they were present. In the second half of the eighties and with specific dossiers during the nineties (enlargement, cohesion policy) the European Commission indeed succeeded in determining, or in part shaping, the agenda for the treaty negotiations. However, scholars have sought out the importance of the institutions not exclusively in the Treaties themselves. The professionalisation

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and expansion of the institutions made the day-to-day practice of European policy more and more important. Supranational and new institutionalism have been oriented toward this tendency – questions on the future or end result of European integration are not asked, attempts are made to recoup how European policy is made. ‘Supranational institutionalism’ is one of the most important uses of institutionalism as applied to the European Union. The article ‘1992: Recasting the European bargain’ (1989) by Sandholtz and Zysman is one of the most prominent publications within this movement.1 In a certain sense, this institutionalism is a return of the neofunctionalist body of thought in EU studies, because it puts the institutions and practice of policy-making front and centre again. Nevertheless there have been new elements. Sandholtz and Zysman pointed to the strong, personal dimension as well as the dependence on context, in the way in which Delors was able to turn the realisation of the market into a pivotal moment in European integration. As a result of that achievement, those espousing supranational institutionalism have been focussed somewhat less on the mechanical and systematic spillover from one policy area to the next. They are also taken with external influences and pay attention to the effect of such influence on ideas concerning European integration. Changes in ideas and perceptions, too, can lead to spillover, as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of a ‘political Europe’ have shown. Within the broader theory of institutionalism, which is not exclusively a theory of European integration, there are multiple ways of approaching the subject, among these the most important being the rational choice model, historical institutionalism and sociological institutionalism. Rational choice theoreticians try to reconstruct how institutional rules of play influence outcomes of negotiations and the success of European policy. For instance, voting structures can force certain choices, and the national implementation of policy can work for one sector but not for the other. They look above all at the technical side of institutions and its consequences for the results of the policy process. Those espousing historical institutionalism deviate from the perspective of rational choice and place more emphasis on the unintended consequences of European policy. The mechanism they use for this analysis is above all ‘path dependency’ – choices made lead to more limited options for subsequent decisions, and sometimes even simply to the necessity of one specific decision. In this way, players in the integration process may end up at standpoints that they had never wanted to take beforehand. Human rights and minorities policy is a good example of this case. The accession of

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Central and Eastern European states demanded the formulation of European norms in this area, yet the inevitable result has been that very gradually even the ‘old’ Member States can be called to account in that regard, and that human rights policy has also entered foreign policy. The enlargement of the European Union by states in transition is also relevant for another reason. This process has generated high costs and made sizeable future investments necessary. Its unintended consequence was an enormous decline in public support for the process of integration. That the enlargement of the European Union nevertheless progressed can be explained by means of the third form of institutionalism: sociological institutionalism. This form similarly places less emphasis on the ‘rational’ dimension and focuses on the ‘corporate culture’ of institutions and the way in which communication flows within and between institutions. Sociological institutionalism could give a good explanation for the onerous role of the European Commission in regard to new Member States, when simultaneously having to uphold treaties and instigate reforms. It has resulted in a fundamentally positive stance with respect to accession and in communication oriented toward persuasion and loyalty, rather than tough sanctions. With that outlook, new institutionalism is not susceptible to the customary criticism of neofunctionalism. Institutions do not automatically lead to more institutions or more integration, but can also put self-destructive processes in motion. Multilevel Governance Institutionalism unlike many other theories, is not a theory that puts the entire Union under the magnifying glass but focuses, rather, on one aspect of it, its institutions. Multilevel governance sets the bar somewhat higher and does not look so much at the impact of institutions on states and policymakers but instead puts the states and policymakers up for discussion in a much more fundamental way. This perspective has been analysing changing political or governmental relationships in the world since the eighties. Its most important source of inspiration is globalisation, which has put into motion a process in which the power of traditional politics and the state gradually crumbles away. To an increasing degree, economies become interwoven with one another and governments are bound to the demands and laws of the international economy. Marks, Hooghe and Blank 2 are the founders of the multilevel governance approach in the EU context. The governance approach is older and broader than its application to the EU and entails essentially that the perspective

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of the state is shifted toward that of broader ‘governance’. In a complex society, more actors influence policy than the state alone. These include social organisations, businesses and the media. They have an interdependent relationship with one another, regardless of the formal hierarchy of the citizen to the government. A good example of this relationship is that the state (or the European Union) becomes increasingly more dependent on experts or business companies for the knowledge necessary for taking good decisions or for being able to carry out good policy. The complexity of knowledge means that the government is no longer capable of doing so itself. Certainly in the globalising world, this dependence becomes more increasingly significant, and more and more actors emerge, on multiple levels. Multilevel governance means that many more players (than states alone) contribute to the realisation of policy, and on more levels (than states and the EU), and that these players are dependent on one another, regardless of their formal power relationship. In that sense, this model has been applicable to European integration from the days of the ECSC on. The model applies to the present-day European Union in two different ways. First of all, it can make the complex power relations and various competences of the European institutions transparent or even relativise them. Seen in the technical terms of Treaties, for example, agricultural policy remained the domain of the Council of Ministers. However, as a result of the practice of decision-making being interwoven in a network of relations – between the European Council, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the European Court and lobbying organisations – the Council of Ministers is much more limited in its options than would be expected. As decisions concerning agricultural dossiers and market issues are frequently taken at the same time, and vetoes in the one dossier make gains in the other impossible, the competences are less absolute than it seems. The second application of the multilevel model has been especially important, since the Treaty of Maastricht. Authors who work with multilevel governance as their point of departure emphasize how European institutions are connected with actors outside the European Union, on the international and above all regional and non-state level. Familiar dossiers such as agricultural or cohesion policy provide an excellent demonstration for this connection. Agricultural organisations that formerly turned to national government when concerned about their position now look directly to Brussels, with tractors in the streets of Brussels as a consequence. Cohesion policy may even provide a better demonstration. In this case, the European Union frequently compensates for any gap in the policy of Member States, whereby the regions also appeal directly to the European Union. As a result, regions or regional

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cities sometimes develop more pronounced European identities than central government. In both applications of the multilevel governance model, the traditional power of Member States is breached or bypassed. Because of this breach of hierarchy, a lot of attention is given to the importance of non-state players in European policy. For divergent reasons, such as the lack of democracy within the European Union or the relatively limited scope of bureaucracy in Brussels, the importance of lobbying organisations, interest groups and specialists is especially great. They fill a gap in Brussels, and in the process acquire a say in policy making they would never have on the national level. Multilevel governance, therefore, prefers to speak of ‘policy networks’ rather than hierarchical decision-making. As is the case of many theories, the perspective of multilevel governance can be directly traced back to a concrete case or event. In this case, it is the Treaty of Maastricht itself. Maastricht not only made the European institutions more important but, with the large emphasis on subsidiarity, attention was given to lower levels of decision making. The Committee of the Regions established at Maastricht to protect this norm of subsidiarity even expressly set as its goal the oversight and advancement of multilevel governance. This nature interwoven in the Treaty has had as its consequences in the fact that multilevel governance has returned to an old problem in the theorising concerning European integration. Once again it is complicated to draw a strict dividing line between theories and visions for European integration. Previously, federalism or neofunctionalism were good examples of theories that for some sounded like ideologies. In those instances in which neofunctionalism was used more than once as a synonym for the ‘Monnet method’, multilevel governance is related to the spirit of Maastricht: unequal decision-making, competences and fragmentation across multiple administrative strata. The explanation for multilevel governance also serving well as a vision or model for integration is two-part. First of all, in a certain sense it is an ‘emancipatory’ instrument for actors who had no voice, or a limited one, in the integration process or within the Member States. Consider in this case regions, lobbying organisations, and also the citizens themselves. In addition, multilevel governance is pre-eminently a theory that provides insight into new forms of power or influence, which have remained unnoticed by many actors. It also puts the debate concerning deficient democratic oversight in European policy as well as the influence of that policy into a somewhat different light. Multilevel governance shows that lobbyists, specialists and regional representatives nevertheless are influential in the decision-making process, in spite of the decisive role of the Council of Ministers.

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Although multilevel governance did not originate within the discipline of International Relations, it is of excellent use in that field and thereby also in EU foreign policy. That applicability is not unexpected, in view of the fact that the thinking of multilevel governance is also strongly connected with globalisation. Under the label of ‘multilevel security governance’, scholars such as Krahmann have shown how the world has become a complex web of international security organisations since the Cold War.3 This analysis of the European Union’s foreign policy can be illuminating. Where a liberal intergovernmentalist reading of the realisation of the European Union’s foreign policy leads to scepticism and expectations that Member States or the United States will always be dominant, analysis of multilevel security governance looks much more at specialization and policy overlaps. Diverse security organizations focus their attention on different tasks and are vital to one another. Examples of such multilevel governance from the nineties are the OSCE, NATO and the Council of Europe in their relationship to the European Union. Final control over the process frequently rested with NATO, but a politically more neutral organisation such as the OSCE or the Council of Europe was sometimes much better able to denounce human rights violations than NATO, as the latter is strongly linked to power politics. NATO is necessary for military interventions, such as those on the Balkan peninsula; yet for putting sensitive political questions on the agenda, other organisations may well be more appropriate. Additionally, there are different knowledge specialisations in these organisations – concerning, for example, the situation of minorities – and they often have good contacts with aid organisations. In Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, the European Union slowly seemed to become a more important player than NATO, as a result of the of its access to the European market and (financial) resources. Historians and State Interests As of yet, historians have not been extensively occupied with the nineties. This is not unusual in view of the limited accessibility of historical, more often than not diplomatic sources. Those writing about these times, such as Desmond Dinan or Andrew Moravcsik, generally make use of a historical approach that showcases heads of state and government leaders. They give the impression that national interests and age-old feuds in Europe were decisive in the process of integration. They see idealism from the European Parliament, the European Commission

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or the European citizen mercilessly punished time and again. Their conclusion is that the Treaties were a compromise and could barely be saved. Dinan’s popular book Europe Recast (2004) gives an excellent account of the ‘history of great men and great nations’ approach to European integration. For example, he focuses strongly on the balance of power within Europe and uses the triangle of Germany-France-United Kingdom as an illustration. Andrew Moravcsik’s The Choice for Europe (1998) also fits well with the thinking oriented toward state interests such as international relations. For Moravcsik, the EU and its concomitant institutions were the stage on which governments negotiated on the basis of their national interests inside the European circle. These institutions mattered for him only to the degree in which they brought government leaders together in a structural manner, and the manner in which they secured conditions in the decision-making process by way of formal rules. Both the European Parliament and the European Commission conducted an ambitious agenda prior to the summit conference concerning the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht, but that programme was shattered by government leaders, according to Moravcsik. Dyson and Featherstone’s extensive history of the EMU, The Road to Maastricht (1999), uses a similar analysis for the realisation of the European Monetary Union, while also devoting attention to technocrats and the role of the European Commission (Delors) as an independent actor. Up until now, historical literature concerning the Maastricht years, has paid relatively little attention to the non-diplomatic level. That lack is remarkable because in past years much attention was indeed given to the importance of technocrats, specialists, interest groups or specific political parties during the first two decades of the integration process. The work of the German scholar Wolfram Kaiser, who carries out research into transnational networks and ‘non-state actors’ in the decades prior to the Treaty of Maastricht, counts as trend-setting. It is in many respects related to the new institutionalism in social sciences. Kaiser has also devoted some attention to the years in the run-up to the Treaty of Maastricht. In view of the fact that the accent in research into European integration has shifted, it seems meaningful that more historians have been inspired by theorising from the social sciences. It also indicates that the use of sources for the historian of European integration ought to become broader in scope – in addition to diplomatic sources, policy documents or sources from the institutions become important, too.

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Think Tanks The Other Europe

The origin of the term ‘think tank’ lies with American advisors in the area of foreign policy and military strategy during the early years of the Cold War. The Brookings Institution, founded in 1916, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, from 1910, both with headquarters in Washington, DC, are think tanks ‘avant la lettre’. They are independent organisations that are committed to scholarly research, (solicited and unsolicited) policy advice and the dissimination of knowledge among a wider audience on diverse aspects of international politics and national government policies. Think tanks operate where democratic politics, the government apparatus, post-materialist social movements, interest groups or lobby organisations and academic institutions meet. In spite of the criterion of independence it is not easy to distinguish think tanks clearly. Many ministries and European institutions have an internal department for ‘forward thinking’ or policy planning at their disposal, which reflect on relevant developments over the medium term and produce strategic answers to them, without being bound by issues of immediate concern, apart from policy implementation. These departments, have an ample degree of freedom of choice in the process. Different to political or civil service personnel, a think tank is not bound to acknowledge political taboos or electoral considerations. Any hindrance to ‘thinking out of the box’ because of existing problem analyses and policy guidelines is to be prevented. In most Member States Foreign Affairs have an independent research institute outside the ministry, providing the minister with risk analyses, policy advice and recommendations. Although they are not founded by private individuals, businesses or academic organisations, but instead by the government, these research institutes are also seen as think tanks on account of their independent, critical role without vested interests or concern for financial gain. Numerous hearings and committees with experts, which support the political decision-making process at present, fulfil a similar function, even though for the most part they lack the institutional sustainability necessary to speak of a think tank. The dividing line between a think tank and a ‘civil society organisation’ (CSO) or a ‘non-governmental organisation’ (NGO) is fluid, too. In spite of their scholarly independence, think tanks frequently also champion an ideal. Conversely, numerous (international) NGOs build their profiles with scholarly research and expertise of their own. Even lobbying organisations that represent commercial interests or business sectors like to flaunt ‘independent’ scholarly research of their own, or conducted on their behalf,

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so as to influence economically relevant decision-making at a national or European level. With the increasing complexity of government tasks, the number of think tanks has increased since the seventies. This occured first in the US, in the EU Member States mainly in the last twenty years, and certainly in Brussels with the increasing transfer of sovereignty.4 Think tanks and related organisations fulfil two important roles in the European Union – support and expertise. In view of its ‘democratic deficit, in the last years the EU – and in particular the European Commission and Parliament – has devoted a lot of attention to dialogue with individual citizens and societal interest groups. Larger policy areas and reform projects more often than not are provided with a civil society forum. In the realisation of the common market, Brussels has made use of a network of contacts and of institutionalised joint decision-making for the relevant lobby and industry organisations from businesses in the Member States for a long time now. After recent criticism of the non-transparent, uncontrolled growth of lobby orgnaisations (and their undemocratic influence) in Brussels, attempts have been undertaken to create at least a voluntary registration system. Officials of the European Commission, members and above all rapporteurs in the European Parliament (given the expansion of the co-decision procedure) have had to deal with growing pressure from thousands of lobbyists. On the one hand, the Commission dependents on the opinions and interests of those directly involved in the Member States to effectively elaborate on the many detailed regulations. On the other hand, the EU – just like national governments – needs to prevent the undermining of democracy as a result of lobbying by financially strong multinationals. Between these representatives of civil society and regular political channels for national and European parliaments, the Council of Ministers in its various constellations and the European Council, there are still two additional channels for joint decision-making and influence. In addition to all the national and European interest organisations, numerous lower-level authorities in Europe have their own bureau in Brussels to promote regional interests, even above and beyond the Committee of the Regions – from the German Bundesländer and the Association of Latvian Municipalities to the Netherlands’ metropolitan Randstad region and the Union of Italian Cities. Moreover, ‘comitology’ – the expanded network of committees of national government representatives and experts who exercise oversight concerning development and implementation of policy by the EU – also needs to be taken into account in alternative channels to policy centres in Brussels. The Council’s need for seemingly apolitical monitoring has grown with the

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increasing competences of the European Commission. After the Treaty of Lisbon an attempt was made to limit the non-transparent multiplicity of committees and their powers known to insiders only. In this case, too, it has been true that permanent dialogue with representatives from government and civil society in the Member States is essential for the functioning of the EU. At the same time all these non-democratic means of access to policy makers constitute a part of Europe’s ‘democratic deficit’. Think tanks do not represent any groups of citizens or social and commercial interests, but offer their expertise to policy makers in Brussels and in the national capitals. Depending on national traditions, these think tanks are above all state institutions, academic institutes or independent organisations. In the case of political advice, in contrast to the (public relations) ‘spin doctor’, a think tank does not aim for maximum electoral gain but for optimal policy. Unlike an academic research institute, name recognition, impact factor and the half-life of ideas have a high priority. Only as second-best option do think tanks make use of academic journals to expound their ideas. On account of the speed of political developments and the half-life of original, thought-provoking ideas, think tanks make use above all of websites, (electronic) policy papers and national media to get their ideas into the world. Workshops with independent experts, on the one hand, and official and political policy makers, on the other hand, constitute a second, more immediate channel for distribution. Just like a journalist (and in contrast to an academic), a political advisor will keep his sources confidential and diligently weigh the use of insider information. For national policy-makers and for the EU, too, think tanks fulfil three roles – first, as a sounding board for political reforms and policy strategies; second, as a provider of expertise for underpinning policy from the perspective of empirical studies or regional analyses; and third, as a ‘backchannel’ for informally preparing international negotiations in the case of particularly delicate questions. Policy makers in national capitals and in Brussels make use of ideas from think tanks and use the authority of think tanks to add weight to their own designs in political negotiations or to try out reactions to a policy idea by way of a ‘trial balloon’, without taking any political risk. Above all in crisis management outside the EU, conferences or expert meetings organized by think tanks for the High Representative, for example, offer the opportunity to come into contact with opposition movements, separatists, non-recognized governments or guerrilla movements outside official diplomatic channels. Thematically, think tank work surrounding the EU has three priorities (as does the EU itself). These are, economic issues, foreign and security policy and treaty reforms. In view of the importance of the EU in economic issues,

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socio-economic institutes are at present just as occupied with national policy as they are with strategic options for the European Commission and the ECB. For the new Member States of 2004 and 2007, the candidate Member States and Eastern neighbouring states, the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW), has the best reputation. The Centre for European Reform (CER), the independent British think tank, operates as an advocate for European integration in a eurosceptical United Kingdom and additionally focuses on proposals for improving the effectiveness of EU policy in economic and related areas, like energy policy and migration. Economic experts from the think tank Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), within walking distance of the European institutions in the Rue de la Loi in Brussels, have influence at the Commission. Some think tanks derive their added value above all from an up-to-date analysis of the social and economic developments in the Member States, whereas others scrutinize the policies of the Union and make recommendations for alternative strategies. The most sizeable area of work for think tanks (regarding number of organisations and production) is that of foreign and security policy. This think tank sector took off with the introduction of the CFSP and the High Representative. In some cases think tanks that had been occupied with issues of peace or disarmament for some time came to concentrate more on the EU as a new relevant actor. These included London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) and Frankfurt’s Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung (Frankfurt Peace Research Institute). Many new think tanks provide the EU with alternative or additional regional expertise – well-founded evaluations of developments and conflict risks for relevant hotspots – and recommendations for European policy that take into account onging conflicts as well as the possibilities and limitations for the EU and a ‘pax europeana’. By far the largest and most influential think tank in this area is the International Crisis Group, founded in the United States in 1995, with its headquarters now in Brussels and bureaus in numerous crisis regions worldwide. Easily taking second place (and similarly following the American example) is the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in London. In addition to independent international NGOs of this sort, the ministries for Foreign Affairs in each of the Member States have their own more or less autonomous centre of expertise in this area – Instituut Clingendael in The Hague, the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Foundation for International and Security Affairs) in Berlin, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and the Institut français des relations internationales – IFRI (French

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Institute of International Relations) in Paris. The think tank, that the EU took over from the Western European Union in 2002, and which now falls under the High Representative, the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EU-ISS) is also headquartered in Paris. At times when reform of the EU’s institutional architecture and its Treaties was high on the political agenda, numerous think tanks developed their own expertise and ideas in this area. In view of the rapid succession of debates on reform in the past two decades, a specialist network of institutional visionaries has emerged. These think tanks, much more so than in the area of economics, need good contacts in Brussels as well as the intuition to perceive which schools of thought can count on sympathy from key persons in the EU and in the national capitals, and which ideas are a priori taboo. At the same time they also have more room for originality even if it is just on account of the inherent paradox of an institution that reforms itself. Here, too, it is true that some institutes are more focussed on the legal quality of their proposals, while others concentrate on the political attainability in the case of the Twenty-Eight European States. In the past ten years, the European University Institute in Florence, CEPS in Brussels, the Center for Applied Policy Research in Munich and the Institut für Europäische Politik – IEP, (Institute for European Politics) in Berlin have been prominent visionaries in the institutional debates. The ‘double hatting’ of the Commissioner for External Relations and the High Representative, the text for the European constitution and the three columns of Maastricht were developed, at least in part, here. A good example of the added value of independent parties among Brussels bureaus and national ministries are those think tanks that, without being solicited, confront the EU and its Member States with the humanitarian consequences of European policy – as concerns refugees, illegal immigration and human trafficking, for example, or as concerns freedom to travel, visa regulations and ‘local border traffic’ at the external border. If an organisation points to the distressing consequences of this policy and protests against them, it can indeed exert influence either directly or via the media and public opinion, though it does not operate as a think tank. So as not to be just a idealistic organisation, a think tank provides advisory opinions on policy, which also take broader political objectives and cost estimates into account. Or it offers empirical information from its own research concerning, for example, refugee flows or the economic significance of local border traffic so as to change political stances. The opposite situation occurs as well, for example, when a think tank adopts an innovative idea from European policy and elaborates on it. Such

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was the case with the European Constitutional Treaty. When the f irst politicians in Brussels and in national capitals became charmed by such a daring and ambitious project in 2001, an impasse arose. To gain broader support for the Constitution, the chief elements of the idea at least had to be worked out. No one in Brussels, however, had the mandate to take up this kind of a political project. Only in 2002 would the European Commission dare to present its president, Romano Prodi, with an initial outline, namely, the ‘Penelope Project’ with the express observation: ‘This feasibility study does not necessarily represent the views of the European Commission’.5 National ministers for Foreign Affairs did not want to take the lead. A ‘German’ draft (even if unread) could evoke resistance and suspicion from other Member States, for example. For that reason, multiple independent think tanks made an attempt to split up the existing Treaties into constitutional provisions and fundamental rights, on the one hand, and operational provisions, on the other hand.6 The slim size and (relatively) clear language of these drafts certainly aided in getting the constitutional project off the ground in Europe. A few years later the constitutional project led to a new political impasse in which think tanks were able to fulfil a useful role. By the springtime, European and national politicians already feared that the ratification of the Treaty could become deadlocked with the planned referenda in multiple Member States. There was an urgent need for a ‘Plan B’. At the same time it was politically completely inopportune and even counter-productive to develop those kinds of plans – it would show, after all, that even the architects of the Treaty had little confidence in the quality of the Constitution and in the successful completion of its ratification. For that reason and in this case, too, think tanks developed the first recommendations and strategies for the ‘worst-case scenario’.7 Parts of their drafts can be found in the Treaty of Lisbon. What holds true for each of these topics is that a think tank has to deal with the tension between what is advisable, from the perspective of the actual problem, and what is politically attainable. If, in developing solutions and advisory opinions, a think tank takes (possible) political resistance toward specif ic plans too much into account, it starts to look like a group of civil servants in a ministerial department or a directorate-general, and loses its added value as a ‘Freidenker’ (Freethinker). Conversely, if a think tank fails to consider political power relations, public opinion or taboos in Brussels to some degree, the advisory opinion will remain unread and will not contribute at all to policy-making and decision-making processes.

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European Treaties From the Sources

Treaties play a special role in the European Union. Seen from a distance the European Treaties seem to be merely a neutral summary of consensus achieved, which are subsequently considered as a legal basis for agreements made. Nevertheless the European treaties are of great value in gaining a good understanding of European integration and for historical research as well. First of all, the Treaties are the rules of the game for the European Union though, the interpretation and implementation of Treaties, are put up for debate again and again. Member States and institutions all read the rules of play differently and try to stretch those rules as far as possible. For example, within the bounds of the original Treaty on the European Economic Community, policy has been set up for social issues, developmental challenges or environmental threats, even though the point of departure always remained the common market. Additionally, the treaty text itself is a good source for historical research. Given a good reading, the apparently watertight and politically neutral formulations betray quite a lot of discrepancies among European Member States and European institutions. Since the eighties, amending treaties has become an instrument and the form into which the intensification of European cooperation is cast. Amending treaties gave both a goal and structure to European negotiations and cooperation. Classic examples of the struggle to interpret the Treaties are the decisions in the cases of Van Gend and Loos (1963) and of Costa/ENEL (1964) at the European Court of Justice. In the Van Gend and Loos case the European Court not only gave an interpretation of the Treaty but also explicitly provided further impetus to the pursuit of interpreting the Treaties. In its pronouncement, the Court stated that ‘the spirit, the content and the phraseology of the EEC Treaty’ had to be considered.8 The spirit of the Treaty thus required a special, not always literal reading of the treaty text, the Court argued. The pronouncement of the European Court concerning the spirit of the Treaty is of the opinion that the text of a Treaty must be seen within a historical context, and does not always provide immediate access to the underlying intention. Language can come in the way of meaning or indeed be used in such a way to avoid certain implications. An interesting example of the latter is the usage of words that pertaining to the sovereignty of Member States. For instance, the text of the treaty for the European Community for Coal and Steel (ECSC) makes mention of a ‘supranational’ High Authority (Article 9). The successor to the High

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Authority – the European Commission, lost this insertion in the Treaties of Rome, and in the versions of the ECSC – after both treaties were combined in the Merger Treaty of 1965 – where ‘supranational’ made room for ‘independent’. Additionally not any of the other Institutions acquired this supranational insertion, or anything comparable, even though the Court of Justice, the European Central Bank, and even the European Commission, are institutions that can rightly be called ‘supranational’. Modifications in vocabulary can thus point to shifts in the political culture or support for European cooperation. Interestingly, such amendments need not always correspond to changes in the day-to-day reality of institutions or their power. The third consideration for studying European Treaties is the special role they play in the process of increasing cooperation. The accumulation of Treaties – as they are not considered as new Treaties but as amendments to those preceding, thereby providing continuity – can be seen as one of the rituals of European cooperation. Beginning with the Single European Act, iImmediately after almost all major Treaties were signed, beginning with the Single European Act, starting a new intergovernmental conference for the next treaty was arranged. European cultural policy in the following section is an telling example of the significance of the Treaty as both an engine for policy and a source for research. This example gives a good demonstration of how cultural policy could be conducted in a limited way already before it was taken up in any European Treaty, by referring to the (spirit of) other Treaties. Subsequently, the Treaty of Maastricht offered some room for cultural policy for the first time. Even so, this limited space became the basis for ambitious policy in a very specific direction, precisely as a result of the phrasing of the text. Treaties, European Identity and Cultural Policy Looking at the Treaties, the first time ‘culture’ shows up is in the Treaty of Maastricht. That Treaty is known, above all, as the start of the European Union, the Monetary Union and European foreign policy. In addition, however, the Treaty laid down possibilities for future European policy areas as well. A few new policy areas were added, like security or, in a very limited way, social policy. In contrast, for other areas it was explicitly affirmed that they would remain national affairs. Cultural policy is a good example of these latter areas, in addition to healthcare and education. The member states expressly laid down in the Treaty that culture would remain a national competence, in which the EU would only be able to operate in a supporting capacity. Characteristic for the sometimes contradictory process

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of European integration is that precisely as a result of laying down the limits of EU authority, space emerged for a more ambitious European cultural policy, with the European Commission as the most important player. With the Treaty as a source, a second contradiction within the cultural policy of the European Union comes to light. The concept of ‘culture’ is used in two different ways. The Treaty of Maastricht speaks of ‘cultures’ in the plural, in order to indicate that culture is a national or regional phenomenon by its very nature. At the same time European cultural policy also serves the attempt to provide Europe cooperation with greater support among Europeans, and it stimulates commonalities in Europe. In Article 128 of the Treaty of Maastricht, therefore, reference also is made both to cultural diversity as well as to common heritage: ‘The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore.’9 Thus, there is talk of national cultures but also of a common European heritage. With that phrasing, the Treaty gives Member States the assurance that culture is a national phenomenon, yet opens the way for the Commission to support national, and thus European, culture. For a long time the Treaties did not talk about culture, though some cultural policy was conducted under the label of the common market. The original EEC Treaty of 1957 makes mention in the preamble of striving for ‘an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’, thereby evoking the impression that this union was not just economic in nature.10 Even so, the beginning of European efforts in the area of culture and identity, is generally placed at the ‘Declaration on European Identity’ by the European Council in Copenhagen in 1973. The Declaration is special because European identity was not described in terms of diversity of nations, but on the basis of positive, European values. Reference was made, to the ‘same attitude to life’, striving for a society that serves the ‘needs of the individual’, as well as democracy, the rule of law, social justice (‘the ultimate goal of economic progress’) and human rights.11 The backdrop was a perceived need to bring the European peoples closer together and build up a ‘citizen’s Europe’, as the so-called ‘Tindemans Report’ (‘Report on European Union’) from 1976 called it. Direct elections for the European Parliament from 1979 on fit into this same context. Somewhat more explicitly, a bridge was built between a ‘citizen’s Europe’ and European culture. ‘European awareness’ was directly linked to cultural policy, in the ‘Solemn Declaration on European Union’ in 1983, whereby thought was given to incentivising information, education or audiovisual policy.12 The Adonnino Report on the ‘people’s Europe’ followed two years

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later. It was during these years, too, that the European Parliament took over European symbols, like the anthem (the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven) and the flag (blue with twelve yellow stars) of the Council of Europe. The European Commission, supported by these declarations and reports, put out a few communiqués concerning cultural policy (1977, 1982 and 1987), yet took an extremely modest position. Policy achieved was limited very much to the technical side of things, like audiovisual policy, for which the technology was still in its infancy. On top of that, this policy could be financed by other policy areas (there was no cultural budget) and connected well with the development of the market and modern technology. Looking at these reports and declarations, it is striking that culture is seen above all as an instrument for enhancing the legitimacy of European policy. The (ultimately) more ambitious initiatives of the eighties cannot be found in the treaties or declarations like, for example, the Jean Monnet programme that made European cooperation in education possible. This Monnet programme has been greatly expanded over the decades and by now has financed hundreds of professorships and research centres. Another example is the occurrence of the annual European cultural capitals. This designation was created in 1983 on the initiative of the Council of Ministers. Since that time a different city may be named every year as the cultural capital of Europe. Athens was the first city in 1985 – it was said to be the Greek minister for Culture who came up with the initiative. Cultural policy has always remained an instrument for European integration, though not without critical commentary. As mentioned earlier, the Treaty of Maastricht introduced a culture section and made the citizens and Member States central to it. The Treaty of Maastricht brings to light the path toward a ‘people’s Europe’, though it was done in an entirely different way. With the aid of this document, European (cultural) policy was viewed in the light of subsidiarity. After defining European culture as a multiplicity of national and regional cultures, the text of the treaty speaks of the task of contributing to the ‘flowering of cultures’, encouraging ‘cooperation between Member States’ and advancing this cooperation with ‘third countries’ and organisations like the Council of Europe. In addition to providing stimulus for culture and advancing cooperation, the Treaty explicitly mentions that even in other policy areas ‘cultural aspects, specifically respecting and advancing cultural variety’, must be taken into account.13 Diversity is considered a positive value, which should be increased. In that regard, any room for independent policy focussed on ‘European culture’ was seemingly absent. The first steps in the direction of any policy by the European Commission therefore were – against the desire of the

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European Parliament, which remained critical concerning the Treaty – put under the modest label of ‘cultural action’. That step brought the Commission along the cautious path of the eighties. Subsequently, a number of reports and policy documents defined the place of culture in European integration and increasingly appropriated the domain for itself. The most important strategy in this process was anchoring culture in the other objectives and policy areas of the European Union. A first step in this direction was taken in 1996, when the Commission drew up an extensive report concerning ‘cultural aspects’ in all European Community policy.14 The report opened with cultural policy and the point of departure taken by Treaties since 1957, striving for ‘ever closer union’ translated into initiatives like European citizenship and educational or youth policy. The image of culture in the European context followed two lines of thought. First of all, the text positioned culture as being threatened by regulations surrounding the internal market. That threat made the protected position of (national) culture increasingly more onerous, after all. In addition, the Commission elaborated on how culture had at the same time become interwoven with almost all policy areas in the European Union and could also serve economic goals very well. The need for European cultural policy arose within the principle of culture as a national affair. The European Commission attempted to liberate cultural policy from the limitations of the Treaty of Maastricht by means of this broad outline of European integration, which had existed since 1957. In later communiqués, strategic importance continued to be worked out more and more. Since the seventies, bringing European citizens together had slowly become a priority and was again appealed to, by way of further developing the European cultural capitals, for example. In a climate in which cultural policy remained suspect for some Member States, the Commission preferred to focus on documents about the commercial and technical side of cultural production, above all. In this way, the Commission linked cultural policy to the European market and, in particular, to the increasingly more important cohesion policy. Thus, culture was certainly not just threatened by the market but could also stimulate that same market. Within the cohesion policy, for example, the Commission distinguished three roles for cultural strategies –: direct stimulation of the ‘cultural sector’, stimulation of ‘regional development’ and advancement of ‘social integration’ and ‘social cohesion’. By strongly connecting to the market and regional development, cultural policy acquired a base of support. The limitations imposed in the Treaty of Maastricht increased the emphasis on diversity in the European Union, certainly in cultural policy.

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In any case, cultural policy would not be possible without it supporting that diversity. In 2000, the European Parliament even adopted a motto for the European Union, which appeals to that very sponsorship: ‘united in diversity’. Although this motto, together with the other symbols such as the flag and anthem, was not recorded in the Treaty of Lisbon (2007/2009), it is nevertheless generally used as in communiqués from the European Commission. The motto is a direct consequence of policy oriented toward identity and culture, which arose in the seventies and was put into words in the Treaty of Maastricht. Diversity is an important and even binding value. It is not merely the cause or need for cooperation, but has become a value in and of itself. The strategic importance of this treatment of European culture and identity in the Treaties is that it covers the lack of European unity concerning these topics. Diversity is good, because diversity is European. The peculiarity here is that the emphasis on diversity arose to safeguard culture as a competence of the Member States, yet is gradually becoming a strong foundation for European identity. Diversity as a European value in the Treaty of Maastricht, which has come to serve the strategic interests of the EU, can also be found in the cultural capitals of Europe. In the meantime, this instrument of cultural capitals serves economic goals, in accordance with the limited treaty basis for cultural policy. Since 2000 regionally important cities rather than actual capitals are chosen. In this regard, the European Commission points to the effects of these cities on economic development. Summing up, it can be stated that studying cultural policy from the perspective of the Treaties shows a number of important tendencies. In the first place it can easily be seen that the minimal and sometimes cryptic texts of the European Treaties can lead to ambitious policies. Secondly, what is striking about the Treaties is how cultural policy is strongly interwoven with other motivations and interests. It is frequently difficult to unravel whether cultural policy serves the market, democratisation, the build-up of support for the European Union, or culture itself. The treaty texts and declarations bring this interwoven nature and these motivations to light. In terms of policy, ‘culture’ within the European Union thus proves to be a means (connecting the citizen and integration) as well as an end (advancing diversity or protecting from the market). Finally, the Treaties provide an excellent demonstration of how the relationship between Europe and the Member States is managed in cultural policy. Cultural policy supports diversity and sees Europe, too, as a multiplicity of cultures. This advocacy produces a definition of European culture and diversity comes to be considered a European value.

Lisbon Agenda; Proclamation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights

Introduction of the Euro Banknotes and Coins; Convention on the Future of Europe in Brussels

Membership Perspective for the Western Balkans

Accession of Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czech Republic; Signing of the European Constitutional Treaty

Accession of Bulgaria and Romania; Signing of the Lisbon Treaty

Founding of the European Financial Stability Facility

Introduction of the European Stabilization Mechanis

Introduction of the Fiscal Union; Accession of Croatia

2000

2002

2003

2004

2007

2010

2012

2013

2004

2004 2004

2004

2004 2004

2004 2004

2013 2007

2007

2004 2004

5.

A Constitution for a Larger Europe?

In the course of the preceding decades, economic integration strengthened the positions and competencies of the Commission and Parliament, making Member States particularly wary, and leading to convoluted compromises designed to guarantee the functioning of the Union while simultaneously safeguarding Member States’ sovereignty. At a time when citizens demanded more participation for themselves and more transparency on the part of the political establishment, the European Union came to represent depoliticized and undemocratic government. Around the turn of the century, along with the near doubling of the number of Member States, the need to create a ‘Europe for citizens’ was the primary motive behind grand initiatives for a charter, a convention and a European Constitution. The embellishment of the EU with the symbols and institutions of a nation-state, however, was not received well by sceptical citizens. After the Treaty of Lisbon, democracy and transparency once again took a back seat to functionality and intergovernmental guarantees. Amid the subsequent euro crisis, public concerns over the costs of European solidarity grew in the northern half of the Union, while in the southern half not only citizens, but also functionaries in national governments and parliaments, felt held to ransom by Brussels. The Intergovernmental Conference of Nice in December 2001 ended in disappointment for everyone involved. Despite the time pressure posed by the upcoming eastern enlargement, heads of state failed to come up with convincing answers to the so-called ‘Amsterdam left-overs’ – questions concerning the composition of the Commission, the allocation of seats in Parliament, the weighting of national votes in the Council of Ministers and the extension of qualified majority voting (QMV) to additional policy issues. Prestige and national interests prevented genuinely European answers to these urgent questions. The compromises forged at Nice did offer ample guarantees for the sovereignty of Member States, but only at the expense of institutional clarity and procedural practicability. In the public and political debate, Nice lent additional credence to the belief that neither Monnet’s incrementalism nor Jacques Delors’ grand visions was capable of reinvigorating the integration process. As president of the Commission, Delors (1985-1995) had succeeded in winning Member States over, on two ambitious projects, the EMU and the CFSP. This success, however, had not put an end to the institutional deadlock between Europe and the states. Quite to the contrary, as a result of the transfer of ever more policy competencies, Member States’ demands for intergovernmental counterweights grew.

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Even before the conference began, many anticipated that Nice would not end with a breakthrough. Motivated by the need to find a solution before the accession of ten new Member States, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer championed a new type of integration strategy. Finalité was the keyword of his May 12, 2000 lecture at Berlin’s Humboldt University.1 It meant first deciding on the ultimate objective of the integration process, and second breaking it down into manageable, concrete measures. This was the very opposite of Monnet’s method, which had used pragmatism and depoliticization to allay Member States’ apprehensions. An institutional breakthrough was not Fischer’s only concern. In the course of the 1990s, Europe’s lack of democratic legitimacy became subject to ever more frequent criticism. Fischer therefore proposed a structure, similar to a national democratic system, for a future EU with thirty or more members: a constitutional treaty; a chamber of deputies (i.e. the EP, with members who would also have seats in their respective national parliaments); a senate (the Council of Ministers) and a ‘European government’ (i.e. the European Council or the European Commission). Reaction to Fischer’s proposals was rather reserved. His Humboldt speech nonetheless became a symbol of a new phase, in which European leaders tried to reduce the gap between Europe and its citizens through institutional innovations. Democracy and participation were suddenly high on the political agenda, whereas Delors’ reform agenda had addressed primarily the European political elite and policy fields. Prefiguring this new approach in 1999-2000, a European Convention had been called – a high-level meeting of national and European policymakers, to draft a Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Later, between 2002 and 2003, a new Convention on the Future of Europe had the responsibility of drafting a constitutional treaty. Under Delors’ Commission chairmanship, the EU looked increasingly like a federal state, where European laws and regulations determined much of the lives of millions of Member States’ citizens in numerous policy fields. The fact that, in the spirit of the fifties, the EU-Treaty was a functional agreement between states was thus generally perceived as a deficit. Thus in 1999 the European Council moved to draft a Charter of European fundamental rights. Under the chairmanship of former German President Roman Herzog, the Convention met for the first time in December 1999. It consisted of two representatives from each national parliament, one government representative, delegates from the EP and one representative from the European Commission. Both the strong presence of democratic representatives and the self-identification as a convention – a reference to the Philadelphia Convention, where the American Constitution was drafted

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in 1787 – signified the motivation to close the gap between Europe and its citizens. The Charter itself was largely based on the Council of Europe’s 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, and its content offered few surprises – equality, freedom of expression, social rights and a ban on torture and capital punishment, among other tenets. The legal status of the Charter, however, was more contentious than its content. It was not an integral part of the subsequent Lisbon Treaty (2007-2009), as was initially planned in the failed Constitutional Treaty of 2003-2004. Nevertheless, the force of the Charter is the same as the EU Treaties, and EU citizens may invoke the Charter at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. Member States were anxious to ensure that the Charter would not give the Court and the Commission carte blanche to interfere with national legislation and policies to the detriment of the subsidiarity principle. The Charter therefore explicitly stated that its validity was limited to the implementation of European law. In view of the scope of European legislation, in particular as it pertains to issues of the four freedoms – the free movement of goods, people, services and capital – this stipulation was not likely to effectively curtail European interference. To an outsider, the first impression of the Charter may have been one of intergovernmentalism, but the underlying reality was characterized by a supranational bent. After the completion of the Charter at the end of 2001, the European Council called a new Convention under the leadership of former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and gave it the ambitious task of drafting a European Constitutional Treaty. This Convention’s composition was similar to the first, and invitations were extended to the governments and parliaments of the candidate Member States. Public meetings, hearings, internet forums and media campaigns signalled an even more earnest effort to get the European public involved. But despite all good intentions, the difficulty of explaining complex content and procedural issues to a lay audience soon became apparent. Once the Convention reached the stage of actually drafting a text, Giscard felt the need to tighten the reins. Consequently, it succeeded in presenting only one coherent constitutional draft to the European Council in July 2003. Strictly speaking, the draft was a non-binding proposal to the Council, but given persistent talk of Europe’s democratic deficit, political leaders were ill advised to demand major changes. The scepticism of European citizens grew amid the difficult – and closeddoor – negotiations that ensued. Not even the grandiose signing ceremony in Rome on October 29, 2004, at the very same location where the EEC

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European Council

instructs

Heads of state and government of the Member States

Council of Ministers Ministers of the Member States ses advi

European Court of Auditors

ad

s ise

Representatives of local and regional governments

v ad

v is es

con t ad rols vis es

sures advis es

Committee of the Regions

es vis ad

initia tes m ea

Nominated by the Member States, appointed by the Council of Ministers

ol s contr ures roced tive p gisla r orteu rapp

Representatives of interest groups of the Member States

le ecial nd sp

European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)

Directors of the national banks of the Member States ar y a ordin

Nominated by the Member States, appointed by the Council of Ministers

European Central Bank

r orteu rapp

European Court of Justice

initiates legislation

European Commission

European Parliament controls

Nominated by the Member States, appointed by the European Council, confirmed by the European Parliament

Elected by European citizens

European institutions: Treaty of Lisbon 2007/2009]

Treaty had been signed in 1957, could allay these anxieties, and the relief felt across the political leadership over the successful conclusion of these negotiations proved to be short lived. The series of ratifications by Member States (typically in parliament, but in some cases by referendum) came to a grinding halt after the European Constitutional Treaty was rejected by plebiscites in France and the Netherlands: in France, 55 per cent voted no on May 29, 2005, and three days later in the Netherlands 61 per cent followed suit. After these defeats, citizen participation and transparency once again became taboo for Europe as far as the Treaties were concerned. EU leaders immediately prescribed themselves a ‘period of reflection,’ and returned to deliberations behind closed doors. Then, in 2006 a commission of seasoned

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politicians headed by former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato was charged with finding a way out of the crisis. Its recommendations resulted in the present Treaty of Lisbon, signed on 13 December 2007. Rather than one new treaty with a clear separation of constitutional articles and provisions on its implementation, Lisbon was a revision of two existing treaties. A modified EU Treaty from Maastricht with the article of a more principled nature was renamed the Treaty on European Union (TEU), while a modified EEC Treaty from Rome with implementation provisions was renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). In the text of this treaty, too, the word ‘Community’ was replaced with ‘Union.’ Lisbon’s ratification by national parliaments proceeded smoothly, though Warsaw and Prague exacted additional concessions from Brussels in exchange for their consent. The Irish were compelled by their constitution to hold a referendum, and only a second vote in October 2009 produced the necessary majority in favour. As compared to the Constitutional Treaty, Lisbon made primarily sym­ bolic concessions to citizens’ aversions to ‘more Europa.’ It contained no European flag, no anthem, no grandiloquent preamble or invocation of God. The person in charge of foreign policy was not referred to as a minister. If European identity and increased citizen participation by politicising decision­making in Brussels had been key objectives of the Constitutional Treaty, the depoliticized Lisbon Treaty was intentionally phrased to be as technical and ideologically neutral as possible. Member States, moreover, were able to enhance intergovernmental guarantees on a number of strategic issues. In terms of institutions and procedures, most of the Constitutional Treaty’s innovations were upheld by Lisbon. Lisbon, introduced the European Union as the institutional roof on the Treaty of Maastricht, and came to replace the European Community as a legal entity. The distinction between the communitarian f irst pillar, known since Maastricht as the Economic Community (EC), and the intergovernmental second (foreign policy) and third (police and justice) pillars was formally abolished. In reality, however, the discrete pillars continued to exist, as Lisbon was explicit that separate decision-making procedures applied to foreign policy, in contrast to the Constitutional Treaty. The competencies of the Commission and Parliament, moreover, were not increased in this policy field. The third pillar was integrated into the communitarian EU. The Charter was recognized as binding law, but was not integrated into the Treaty itself. For similar symbolic reasons, the primacy of European law over national law was relegated to an annex, while the main text underlined

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The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

national sovereignty. For the first time, the Treaty made arrangements not only for accession, but also for an ‘orderly exit’ from the EU. At the time this stipulation was written (in 2004 for the Constitutional Treaty and in 2007 for Lisbon), this seemed a purely hypothetical scenario. As far as the democratization of the EU was concerned, Lisbon offered less than the Constitutional Treaty. It copied the citizens’ initiative, the right for one million citizens from a quarter of the Member States to request a legislative initiative by the Commission on a particular issue. It remained to be seen, however, whether what looked to be a major step in the direction of public participation would work in practice. Additionally, the so-called ‘yellow card’ available to national parliaments emerged as a strong democratic tool within the Treaty of Lisbon. One third of the national parliaments was given the power to stop a legislative initiative by the Commission, or at least to force the Commission to re-evaluate its initiative, if they agree that it violated the principle of subsidiarity. The frequency of use of the subsidiarity check has varied widely from one member state to the next, and even between chambers of the same parliament. To reach the quorum for a ‘yellow card,’ extensive and laborious consultation and coordination is needed among party factions in one chamber, between chambers and between national parliaments. This has failed to be the panacea for popular discontent, the democratic deficit or Europe’s undermining of the mandate of national parliaments. Finally, a third step towards democratization was the election of the president of the European Commission by the European Parliament, which replaced the previous practice of merely asking for the EP’s consent for his nomination. This provision clearly gave additional weight to direct European elections. In institutional terms, most of the innovations from the Constitutional Treaty were upheld: the creation of the post of Permanent President of the European Council for a term of two and a half years, as well as the dual position of High Representative for CFSP and Commissioner for External Relations. Both new positions constituted potential concentrations of power, but were initially weakened by the choice of two politicians without much of a European reputation or ‘Hausmacht:’ Herman van Rompuy from Belgium and Catherine Ashton from the UK, respectively. The latter as European Foreign Minister, faced the weighty responsibility of getting the Directorate General at the Commission and the staff at the Council Secretariat to work together. The new diplomatic service, the European External Action Service (EEAS), was expected to work at bridging the gap between the communitarian structures of the Commission and the intergovernmental idea of the Council Secretariat. The EEAS appeared at first to fall victim to Member

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States’ unwillingness to give up any sovereignty in this policy field, as well as to the competition of competencies between Council and Commission. Holding four positions at one time is surely no sinecure. As Commissioner for External Relations Ashton was also Vice President of the Commission and, as High Representative, she was the Permanent Chair of the Council of Ministers for General Affairs and External Relations. In sum, the four key figures – the President of the European Commission, the Permanent President of the European Council, High Representative/Vice-President of the Commission and the semi-annually rotating Presidency of the Council of Ministers – had to be consolidated in a new, power equilibrium. For a number of institutional Amsterdam leftovers, the Treaty of Lisbon recalled the solutions arrived at by the Constitutional Treaty. Least controversial was the designation of an upper limit for the size of the European Parliament, which was fixed at 750 members. In addition, nations, regardless of size, would no longer have a Commissioner in one of three legislatures from 2014. This was meant to guarantee a workable Commission size of about twenty people. Despite the fact that the Commissioner does not formally represent his country, this change was hotly contested; ultimately a clause was added, stipulating that it would become effective if the European Council were to agree unanimously on a different solution, as it did in 2008. The constitutional solution for the unattainable two-thirds majority set out at Nice was a more practicable majority of at least 55 per cent of Member States and 65 per cent of the population, though until 2014, Member States had the option to invoke the two-thirds majority rule of Nice as an extra claim to block a decision. The European Council of heads of state and government had held a regular high-level meeting to determine strategic choices in European policymaking since 1974. Albeit not a formal EU institution, it was responsible for asking the Commission to draft legislation in key policy f ields. Only with the Constitutional Treaty (and the later Treaty of Lisbon) was the European Council included in the Treaties, though it had been mentioned in the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht. The same holds true for the European Central Bank. These are typically the two faces of the EU – on one side, its ability to record its functioning in highly complex formal rules of procedure and, on the other, its ability, if needed, to work without formalized institutions, even in key areas. In addition to these institutional reforms, Lisbon also created new opportunities for deepening integration. Instruments for enhanced cooperation offered three mechanisms, of which only the European External Action Service, to support the High Representative, attracted wide attention. The

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Lisbon Treaty additionally offered the option of a ‘vanguard’ of at least nine Member States to jointly decide to initiate ‘enhanced cooperation’ within the EU’s institutional framework. This mechanism has only been used for a handful of specific and rather technical issues since. The ‘Permanent Structured Cooperation’ offered a similar innovation for defence policy. As defence was core political business, the initiation of such cooperation required the consent of a qualified majority of the Council of Ministers as a whole. When ratification process was finally completed at the end of 2009, government leaders and the Commission were in agreement that the days of major treaty reforms were over; there had been six in f ifteen years, from the SEA to Lisbon. In view of citizens’ euroscepticism and the trend towards renationalization, another such endeavour could jeopardise the achievements of European integration. Within the existing treaties, ample room for manoeuvre was available, given the political will, potentially by means of differentiated integration, which did not require all Member States to participate in equal measure. Even during later existential crises of the EU, for instance the financial crisis that threatened the euro as common currency, treaty reform was rarely raised as an option. In hindsight, ten years of trying to both strengthen the democratic legitimacy of Europe and streamline its institutional architecture yielded substantial results only for the latter; democratization and politicization increased citizen participation only on paper. The EP and national parliaments strengthened their positions, but the same was true for the European Council and the Council of Ministers as intergovernmental counterweights. Differentiated integration facilitated deepening, but compared to the relative clarity and elegance of Lisbon, it produced additional complications, exceptions and duplications, which were bound to have a negative impact on transparent decision-making and restoring the trust of EU citizens.

Differentiated Integration In view of the increasingly frequent use and the heterogeneous character of differentiated integration, classification is needed. A distinction between deepening differentiation, which allows for more or less integration for Member States, and enlargement differentiation, which offers non-Member states something more than no integration at all, is crucial. Essentially, the European Union recognizes only two categories of states: Member States and non-Member states. In order to guarantee the quality of the integration

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process, states have to undergo thorough scrutiny before they are allowed to join. The euro crisis that began around 2010 demonstrated the dire consequences wrought by the breaking of the weakest link in the chain. The exclusivity and strict conditionality of the integration process is, however, matched by a fundamental openness of the EU to all European states and the good intentions to make membership an achievable objective for all. Potential new Member States often need the motivation of EU inclusion and financial, administrative and strategic assistance from Brussels if they are to meet the criteria at all. There is no straightforward answer to the vexing question of whether reforms are a precondition for accession or whether the prospect of joining the EU is a necessary stimulus for reform. Despite the distinction between members and others, Brussels is compelled to use the promise of additional assistance and deeper integration to stimulate reform. The EU itself is set to profit from political and economic reforms as well as from the stability of (neighbouring) countries without accession prospects. In these cases, a form of ‘selective membership’ or association may serve as strategic leverage to increase Brussels’ influence. Differentiation within the EU is common practice as well. Would the deepening of integration be possible at all if every step forward required the consent and participation of all Member States, which would in turn all have to have meet the set criteria? Despite the principled warnings against a ‘two-speed Europe’ or ‘membership à la carte,’ in an EU with nearly thirty members the question is not so much whether differentiated integration is used, but how and under what conditions. Upon scrutiny, moreover, it turns out that the EU architecture already permits many instances of differentiation. This may well be the pivotal paradox of the EU – the dynamics of deepening and enlargement require the illusion that there are but two options, to be or not to be a member. At the same time, a multitude of intermediate stages and ‘halfway houses’ have proven necessary to make deepening and enlargement work. Candidate status is merely the tip of the iceberg. The net result has been an institutional and procedural ensemble growing ever more complex because of deepening and enlargement differentiation. The Schengen Agreement is a classic case in point of deepening differentiation. In 1985, the abolition of border controls for travellers between EC/EU countries was introduced by France, Germany and the Benelux countries in anticipation of the common market. Not every member state of the European Union is automatically a member of the Schengen area. Since the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999, however, which made Schengen part of the acquis, every member state is obliged to do its utmost to fulfil the extra criteria

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adopted by the EU, at first in the third pillar and later for the most part in the first pillar. The new East European Member States gradually joined the Schengen area only in 2007-2008, for instance. The United Kingdom and Ireland, however, decided to opt out – an example of negative integration. Conversely, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland are actually part of Schengen, although they are not EU Member States. A number of mini-states have been invited to the Schengen area for pragmatic reasons, for instance, San Marino, which would have otherwise been forced to install controls on the border with Italy, its only neighbour. All are bound by the Schengen protocols, but have no say whatsoever in decision-making. Schengen is thus a peculiar combination of deepening and enlargement differentiation. The EMU and the Eurozone are similar phenomena of differentiation. Not all Member States have fulfilled the Maastricht criteria for the euro, though a substantial majority of them has. Here too, the UK has chosen an opt-out and, after a negative referendum, Sweden has decided to postpone euro introduction indefinitely. Some non-member mini-states have also been included in the Eurozone – Vatican City, Monaco and San Marino even coin their own euro currency, though Andorra does not. An older application of differentiated integration concerns the colonial and autonomous territories of Member States. During the EEC Treaty negotiations, former colonies and their trade relations with erstwhile imperial centres constituted a major stumbling block. Meanwhile arrangements were made such that the Member States of the British Commonwealth – now independent countries save their special trade relations – no longer have any special ties with the EU. Over time, diverse and particular arrangements have been made. French overseas territories such as the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean or the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa use the euro currency and their citizens have the right to vote for the European Parliament, but they are not part of the Schengen area. Conversely, the Faroe Islands and Greenland have territorial autonomy within the state of Denmark, but they no longer belong to the EU. Aruba, Curacao and Saint Martin are independent states within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and they use the Aruban florin or the Antillean guilder. Nearby Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba are special municipalities of the Netherlands, but adopted the American dollar as currency in 2011. Two intergovernmental forms of integration are feasible outside of the Treaties. Practical if inelegant is the ad-hoc coalition of countries to tackle a specific, urgent problem that requires cooperation. Inclusion of all EU Member States in these cases is neither feasible nor desirable, and institutionalization is not on the agenda. The co-operation of EU states

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supporting the American intervention in Iraq, for instance, was such a coalition. A consensus within the framework of the CFSP would have been impossible to reach and institutionalization was not an issue. The model of the ‘vanguard’ is quite the opposite in most respects, and is much more favourable to Brussels. Here, a number of countries take an integrative step forward on an intergovernmental basis, which not all Member States are prepared to follow. The explicit objective to keep this cooperation open to any country willing to participate and to eventually make it part of the EU framework. This approach contributes to dynamic deepening, even in an EU of twenty-eight, without burdening the Treaties with fresh complications. Schengen, which began with only five countries, is an example here. Integration inside of the Treaties knows two forms as well. The opt-out is not elegant, but is feasible – a member state stays aloof (if only partially) from a next step in integration by way of a special protocol attached to the agreement. The UK and the euro or Poland and the Charter are opt-out cases that demonstrate the real threat of a Europe ‘à la carte.’ The inverse case exists, too – selective in, or exclusion of countries by the EU in specific policy fields. The temporary special supervision and restrictions imposed on Romania and Bulgaria since their 2007 accession to the common market, and the third pillar under the name ‘Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification’ were involuntary limitations on full membership. Instead of including states on the basis of more demanding criteria (as in the case of Schengen or the Eurozone), it excluded countries that did not (yet) meet the normal EU criteria to a sufficient degree. As differentiation becomes increasingly common, several attempts have been made to allow for functional differentiation within the Treaties’ framework. The nineties saw the least controversial attempts, when the ‘open method of coordination’ (OMC) was introduced and formalized by the Lisbon Treaty. The Council accepted a proposal by the Commission to set standards and benchmarks for a policy field that was, strictly speaking, not one of the EU’s competencies. The benchmarks were non-binding, but they were expected to promote uniformity and the exchange of best practices. It was up to Member States to determine whether and how they were willing to comply. Brussels did not monitor the actual policies, only the results achieved. Enhanced (or closer) cooperation was introduced in Amsterdam for the first and third pillars, but became productive only when it was extended to the second pillar at Nice. On that occasion, other member countries were in fact barred from blocking an initiative for enhanced cooperation

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within the framework of the Treaties by at least a third of the members. In defence policy, this was called Permanent Structured Cooperation in Defence (PSCD), but the technique was the same. Starting such a cooperative project required a qualified majority in the Council; from there, implementation only needed the unanimity of participating countries. As long as differentiation pertained just to former colonies at great geographical distance from the European continent, European mini-states and neighbouring countries that easily met the Copenhagen criteria, enlargement differentiation was politically unproblematic, though it may have constituted a nightmare in its legal implementation. Quite the opposite was true for larger neighbouring countries that failed to meet most of the criteria of democracy, rule of law and a functioning market economy. The Balkan states and neighbours such as Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were typical of this category. A brand of differentiation that offers a country limited or partial membership, including political and institutional participation, has remained taboo. Experts have however enthusiastically discussed what is often referred to as ‘association plus’ – selective participation in specific European policies without decision-making rights or representation. Such options are on the table for the countries of the Western Balkans with at best medium-term membership prospects. The same applies to non-candidates in North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Examples include the 1996 customs union with Turkey, visa-free travel for countries such as Albania and Moldova and the creation of a free-trade area between the EU and the Western Balkans. The outcome of the Brexit negotiations in 2017-2019 may herald a new chapter in differentiated integration. The United Kingdom will cease to be a member state, but London and Brussels will try to avoid organizing their relationship and cooperation from a zero standpoint. A limited number of membership elements will remain, where political will and institutionalprocedural frameworks allow. The result will be a hybrid combination of expansion and deepening integration – more than candidate-member states wish for and less than negotiable within the European Union through ‘opt-outs’. Differentiated integration has shown many possible gradations between a soft and hard Brexit (with access to the common market, or not) London will lose participation in legislative and regulatory provisions in whichever policy areas it remains integrated. Opponents of the idea of deepening differentiation refer to a ‘two-speed’ EU and ‘second-class membership,’ to stress that such unequal treatment flies in the face of EU ideals, while advocates point to the added value of flexibility in the integration process. This vision points to ‘vanguard,’ ‘core Europe,’ ‘centres of gravity’ and ‘variable geometry’ as key technical terms.

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Whereas sceptics consider enlargement differentiation a threat to accession criteria and quality of membership, those in favour point to the need to reach out with substantial and/or symbolic offers to potential candidates.

From Fifteen to Twenty-eight Accession negotiations with six countries opened in 1998: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus. The criteria for this selection included a combination of idealistic, strategic and pragmatic considerations. No one doubted that the East-Central European countries of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (excluding Slovakia with its stagnant democratization process), and the small nations of Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus would perform better than others in fulfilling the given political and economic criteria. Reform results and the adaptation of national laws – so-called acquis harmonization – as well as key reform deficits were documented and analysed by the Commission in an annual progress report for each candidate country. In 1999, two pragmatic considerations prompted the Council to relax its response to identified deficits and invite another six countries – Malta, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria – to open negotiations as well. First, additional delay would have created a long temporary outer border of the EU with all pursuant costs in terms of infrastructure for customs and border control. Second, accession of the eastern candidates in two or more waves would run counter to the idea of regional cooperation that Brussels sought to foster. In December 2002, the five East-Central European countries concluded negotiations, simultaneously with the three Baltic States and the two Mediterranean islands, but negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania remained open. EU membership was widely perceived as crowning ten long years of post-communist political and economic reforms, and the enlargement of the Union from fifteen to twenty-five Member States on 1 May 2004 increased the population and the territory of the EU by some 20 per cent. The real challenge of this so-called ‘big-bang enlargement’ was the unfinished processes of political and economic transition that increased the EU’s heterogeneity in many respects, away from the original homogeneity of the Six. Even decades later, the level of prosperity in the then new Member States is still on average one third below the level of the Fifteen. One of the steadfast principles behind Eastern enlargement was the avoidance of importing any interstate conflicts. Fearing the outbreak of ethnic violence between future Member States in Eastern Europe, France

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had introduced the Balladur Stability Pact to promote regional cooperation and bilateral agreements in 1993. It was largely unnecessary, as it turned out, because the expected eruption of minority conflicts never occurred – no government dared to risk their EU ascension prospects over border or minority issues. In this respect, the stabilising effect of the EU prospect is beyond doubt. In the case of the Russian minority in independent Estonia and Latvia, which is deprived of most if not all of its political rights, Brussels eventually accepted a (potential) minority conflict with Russia. The alternative would have been giving Moscow a decisive say in whether the Baltic States could become EU members. A similar strategic choice had to be made in regard to the Cyprus question. Here again, one party to the conflict could use EU prospects to blackmail the other. The northern half of the former British colony had been under Turkish occupation since 1974. Even on the rare occasions when Greek political leaders and their Turkish adversaries in the divided capital of Nicosia looked ready to cooperate with UN efforts at mediation, interference by Athens or Ankara restored the former stalemate. Using EU accession as leverage, in 2002 the EU and the UN jointly developed the so-called Annan plan. Its starting point was a confederate solution with maximum autonomy for the two constituent republics. For Northern Cyprus, which was much poorer than the south and lacked international recognition, EU prospects proved attractive enough to prompt a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum. A large majority of Cypriots in the south, however, voted ‘no.’ They were well aware that their ascension on 1 May 2004 was a done deal and did not really depend on the referendum’s outcome. Consequently, the EU ended up inadvertently importing a conflict. Though there had not been armed clashes in years, it was bound to lead to complications, with half the island occupied. Turkey alone recognized Northern Cyprus and refused diplomatic relations with the south, and despite the customs union with the EU Ankara denied ships from Cyprus access to its harbours. The Cyprus question has contributed to tensions between Europe and Turkey ever since. For the EU itself, it constitutes an administrative minefield. On 1 May 2004 all of Cyprus became part of the EU. Under international law, the Turkish troops in Northern Cyprus formally constituted an occupation – by a state, no less, that aspired to EU membership itself. Regulations generated by EU membership created all kinds of bureaucratic and practical uncertainties. In Northern Cyprus, for instance, adults have the right to vote in European elections, European agricultural policies apply to Famagusta olive trees and the euro is valid currency. The Cyprus question clearly demonstrates that the accession criteria

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of Copenhagen concerned democracy, rule of law and market economy in candidate countries. It failed, however, to address relations with neighbouring countries. Furthermore, the problem of inter- and intrastate conflict was to return for Brussels on a different scale entirely with the integration of the former Yugoslav republics at the start of the 21st century. Here, the problem was exacerbated by the still-fresh wounds of war and the non-recognition of Kosovo and Macedonia by Serbia and Greece respectively. Former communist countries in Eastern Europe perceived EU membership as their ‘return to Europe,’ a historic moment all political parties and governments were eager to claim for themselves. The decision by the Fifteen to welcome ten countries on 1 May 2004, but to exclude two others, came as a shock to Bucharest and Sofia. Key points of criticism from the Commission’s October 2002 progress reports for Romania and Bulgaria concerned much-needed investment in agriculture, transport infrastructure and environmental protections, but above all judicial and state bureaucracy reform. The hard choice between the strict enforcement of accession criteria and the fundamental openness of the EU continued to haunt Brussels. Stagnant political and administrative reform processes in Romania and Bulgaria clearly needed the pressure accession prospects could provide. On the other hand, the Fifteen were not willing to risk the quality of European integration. They suspected that, due to inefficiency and corruption, European assistance might not produce the expected results. Because of the deficits of both these southeast European candidates and their lack of drive towards reform, Brussels chose to continue its monitoring of the fight against corruption and the reform of the bureaucracy and the judiciary, even after Romania and Bulgaria had been accepted as full Member States with equal rights in 2007.

Enlargement and Europeanization After the ‘Big Bang’ The completion of the ‘big-bang’ enlargement on 1 Januray 2007 marked the end of an era for the European Union. Using the leverage of accession, the EU had succeeded in motivating the former Soviet bloc countries during the years of their economic and political transition. In the case of the Balkan countries and the EU’s new neighbours to the east, transition difficulties were far more serious and were often tangled up with territorial and ethnic conflict. Enlargement strategy was far less successful in southeastern Europe than it had been in Eastern Europe. Moroever, European citizens were anything but convinced that more states should join the Union. European

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politicians were faced with the question of how to solve southeastern Europe’s major transition problems with an EU of Twenty-eight increasingly symptomatic of ‘enlargement fatigue.’ Resistance to further enlargement was on the rise among members of parliament and voters alike. Europe needed not only a new strategy for the southeast, but a strategy to promote stability, prosperity and democracy in neighbouring countries without even long-term membership prospects as incentive. From 2003, neighbourhood policy was developed for this latter category of states. The development of new strategies for long-term candidates and their neighbours brought to light a number of characteristics typical of the EU in its external relations. First, major powers are inclined to bypass Brussels and act autonomously in foreign policy, even if their actions frustrate European policy, particularly in times of political crisis. Greece’s refusal to accept accession negotiations with Macedonia because of the conflict over the latter’s name is a case in point. In other cases, national politicians are far more proactive than the EU could ever be. Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski acted as mediator in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004 and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy did the same in the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. National interests sometimes prevail, though all parties are well aware that in the end, Europe needs to speak with one voice to be heard in world politics. Second, the historic success of the Eastern enlargement made it difficult to question its example. Strategies for the Balkans and neighbouring countries would eventually become variations on the theme of this enlargement strategy. Third, the downside of the EU’s reliability and the power of the EU in lengthy transition processes was procedural formalism and lengthy decision-making procedures in crisis situations. Within the EU, the Commission represents the more structural approach to transition and accession, whereas the High Representative takes on crisis management and prioritizes regional stability. Despite the dual position of High Representative and Commissioner for External Relations, in place since the Lisbon Treaty, these two contrasting visions often fail to harmonize. Turkey became the EU’s first test case in coping with a country whose application for accession did not result in candidate status and the immediate opening of negotiations. Ankara’s application dates back to 1959 and resulted in an association agreement (1963) that promised a customs union but not participation in decision-making institutions. The customs union was not opened until 1996, and it was not until December 1999 that the European Council in Helsinki decided to offer Turkey candidate status, but without opening negotiations. This move was motivated by Turkey’s geostrategic position near the unstable regions of the Middle East and the

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Black Sea, which had become increasingly important to Europe. Additional motivation came from Ankara’s rising frustrations with the EU, which had opened negotiations with the East European states and offered accession prospects to even the former Yugoslav republics and Albania the same year. On account of the increasing assertiveness of Ankara’s foreign policy and Turkey’s strong economic growth (as compared to Europe’s), as well as mounting anti-Turkish and Islamophobic sentiments among European voters, these negotiations differed markedly from what had come to be seen as ‘normal’ accession talks. For countries like Estonia or Hungary, EU membership was the only conceivable strategy for the future and negotiations amounted to little more than unilateral adoption of EU standards with some token derogation, at that time. Turkey was something of a heavyweight as an EU partner and held a number of trump cards for negotiations; independence remained a viable alternative. Fundamental issues – such as capital punishment, women’s rights, torture, religious freedom and the Cyprus and Armenian questions – cut to the core of the Copenhagen criteria, and the negotiations that opened in 2005 turned out to be much more contentious and politically charged than the technical acquis harmonization of Eastern Europe. Turkey’s EU accession process constituted an exception in more than one respect. It was highly contested in public and political debates in the Member States, and not only because the size of the country threatened to dramatically upset established power relations in the EU. Turkey’s human rights record and the financial burden posed by Eastern Turkey’s structural economic underdevelopment fuelled additional concerns. The pivotal question, in public debates in particular, was whether the right of every European state to apply for membership applied to Turkey. Critics pointed to the geographical position of Turkey as a predominantly Asian country, and often argued that the dominance of Islam was in conflict with European civilization and its Greco-Roman, Enlightenment and Christian origins. Additionally, major disparities between the country’s wealthy, modernized west coast and the vast underdeveloped Anatolian hinterlands would force the EU to completely rethink its structural funds in the case of a Turkish accession. The EU’s most recent accession, the membership invitation for Croatia in 2013, likewise demonstrated the difficulty of handling conflict between and within states negotiating for membership. Early in 1991, Europe had recognized Croatia’s independence from Milošević’s Yugoslavia, but the authoritarian regime of President Franjo Tudjman and the expulsion of the Serb minority precluded any thought of EU prospects in the nineties. The economic upturn and, more importantly, the move toward democracy

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under President Stjepan Mesić after Tudjman’s death and Croatia’s readiness to play a constructive role in the unstable Balkan region, prompted the EU to offer a stabilization and association agreement (2001) as a reward, soon followed by candidate status in 2004. The opening of accession negotiations a year later was dependent not only on the European Commission’s report (or avis), but also on two political questions. Austria threatened to veto the Turkey negotiations unless other Member States promised to open talks on the first chapters of the acquis with Zagreb. This threat meant trouble for the Commission, as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom insisted that Zagreb fulfil one additional criterion before negotiations could start – full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) in apprehending and extraditing war criminals from the conflicts of the nineties. Furthermore, the decision on the completion of the negotiations was not made in the Commission’s offices. It depended on a number of minor unresolved issues with Croatia’s neighbour, EU member state Slovenia. Ljubljana used the accession negotiations with Zagreb to table the disputed maritime border, disagreements over banking funds and a nuclear power station. Once again, negotiations that should have been a technocratic process of adaptation were instead used for political leverage. After signing the agreement in December 2011, Croatia became the twenty-eighth member of the EU in July 2013. For Eastern Europe, 2004 marked the completion of a ‘double transition’ – from plan to market, from dictatorship to democracy. But for most of southeast Europe, a triple transition had only just begun. Most successor states had lost ten years of political and economic development because of bloody conflict. More importantly, they were additionally burdened by the transition of state and nation building. After the Kosovo war in June 1999, the EU promised the Western-Balkan states a long-term accession prospect. Two additional conditions accompanied the Copenhagen criteria: regional cooperation and the settlement of national conflicts within and between successor states, and full cooperation with the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague (ICTY). The Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe was created with ample financial resources to facilitate regional cooperation in economic development, democratization and stabilization. The Stabilization and Association Process was announced as a preliminary phase of candidate status, offering the states of the region shared trade benefits in their relations with the EU. The results of the EU’s efforts in crisis management and diplomacy in its military and civilian missions increased markedly in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Croatia’s interference in Bosnia-Herzegovina ended,

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and Europe’s recognition of Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence prevented a fresh escalation of its conflict with Serbia. In Macedonia, a civil war between Slavic Macedonians and the Albanian minority was halted in its early stages. Brussels managed the independence of Montenegro as the last republic of the Yugoslav federation. Finally, with prospects for accession as leverage, a first breakthrough was achieved in bilateral relations between Serbia and Kosovo. In addition to countries that strived for membership but could not yet fulfil the Copenhagen criteria, a small group of countries exist that do meet the criteria, but have preferred not to join. In Norway, two referendums (in 1972 and 1994) rejected EU membership. Though without the right to vote, Oslo’s participation since then in European structures such as Schengen, Europol and the European Economic Area (EEA) has increased. In Switzerland, an EU application was also blocked by a 1994 referendum. As an EFTA member, Switzerland conducts EU relations on a bilateral basis, outside of the EEA and the scope of its integration is comparable to Norway’s. Bern and Brussels must regularly modify around a dozen bilateral agreements to keep in sync with EU legislation, and Switzerland adapts its legislation to the acquis without having a say in decision-making. Iceland, as the third outlier, was once content with economic integration via the EEA and visa-free travel via Schengen. The 2008 banking crisis and the bankruptcy of the Icesave bank, however, opened up new EU membership prospects and the introduction of the euro. Accession negotiations began in 2010, after an application the preceding year. As an EEA member and participant in other EU structures, Iceland had already adopted substantial parts of the acquis. Fishing rights and compensation claims on savings from the Netherlands and the UK, however, impeded progress and a change of government in 2013 brought the talks to a halt. Because independence with strong ties to the EU is always a viable alternative to membership, at best a small majority of voters in Iceland, as in Scandinavia more broadly, will ever vote for accession. One thorny issue – fishing rights or military neutrality, for instance – is usually enough to make a referendum fail.

‘Pax Europeana’ Inspired by the example of the Pax Romana, the European Union protects the security and prosperity of its citizens by way of what Commission President Roman Prodi coined ‘a ring of well-governed friendly states.’ The EU’s main concern has been ‘soft-security risks’, such as migration from poverty and

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organized crime stemming from disparities in prosperity between the EU and its neighbours, in particular as pertains to authoritarian regimes in neighbour states. The ambition to tackle armed conflicts, so-called ‘hard-security risks’, implies a more concrete agenda. The EU had contained the (initially overestimated) potential conflicts between candidate countries in Eastern Europe. As it turned out, in the context of the integration process and on Brussels’ insistence, countries proved willing to settle conflicts over ethnic minorities and state borders, or at least to handle these conflicts in a constructive and peaceful manner. Issues such as the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, the maritime border between Slovenia and Croatia and pragmatic arrangements with Lithuania for the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad are instructive examples. In 2002, the year of final negotiations with the ten candidates, the European Commission began to more critically consider relations with the EU’s new neighbours to the east: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Russian province of Kaliningrad. Because of massive differences in the prosperity level along the new outer border of the EU, and the disadvantages of a closed, strictly monitored border to the frontier regions, the ‘New Neighbours Initiative’ was established; it would be renamed ‘Wider Europe’ before eventually becoming the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004. Not only was the staff in Brussels taken over from the Directorate General Enlargement, but also most of the instruments to promote democratization, rule of law in order to reduce soft-security risks to the EU such as illegal immigration, organized crime and smuggling. The ENP, however, had to make do without the enlargement strategy’s crucial leverage – the prospect of full EU membership in the long term. The net results in the targeted countries may not have been terribly impressive, but within the EU itself, neighbourhood policy triggered a process not uncommon to decision-making in Brussels. The reserve of extra resources for Europe’s eastern neighbours made southern European Member States fear a shift in Europe’s equilibrium, with Berlin as the new centre of gravity. Early on, Paris cajoled the EU into accepting the participation of Mediterranean ‘neighbours’ from Morocco to Israel in the ENP. For strategic reasons, even the Caucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were added shortly thereafter, though potential candidates in the Balkans were not included in the programme. Typically, the ENP was added to but did not replace existing EU programmes; the political memorandums of understanding in the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs) with the former Soviet republics established in the nineties remained in force,

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as did the association agreements with the North-African states and the regional programmes (Tacis and Meda) and the Mediterranean dialogue of the Barcelona process. The EU’s multi-annual financial framework 2007-2013 was eventually used to restructure assistance for non-member states, resulting in one-to-one links between regions and strategies: The Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) for potential candidates (13 billion euro); the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI) for neighbouring countries and Russia (11 billion euro); and the Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation Instrument (DCECI) for developing countries worldwide (17 billion euro). Together these instruments of foreign policy, with all their funds for democratization assistance and emergency relief, amounted to a mere 6 per cent of the total budget of the European Commission. As the problems of Morocco and Moldova or those of Libya and Belarus are not easily compared, the ENP inevitably developed separate southern and eastern tiers. For the states of North Africa and the Middle East, EU membership will never be an option. For the three Caucasian republics and Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, however, the EU developed a follow-up programme of association agreements, albeit without much in the way of substantial advantages to the partners. The Eastern Partnership was introduced in 2009 whereby, in exchange for reforms related to the rule of law, democracy, market economy and human rights, Brussels offered the prospect of attractive benefits such as a free trade zone with the EU, visa freedom and ultimately even the possibility of EU membership. But the core problem of the EU’s efforts in democratising and stabilising its neighbours remained unresolved – exclusivity and inclusiveness do not sit well together. For many southern neighbours, the short and medium-term advantages of these benefits were not on a par with the exacting reform demands. Additionally, the eastern neighbours had to consider Russia as a competing regional power, and Moscow did not hesitate to use its energy resources as geostrategic leverage. Authoritarian regimes, non-recognized statelets and minority problems in Southeast Europe and the western part of the former Soviet Union (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and the Caucasian republics) forced the EU to deal with real instead of potential conflicts and their consequences, such as social despair, the influx of migrants and genocide. In the nineties, images of ethnic cleansing, bombed-out cities and displaced populations in Dubrovnik, Sarajevo and Vukovar demonstrated the EU’s impotence in dealing with armed conflict and civil war on its own continent. At the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, Europe tended to overestimate its power. Srebrenica and the

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US military intervention to impose the accords of Dayton and Paris (1995 and 1996) upon the warring parties, forced Brussels to rethink its assumptions. The embarrassing realization that, even half a century after World War II, Europe was unable to deal with its own conflicts, motivated Member States to act. The Treaty of Amsterdam (1996-1999) introduced key improvements, such as the establishment of the High Representative for CFSP in the person of Javier Solana and the strengthening of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Europe certainly played a greater role in the Kosovo war of 1999, and in the pacification of the 2001 civil war in Macedonia it was Brussels, not Washington, that took the lead. Before Europe could develop a meaningful common foreign and security policy, however, it had to deal with a number of structural issues. The first concerned the ambivalence of France, Germany and the UK as major Member States. In times of crisis, each tended to forego the added value of joint action in favour of the prestige associated with singlehanded diplomatic or military action. Examples of such action abound: French President Sarkozy in the Georgia crisis of 2008, his successor Hollande in the civil war in Mali in 2013 and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Iraq War. Even at Lisbon, the CFSP remained intergovernmental territory, and the possibility of qualified majorities remained a dead letter. Neither Parliament nor court has a say and policymaking is limited to Member States and the High Representative. The tension between the EU’s decision-making procedures based on consensus and the need for rapid and united action in the event of an urgent humanitarian or military crisis is another issue. The EU has set up separate decision-making procedures and created the instructional structure to command the resulting joint action. In most policy fields, the national implementation of European directives is sufficient, but not in the case of military or police missions. A Political and Security Committee was therefore added to the Foreign Affairs Council for advising the COREPER and directing the operational institutions of the EU Military Committee (EUMC) and the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management (CIVCOM). Additionally, the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) was founded in Paris in 2001. In political and budgetary terms, the European Defence Agency was the most important newcomer, charged with improving the coordination of national military capacities such as shared procurement of military hardware, and to outline a strategic vision for European military industry and technology. Before this institutional structure for military and civilian crisis management could be established and before the Helsinki Headline Goal could allocate the necessary staff and resources, a third political issue had to be

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tackled – the division of labour with NATO. Despite the provisions outlined in the Petersberg Tasks – which leaves collective defence to NATO and limits EU missions to crisis management in cases in which NATO remains uninvolved – Washington and London remained sceptical of Europe’s plans. The new Member States in Eastern Europe, too, preferred the backing of NATO in their strategic dealings with Moscow. Only the massive burden of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a growing number of more minor flashpoints, from East-Timor to Moldova, have demonstrated that the EU as a regional organization might be a welcome supplement to NATO. In practice, as it turns out, the three dangerous Ds – de-linking, duplication and discrimination – identified by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 1998 were moot: there is separation of transatlantic and European decisionmaking, no overlap of command structures and no exclusion of non-EU NATO countries. In theory, the EU commands a complete toolbox for international conflict management: trade relations, military missions, expertise for the reform of the judiciary, development aid and shuttle diplomacy or election monitoring. Only two people have been responsible for crisis management since Amsterdam. The High Representative commanded a small staff of seasoned diplomats for rapid crisis response, but lacked a substantial budget of his own. The Commission of the economic giant EU proffered numerous carrots and sticks: sanctions such as a trade ban or the suspension of assistance programmes or accession negotiations, but also the promise of visa freedom or free trade agreements. This approach was ill suited for acute crises. In the Treaty of Lisbon, Member States decided to cut this knot of conflicting competencies in favour of a solution that came to be known as ‘double hatting’. The High Representative of the intergovernmental CFSP became the European Commissioner for External Relations as well, and as such Vice-President of the Commission. The key question is not whether this double-hatted functionary will solve every crisis from Palestine to Kosovo. Institutionally, the real challenge is to use the European External Action Service to bridge the gap between Council Secretariat and Commission to implement integral crisis management. Over the past decade or two, the European Union has initiated a series of more or less successful crisis missions. The long view shows a clear preference for judicial, humanitarian and policy missions and the reluctance to engage in military action. Most of the EU’s missions have occurred on or near the European continent, but some have ventured to remote regions of Africa and Asia. The details of the missions have varied considerably, as two extremes demonstrate. London was President Bush’s principle ally

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in Iraq. Until 2009, the British mission was responsible for security and reconstruction near Basra in the south of the country. Norway, Italy, Romania, Denmark and contingents from other countries that were part of this mission participated outside of EU structures, as a ‘coalition of the willing’ without any ambition to use the mission to generate new competencies or strategies for the EU. In contrast, the mission to Skopje that stayed on after an escalation of the civil war in Macedonia was halted in 2001 was a thoroughly European endeavour. The Special Representative for Macedonia reported to the High Representative and hence to the Council. The same diplomat, however, doubled as head of the EU delegation to Skopje, and thus represented the Commission. This local variety of ‘double hatting’ brought together the responsibilities of Council and Commission in practice, even before the EEAS of the Lisbon Treaty (2007-2009) had been formally created.

The Lisbon Agenda The original idea of the EU was that the advantages of a sizable common market without trade barriers would have a lasting positive effect on the social and economic development of Member States. Interference by the EU in, say, social policies or education beyond the bare minimum for the functioning of the common market, had long been taboo for the Six and Nine. From the eighties on, however, it became clear that globalization had reached Europe. A fresh round of modernization and innovation was necessary to compete with the US and Japan as well as, increasingly, China and India. This awareness instigated the implementation of the EMU in the nineties, and also prompted Brussels to take the lead on an active strategy to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness. Delors’ 1993 White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment was the starting point for a strategy to consolidate Europe’s social model through innovation in the twenty-first century. In March 2000, the Council therefore adopted the ambitious Lisbon Agenda (or Strategy), with its declared intention to turn Europe into ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy in the world.’ At the end of that decade, however, the sobering conclusion was that not one of the Twenty-seven had managed to meet the Agenda’s designated benchmarks. Because its objectives were still crucial, ‘Europe 2020’ – a new strategy for increased productivity, lower unemployment, social cohesion, better education and, as a new element, sustainable development, was launched in March 2010. The benchmarks remained the same: 70 per cent employment rate, 3 per cent of GDP for government investments in

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research and development and 3 per cent economic growth. The euro crisis and excessive government debt, however, made such a programme utterly unfeasible within a few years of its launch. European educational policy is illustrative of this trend. In daily practice, the relevant stipulations of the EEC Treaty have primarily resulted in efforts to guarantee the mutual recognition of degrees and diplomas as part of the internal market. In 1999, this produced the Bologna Process, under the egis of the Council of Europe. European initiatives in educational policy have been part of the priority agenda for ‘Europe and its citizens’ since the Tindemans report of 1975. Shared economic prosperity no longer sufficed as guarantor of European cohesion. A democracy of responsible citizens identifying as Europeans and building transnational networks with fellow Europeans constituted the new ideal. The increasing prioritization of the knowledge economy later reversed this trend and positioned educational policy squarely in the framework of Brussels’ social and labour market policies again. Despite the pressure for reform, Member States were adamant that education was their prerogative and theirs alone. EU spending on education was substantial, but all of it in distributive action programmes. The EU itself did not shape educational policies, it supported national governments, through programmes such as Comenius, Erasmus, Life Long Learning and the like. The Lisbon Agenda (2000) had a strong focus on education in its objectives of promoting a European knowledge economy and reducing the def icits of some Member States. The use of the Open Method of Coordination underlined the intergovernmental character of these measures. Best practices, benchmarks and comparative studies on investment in R&D, the quality of education (especially in the sciences), the population’s average level of education and social mobility and cohesion contributed to substantial reforms in many member countries, including the introduction of the Bachelor system throughout Europe. In 2010, the net result of the Lisbon Strategy may have been disappointing in terms of investment and competitiveness, but as far as the prioritization of education in the knowledge economy and the positioning of the EU in this policy field, the results have been a paradigm shift. Both in the Lisbon Agenda and in Europe 2020, a quantum leap in research and technology policies of the Twenty-seven was an absolute priority. Implementation, however, has encountered resistance from two sides. Member states are anxious to guard their national competencies much as they do in educational policy. Stimulating Research and Development (by either the EU or national governments), moreover, raises the ideological question of whether innovation should be left to market mechanism or be stimulated

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by means of regulation and protectionism. An outstanding dilemma has been Europe’s ambition to use innovation to make the internal market as a whole a stronger competitor of the US and Japan, without inadvertently creating any competition distorting within Europe. Consequently, the European Commissioner for Competition has monitored national industrial subsidies often going head-to-head with national governments, multinational companies and trade unions. The EU’s own subsidies of the five- and later seven-year Framework Programmes are, on the one hand, substantial enough to provoke fundamental debates and, on the other, too small compared to national R&D budgets to really generate large-scale synergies. Exceptions include the prestigious European project Galileo, as a counterweight to American GPS satellite navigation, the CERN particle accelerator or Airbus as Boeing’s European competitor. These are all far beyond the capacities of a single national enterprise. In early 2013, the Commission continued this strategy by announcing the investment of 1 billion euro over the following ten years to simulate the functioning of the human brain and the development of graphene as a new material for the digital industry.

The Euro Crisis On Germany’s instigation in particular, Europe had introduced the Stabilization and Growth Pact (SGP) in 1997, in order to force France and other Member States to commit to budgetary discipline. Berlin would itself violate the limits set by the SGP more than once, using its political weight to avoid EU sanctions. In general, fiscal discipline was not a top priority in the euro zone. This may have been partly down to political choices, but the substantial north-south disparities in economic competitiveness constituted a structural issue here. The introduction of the euro meant that states abandoned key monetary instruments such as the devaluation of the national currency, and real wage increases did not correspond to increases in productivity. Thus, these states’ competitiveness sank even further, while national debt and trade deficits grew. In the medium term these effects led to the euro crisis. The global banking crisis that had begun in the American real estate industry in 2007 made the financial markets, eager to avoid any risks and react with excessive sensitivity. Remedying the crisis became Europe’s responsibility. In accordance with the stipulations of the Maastricht Treaty for the EMU and the Stability and Growth Pact, the European Commission announced that investigations had been opened into a number of Member

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States, including Greece, in connection with excessive budget def icits in 2009. As the Council had f inal say in this protracted process, this announcement was like a f inal warning. In late 2009, however, the f inancial markets’ reaction was immediate when it was revealed that the macroeconomic indicators Athens had given to Eurostat had structurally whitewashed the country’s economic condition. International banks were wary of the risks involved in refinancing Greece’s government debt and state bankruptcy was imminent. This crisis soon turned out to be but the proverbial tip of the iceberg. In Portugal problems connected to an excessive national debt and an insuff iciently competitive economy spiralled out of control. In Spain and Italy, meanwhile, the main causes were a real estate bubble and state guarantees for banks on the brink of insolvency, but the consequences were similar. Problems were exacerbated by international rating agencies’ decision to lower the credit ratings of these nations, and the interest on such uncertain government bonds rose even further. The primary Maastricht criteria for Member States that introduced the euro in 2001 was a national debt of no more than 60 per cent of GDP and a maximum budget deficit of 3 per cent. Even though in reality only small affluent countries like Luxembourg, Estonia and Slovenia managed to meet that standard, Greece’s 180 per cent was well off the charts. While the AAA-rated countries in the euro zone paid 3 per cent interest on their government bonds, crisis states paid as much as 10 to 20 per cent. Greece’s imminent bankruptcy posed an economic threat to the trust that financial markets had in the euro. It demonstrated the scope of common market dependencies and the malfunctioning of the mechanisms of the EMU and the Stability Pact to prevent crises of this kind. In no time the Greek crisis became a European crisis, despite the fact that the South European state accounted for just a few per cent of European GDP. That the euro crisis hit south European Member States first and foremost had a number of structural causes, including an inefficient and disproportional state bureaucracy, widespread corruption and mass tax evasion. But the causes that were directly linked to the European market, the EMU and the euro were no less consequential. In 2000, several economists had expressed doubts about the European Council’s decision to invite Greece to join the euro group as a latecomer. The Council expected that this gesture would motivate Athens to adopt a more constructive position on a number of other (political) questions. The Council clearly underestimated the risks posted by the small Hellenic economy and failed to scrutinize overly optimistic figures from Athens.

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In May 2010, the European Council installed a European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) as a support mechanism for the countries in crisis. Participating states donated 110 billion euro for Greece and reserved another 750 billion (later raised to one trillion) for the other countries. With these emergency measures in place, negotiations began on a structural solution in the form of a European Stability Mechanism (ESM). An agreement was reached in March 2011 and the Mechanism entered into force as of 1 January 2012. Public impressions of Brussels amidst the euro crisis did not inspire much confidence. Because of the mindboggling figures and the indignation of North European voters, heads of state and government were reluctant to make the economically necessary but unpopular move to participate in the EFSF and the ESM. The acute crisis did generate the political will needed to take some liberties in the interpretation of the European Treaties. The ‘no bail-out’ clause on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in the Treaty boiled down to a ban on saving Member States from over-indebtedness. The sacred principle of the ECB’s independence, too, was jeopardized when it was forced to offer cheap credit to European banks – indirect support of states in dire financial straits. More coordination in economic policy and the strengthening of the SGP was also the message conveyed by the German initiative of the Euro Plus Pact of March 2011, but It was on a voluntary basis and lacked sanctions or mechanisms of supranational control. All seventeen members of the euro zone and half of the other EU Member States accepted the Pact. Tensions between supranational and intergovernmental views certainly hampered decision-making. The Commission came up with a system of automatic sanctions, without political decision, as was the case in the SGP, and an ‘economic government’ for the euro zone. Speaking for the heads of state and government, in October 2010 Council President Van Rompuy vetoed these plans. An inverse (negative) qualified majority of the Council ought to be able to stop the Commission imposing sanctions, essentially an intergovernmental political decision. Only when it became clear that the measures taken had not been able to restore the trust of the financial markets and the rating agencies, the European Council in Brussels in December 2011 yielded the solemn promise of twenty-six Member States to work towards a ‘fiscal union,’ by the end of 2011, with the ever-eurosceptical UK refusing to cooperate. A fiscal union implied a radical interference in national sovereignty concerning government budgets and tax policy. All states would now have to undergo strict and extensive monitoring of their annual finances by the European Commission. Those at fault would find themselves under Brussels’ curatorship. The fiscal union came into effect on 1 January 2013.

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The euro crisis was the price Europe had to pay for the EMU’s loose ends, monetary integration had been worked out in great detail. The corresponding far-reaching economic integration concerning national budgets and fiscal policy was a bridge too far for the heads of state and government, well aware of their constituencies at home, who were sceptical of Brussels. The ever-increasing entanglements of the euro zone and the absence of monetary instruments at national level, made the labour market and budgetary discipline crucial policy priorities and simultaneously the weakest link in the European system. Speculation on the financial markets targeting the states with clear deficits put pressure on the euro zone as a whole. Despite the ‘no bail-out’ clause, the euro countries could ill afford one of them filing for bankruptcy or having to leave the zone. On the one hand, Brussels used its leverage to force Greece and other crisis states to adopt austerity measures and reform the state apparatus’ efficiency. On the other hand, the EU was in no position to refuse financial assistance, irrespective of the net results of these measures. Alternatives available to Brussels were limited. ‘Euro bonds,’ issued jointly by members of the euro zone, might help to distribute the risks over the entire zone and let the weakest members profit from the high creditworthiness of the strongest. Because of the ensuing rise in interest rates, all Member States would pay the price for this solution. The Euro bonds proposal was floated in 2010, but abandoned in 2013 due to a lack of political will to pursue such an unpopular mechanism of north-south solidarity, serious reservations by fiscal and economic experts as well as the fact that the issuance would clearly violate a handful of articles in the Lisbon Treaty. The existential crisis of the euro seemed to corroborate the reality that more integration can only be achieved under high pressure and when intergovernmental solutions have failed. The choice for a fiscal union was eventually made in principle, but the outcome was in many respects a compromise once more. As largest net contributor, Germany wanted to see more European supervision of policies in the crisis states. Like most others, Berlin was reluctant to completely transfer economic power into the hands of the Commission. Even Paris’ surprising suggestion of a European ‘economic government’ aimed at more control for the European Council over the ECB instead of new competencies for the European Commissioners. The implementation of the fiscal union soon took on all the characteristics of an arcane masterpiece of differentiated integration. It was an agreement of all twenty-seven members (without the UK), valid for and limited to the euro zone. Because of the British veto, no revision of the Lisbon Treaty was enacted and a non-EU treaty was set up under the joint responsibility of Commission and Council.

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Finally, because of the euro crisis European democratization went full circle. Around the turn of the century, little more than a decade before the crisis, fundamental Treaty reforms aimed at deepening integration including Charter and Constitution, were considered the only way to proceed towards the objective of enhanced citizen participation. The euro crisis demonstrated that the constraints and urgency of action needed in the financial emergency did not allow for more democratic decision-making, despite the fact that these very issues had tangible consequences for every EU citizen. When Slovakia’s consent to the EFSF was on the line in the national elections in the summer of 2010, Brussels and the major Member States resorted to arm-twisting. The same happened in the case of the citizens’ protests in Greece, Italy and Cyprus, where people felt that their government had become a mere puppet for a Brussels dictating policies of belt-tightening. After a decade, the ideal of the nexus of Europe and democracy, the Leitmotiv of the European Constitution, effected quite the reverse.

Constructivism and Democracy Theory and Historiography

The end of the Cold War and the post-communist reforms in Eastern Europe led to initial expectations of a bright future with the worldwide, or at least Europe-wide, victory of democracy. Twenty years down the road, this optimism has all but vanished. In terms of Fukuyama’s ‘end of history,’ no competing classic ideology other than democracy remains in Europe. Popular discontent with the functioning of democracy, however, has grown to such an extent that there is every reason to declare it ‘in crisis.’ Populism and illiberal democracy, moreover, pose pervasive threats to classic representative forms in many Member States – in Western Europe as much as in the East, in the northern half as much as in the south. A common explanation for this crisis is that the threat posed by communist dictatorial regimes in the east, which encouraged unity and uncritical defence of the achievements of democracy and the market economy in the West, has vanished. This explanation is arguably overly simplistic. Citizens’ trust in representative institutions, membership in mainstream political party and election turnout had all been on the decline in most established democracies long before 1989. The call for direct democracy and free and fair elections seems largely unrelated to democratization in Eastern Europe. Most of all, the decrease in public trust in representative institutions – local, national and European – and the rise of left- and right-wing populist parties has been observable all over Europe, not least in those countries that at the start of the twenty-first century had only just thrown off the yoke of half a century of dictatorship.

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This crisis has touched the European Union even more severely than it has national democracies. Eurobarometer surveys demonstrate that citizens’ trust in European institutions continues to decline even more markedly than trust in national institutions such as parliament and government. The appeal for more citizen participation is aggravated by the undeniable fact that the European Parliament lacks a number of rights in controlling the executive and the right of initiative that national legislatures typically have. The European Parliament knows neither political party debates nor power struggles between government coalitions and the opposition. At the same time, control over European (and hence national) legislation slips increasingly out of the hands of national MPs. Depoliticization as the Commission’s habitus, the limited competencies of the European Parliament and majority decisions in the European Council of Ministers (overruling national objections) have meant that Brussels has become the preferred scapegoat for general discontent with democracy in Europe. Some critics have targeted basic elements of European policies, for instance the ‘neoliberal’ phrasing of the Constitutional Treaty, championing a more socially minded Europe based on the redistribution of wealth. Others reject in principle the concentration of power in Brussels, to the detriment of sovereign Member States.2 The intensification of communication and institutional reforms since the Treaty of Nice (2001-2003) in particular shows that the European Union is well aware of its democratic deficit and of eurosceptical perceptions of Brussels as an undemocratic bureaucracy. In the early stages of the Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty, ample attention was paid to democratic reforms, strengthening the position of the European Parliament and the creation of new instruments for democratic control – the yellow and orange cards among them, allowing the directly elected national parliaments to control the European Commission. The same applied to the more prominent role of the EP in the appointment of the Commission, as well as to the introduction of the citizens’ initiative by a million citizens from eight or more Member States. In order to widen social support, the Commission opened itself up to input from European ‘civil society’ and, in general, made an effort to work more transparently, to improve public access to relevant policy documents and invest in a better public communication strategy. All these good intentions were hampered by not only the sheer size and heterogeneity of the EU of Twenty-eight, with its 500 million citizens, but more recently, by unpopular measures taken in the context of the euro crisis. Both for the European Union itself and for theory building on the European integration process, ‘democracy,’ even in its broadest meaning, was a

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relatively new prospect in the nineties. Political science theories, ranging from neo-functionalism to constructivism, have focused on two questions: Why did states willingly transfer sovereignty to the EU? And how did the multi-layered European system of government actually function? Questions concerning the quality of democracy or the deficits of the European Union are of a different type as it is inherently normative. The normative expectations Brussels has to meet in public debate are generally related to a comparison with the democratic institutions of the nation-state. This raises three issues. First, and especially since the enlargement from Fifteen to Twenty-f ive, there are signif icant differences in democratic institutions and political culture among EU members. Consequently, it is increasingly impossible to give a meaningful generic definition of what constitutes a common ‘European norm,’ beyond free and fair elections, rule of law and separation of powers. Populism and illiberal democracies, moreover, contest even these seemingly universal cornerstones. Second, the EU is a unique type of international organization, and defies simple comparison to a nation-state or a federal state because of its size and complexity. Third, the criteria for what makes a good democracy have likewise been in flux at national level over the past decade or so. The rise of populist parties all over Europe and the recurring call for more citizen participation in decision-making through referendums or direct elections for public office attest to the ‘crisis of representative democracy’ that parliaments and political parties stand for. The Democratic Deficit Theory building is not the main objective of discussions on the democratic deficit among social and political scientists. The crucial question is to what extent the EU actually suffers from a democratic def icit and, if it does, whether or not this is detrimental to Europe’s functioning. Two perspectives of European integration and democracy as a political system lead to contrary conclusions here. Democracy experts such as David Marquand and Simon Hix tend to argue that the limitations of democratic decisionmaking and the absence of a European public sphere constitute crucial deficits that may have been bearable or permissible in the early days, but which put the very future of the European project at risk in the twenty-first century. From their perspective, government leaders ought to heed the will of the people, even if it means curbing the integration process, the Irish referendum against the Lisbon Treaty being a case in point. As the legitimation of Europe is based both on citizens and on Member States,

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the political reality facing Brussels is that blocking minorities are easier to come by than (qualified) majorities.3 Conversely, integration experts like Andrew Moravcsik argue that the democratic deficit of the EU should not be overestimated and that too much democratic participation has its own dangers. They point to the numerous ‘checks and balances’ in the European system of government, ranging from co-decision by parliament to the citizens’ initiative and the often overlooked indirect democratic channels of the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Additionally, they stress that every system of government is a mix of effective governance and electoral participation – too much participation and too many vetoes for the citizen forces his democratic representative to bring decision making to a grinding halt, particularly in a system as complex as the European Union. 4 The EU, in other words, relies to a large degree on output legitimacy, the appreciation of citizens for the agreed policies and the results achieved. The follow-up question, then, posed first and foremost by democracy experts, is how to make Europe more democratic. Some proposals suggest that the range of policy fields with co-decision for the EP should be widened or that participation by ‘civil society’ should be extended even further. Other proposals are more radical and suggest, for instance, truly European elections with multinational lists of candidates. Such a list would allow a Dutch candidate, for instance, to earn votes from other member countries and vice versa, or a European Parliament with the right of initiative and the competence to dismiss the government (i.e. the European Commission). Both problems noted above reoccur here. Too much democracy, combined with widespread euroscepticism and the phenomenon of renationalization as a reaction against Europeanization, is bound to prevent further integration. More importantly, an increase in democratic competencies and qualities of the EP results in a corresponding reduction of the supervisory powers of the national democratic institutions. While political scientists and legal experts focus on institutional paths to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of Europe, sociologists and anthropologists address the underlying problem of identity and identification with Europe. Every national democracy partly relies on the self-identification of the people with and the unquestioning acceptance of the nation-state and its political community of citizens. Europe not only lacks such an uncontested ideological authority, but also a common public sphere or, for that matter, a heated transnational debate over ‘Europe,’ ‘European-ness,’ and ‘European citizenship’ are key concepts in these studies, which tend to offer an extensive conceptualization of the problem

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but little in terms of possible solutions in the short term.5 The language barrier alone makes it hard to conceive of a truly European public sphere or common identity. Collective identif ication with a political entity or community is a protracted and erratic process. All Brussels’ efforts to stimulate identity building from above, moreover, are eyed from below with great scepticism.6 Constructivism The intergovernmentalism or neo-realism of Kenneth Waltz and Alan Milward and, even more prominently, the liberal intergovernmentalism of Andrew Moravcsik, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, had been the dominant theories in the fields of international relations and European integration since the eighties. The ‘anarchic’ nature of international relations constituted the starting point of both theories, in absence of a genuine world government guaranteeing security for all nation-states the way the national state guarantees the security of all its citizens. Neo-realism concludes that states are compelled to take care of themselves and will therefore always give priority to the national interest. Theoreticians of liberal intergovernmentalism tended to be more optimistic, and suggested that cooperation for instance, in the context of the European Union, may nevertheless be the best way to serve national economic interest. International anarchy and national interest constitute the common foundation of these two theories, which consider the European Union a particular type of international organization rather than a special state-in-the-making. In the nineties, the new theory of (social) constructivism offered a fundamental shift in the status quo in the study of international relations. In the same way that Andrew Moravcsik is considered the creator of liberal intergovernmentalism, American political scientist Alexander Wendt and his study Social Theory of International Relations (1999) are key to the constructivist school. Other pivotal constructivist theoreticians include the German Thomas Risse, the American Ernst B. Haas (known as the founder of neo-functionalism) and the Dane Ole Waever. Constructivists not only fundamentally question ‘international anarchy’ and ‘national interest’ as the alpha and omega of the study of international relations; they also argue that ‘national interest’ does not correspond to an objective reality as a driving force for the international system of states, but is itself a (social or political) construction. The perception and framing of political reality by leaders and opinion makers, is therefore crucial. As the title of Wendt’s key publication points out: ‘Anarchy is what states make of it.’7

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Supranational integration and world peace do not hinge on any objective changes in political reality, but rather on the readiness of political leaders to change perspective. This shows that constructivism is a ‘meta-theory,’ not merely a competitor to neo-realism or neo-liberalism, and offers an alternative instrument for the analysis of international processes. It also relegates such theories, and their take on international relations, to the status of being themselves part of the (socially construed) problem. Some constructivists have stubbornly reiterated their fundamental critique of positivist theoretical schools. Others have, with some degree of success, tried to find a modus vivendi within liberal intergovernmentalism. The LIG school, which has single-handedly determined most of the Political Science research agenda, has in turn incorporated constructivist ideas. Conversely, constructivists have been criticised for their inability to produce a theoretically sound prognosis, instead making sense of international relations only in retrospect. Constructivists have retorted that it is fundamentally impossible to predict the outcome of a negotiation process or an international conflict. Unlike neo-realism, they claim, constructivism is able to explain changes in the positions and preferences of governments, albeit in retrospect. Constructivists, unlike intergovernmentalists, are not primarily interested in international negotiations over particular conflicts of interest in their empirical studies. Their focus is on the underlying processes of ‘framing’ negotiations at the domestic level, which both precede and accompany international negotiations. As a logical consequence, their preference for study is for protracted political issues such as Europe’s agricultural policy, the monetary union or the accession of new Member States, rather than acute crises or pivotal historical moments. Such issues mobilise the citizens of Member States and national media, pertain to norms and identity and can never be analysed as a quasi-monopoly of the political elite. Network analysis, newspaper research, interviews and discourse analysis are among the typical tools of constructivist research. Its interest in both international and national negotiation processes and its readiness to accept – besides the state as the classic bottleneck in (liberal) intergovernmentalism – other actors (e.g. NGOs, social movements and multinational companies) in transnational negotiations, does much to bridge the gap between constructivist political scientists and Moravcsik adherents. The recognition of (beneficial) top-down influence by European institutions on the construction of the ‘national interest’ by Member States also links constructivists to the neo-functionalists of the fifties and sixties.

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The advent of constructivism coincided with changes in the political reality of European integration in the nineties. For two decades, the persistent obstruction of further integration by unchecked national interests had time and again corroborated the neo-realists’ argument. The chairmanship of Jacques Delors however, saw the introduction of the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht, and it then seemed possible to overcome the impediment of national interests after all. The term ‘anarchy’ seemed increasingly inappropriate to describe the emerging new world order. Even more so than neo-liberalism, constructivism echoed this newly found optimistic outlook on European integration. In the academy, too, times were changing. The study of international relations had long remained loyal to its roots dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, and conceived of the interaction between states in a manner informed by the natural sciences. Such a positivist understanding, which positions empirical observations as the one and only starting point for theory building, was increasingly called into question. Specific inquiries into particular confrontations of competing national interests ceded to the exploration of the construction of these national interests. Historical actors, their perception and discourse took centre stage in international relations, and were no longer conceived of as lacking will or agency or being at the mercy of conflicting structural interests between states. The academic orientation of constructivism was historical rather than positivist – objects of study reflected on their own motives and actions. In the social sciences, such discourses were often seen as tools in the hands of the political elite to consolidate power by manipulating and disciplining the populace. In international relations, however, this laid the theoretical foundation for increasing trust and cooperation between European states. Wendt argues that the international order does not per se compel states to a certain kind of interaction. He distinguishes three types of interaction, using political philosophers as metaphors: enmity (Hobbes), cooperation (Locke) and friendship (Kant). Neo-realists confirm politicians’ inclination to see negotiations as a zero-sum game, while neo-liberals follow Locke in stressing the possibility of win-win situations. The Kantian position of the constructivists is, according to many, more of an ideal than an analytical tool. In the specific field of European integration history, the social constructivism of key scholars like Jeffrey Checkel and Thomas Dietz has become increasingly relevant since the nineties. They represent a middle ground between the structuralist, often economic-deterministic approach and classic integration theories, with their strong focus on individual actors and

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rational choice. Consequently, the range of social-constructivist approaches is extremely wide, but a focus on things like cultural identity, political discourse and social convention, constraining (but not determining) the options available to the integration process and its actors is a common denominator.8 There are obvious connections between this approach and recent work by historians on democracy and, in a wider sense, the relationship between the European government and its citizens. Historians and European Democracy In terms of public opinion – and in much of the political science literature – the norm for European democracy as a ‘new’ topic is often today’s nation-state democracy or ideas for the improvement of existing democratic systems. Democracy as a topic is on the rise for EU historians as well, but from a different perspective. Rather than questions regarding the current status quo or any concepts for the future, the views and practices of democracy in various stages in the history of European institutions is crucial. Arguably, opinions of citizen participation in politics or of the lobbying efforts of companies and idealist social movements were quite different in the fifties and sixties, to what they are today. Like political scientists, historians hold a much broader understanding of ‘democracy’ than elections and the competencies of parliament as a democratic institution. Even before the f irst direct EP elections, the EEC needed public support and legitimacy as well as input through channels other than direct elections. Twenty-first century historians, like social scientists, are predominantly interested in the tensions between European and national identities. European democracy is connected to ‘European citizenship’ and identification with the EU as a political community. Historical science, however, is not focused on statistical data pertaining to the self-image and worldviews of European citizens, but rather on the discourses of political leaders concerning the promotion of European identity amongst a political community and the gradual creation of a European cultural policy to promote such identification. Such a policy entails state-like symbols and rituals as well as schooling, mobilization and networking initiatives. Conversely, historians are only beginning to explore the emergence of ‘European citizenship’ as a collection of rights and protections available to European citizens, increasingly across the entire EU. These used to be the classic and exclusive prerogative of the nation-state, ranging from the right to vote to legal and consular assistance and social security.

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In historical studies of the formal aspects of democratic representation in Europe, much attention is paid to the years leading up to the introduction of direct elections in 1979. Quite the opposite is the case for political scientists and administrative experts, who focus on the functioning of democratic controls and co-decision procedures by the European Parliament in a multilayered or multilevel system of governance, and on the tension between national and European democratic control after 1979. The tug of war between the Parliamentary Assembly and national governments over the realization that the clause in the Treaty of Rome concerning European elections is central to historians in the analysis of decision making and political rhetoric.9 In their study of European integration from the earliest days to the present, historians are increasingly fascinated by, on the one hand, the history of policy fields, and on the other, political-culture aspects of European parliamentarism. The former highlights the influence on European decision-making wielded by civil-society organizations and lobbying from the business community in Member States, as well as the generation of social support by the European Commission through institutionalized channels of participation and communication.10 However, in sync with the constructivists’ focus on political and social institutional cultures, conventions and traditions, some other historians have come to study the status and authority for and by the European Parliament. From the opposite perspective, the European Parliament may be seen as a ‘melting pot’ of the political cultures of all the national parliaments with the unique formation history of a hybrid parliamentary culture of its own.11 Looking back at seventy years of European integration, and Europe as an object of academic study, the convergence of political science and history is an undeniable trend. Both have relegated the grand ideals of federalism to the past and have overcome the stalemate in theory building between neo-functionalism and neo-realism, in terms of the ‘why?’ of European integration. Political scientists and historians increasingly focus on the functioning of European institutional architecture, its results in policymaking and the justification of policy vis-à-vis European citizens. From a political science perspective, the implication is a rapprochement between theory building and policy development in Europe (typically since Maastricht). For historians, limited to the period between the fifties and the eighties because of access to the archives, the implication is an erosion of the dominance of classic intergovernmental and institutional historiography – policy fields, identity and representation are new topics of study. Consequently, relations between Europe and its citizens, or between transnational interest groups and European institutions, come to the fore.

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The European Central Bank Of all European institutions, the European Central Bank (ECB), together with the European Court of Justice, is the most independent from interference by Member States, other institutions and interest groups. Unlike the European Court of Justice that has established its central position, and substantial autonomy over the years, the Bank’s exact role and influence is yet to be determined. At several crucial moments in the history of integration, the Court has both consolidated its own position and made an important contribution to the integration process. Although the European debt crisis (2009-present) seems to have reinforced the ECB, with its role in the European Banking Union as most recent illustration, it still remains to be seen if and how the Bank will be able to follow this example. At the negotiations in Maastricht and Amsterdam in the nineties, it was decided to replicate the German banking model of total political independence and strictly def ined responsibilities at the ECB. This decision has shaped the first decade and a half of the ECB and ensures an uncontested independence, but it has also curtailed options for new initiatives in times of crisis. The history of the European Central Bank is in two respects a laboratory for understanding of European integration and of the crisis of the euro since 2008. Firstly, the ECB is obviously a test case for views on economic and, in particular, monetary policy in the European context. The history of the ECB, founded in 1998, and its predecessors, reveals the conditions for a successful common currency and the roles and responsibilities adopted by politicians and bankers. Additionally, and of equal importance, the development of the ECB and its predecessors reveals crucial mechanisms in European integration. The way the ECB and the Economic and Monetary Union were set up and justified is reminiscent of the strictly sectoral integration of the f ifties (coal and steel, nuclear energy, the internal market), as the common currency was introduced without the necessary supporting policies (common economic policy). It remains to be seen whether this strategy will work for the future of the ECB and EMU. The European debt crisis of 2009 strongly suggests a negative answer. The history of the ECB itself also relates to the development of earlier EU institutions and their role in the integration process. Are they instruments under the full control of Member States or do they have a life of their own? EU history generally suggests that whenever policies are institutionalized both the policy and the institutions develop a dynamic of their own.

The Other Europe

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The History of the ECB and the EMU The early history of the ECB and the EMU is indicative of the current position of the ECB in the integration process and the European debt crisis. The origins of the EMU may be traced back to 1969, when the European Commission drafted the first plan. The reaction to this plan revealed tensions that the project for economic and monetary integration has been unable to overcome until this day. On the one hand, there has been a broad consensus among Member States since the seventies on the necessity for monetary cooperation, even during the European debt crisis. On the other hand, diverging opinions on the practical and technical implementation continue to exist. These divergences are not limited to power politics, but concern the heart of economic and monetary theory as such. The first attempt at a shared point of departure was the Werner Plan of 1970. It proposed three steps: policy coordination first, next fixed exchange rates and finally a common banking system and a European currency. The plan proved to be unrealistic. As early as 1971, a system of exchange rates that were allowed to fluctuate within narrow margins only (the so-called ‘snake in the tunnel’) had to be abandoned. A year later, the Member States tried again. In order to improve coordination, the European Fund for Monetary Cooperation was introduced in 1973, bringing together representatives and officials from participating national banks. Nevertheless, due to the enormous differences in economic power and dependency on other economies as well as the imminent crisis, Werner plan failed again. The European Monetary System (EMS) of 1979 marked the next attempt, again at the initiative of the European Commission, this time headed by EC president Roy Jenkins. The new exchange rate mechanism (ERM) introduced together with the European Currency Unit (ECU), was similar to previous initiatives, but more successful. Its success owed much to the improved economic conditions and later, the active support by the Delors Commission (1985-1995) for the EMS. Delors championed the development of EMS towards a monetary, and to a lesser degree, an economic union. During the negotiations over the later Treaty of Maastricht in 1991, a report written by Delors laid the foundations for the EMU. Again the method of gradual and incremental implementation was chosen. This approach was necessary because of the scope and complexity of the adaptations, but it was also a strategic choice, as it appeared to offer Member States the option of an exit moment. The United Kingdom exited immediately, but even Germany continued to have its qualms about giving up the strong German Mark. The Netherlands championed strict demands

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concerning the economic policy of the Member States. Furthermore, the North European states with their strong currencies worried about the feasibility of the adaptations in countries with a weaker currency. After a phase of policy coordination, economies and currencies would have to be brought together through convergence criteria. In the third phase, the currency would actually be introduced. Meanwhile, some have argued that the European debt crisis’ roots are in a lack of strictness in enforcing the criteria of the second phase. The convergence criteria are mentioned explicitly in the Treaty of Maastricht, whereas most details and figures were mostly relegated to the protocols of the Treaty. These so-called Maastricht criteria stipulated that the budget deficit of a member State should not exceed three per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and the government debt no more than 60 per cent of GDP. Inflation should not be more than 1.5 per cent higher than the average of the three Member States with the lowest inflation. Two additional criteria concerned the interest rate and proof of good conduct having been in line with the ERM for at least two years. This second phase of the trajectory towards the EMU was supervised by a new European institution, the European Monetary Institute (1994), the successor to the European Fund for Monetary Cooperation and the predecessor of the European Central bank (1998). The third phase, the actual introduction of the common currency, was connected to the founding of a European central bank. Although the convergence criteria clearly pertained to the wider area of economic policy rather than to monetary policy alone, the debates preceding the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam on a new European central bank revealed three major dilemmas within the EMU. Firstly, economic policy was a major source of dispute. The French subscribed to the Locomotive view, which held that economic convergence would follow on from monetary integration. The German’s maintained the Coronation view, which held that monetary integrations should be the crown on economic integration. The second dilemma is closely linked to the first one. The central bank that belonged to the French monetarist view is a political instrument, whereas the German economists demanded full economic union and a fully independent central bank. The EMU has been described as a French idea with German implementation, for this reason. In actual practice, the German implementation was limited to the central bank. Afterwards, the German preference for coordination of economic policies proved extremely difficult, for which Germany itself, was partly to blame by letting its budget deficit rise above the three per cent limit.

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The third dilemma concerned the number of countries participating in the EMU. In the Treaty of Maastricht, the United Kingdom, later followed by Denmark, insisted on not having to introduce the common currency. Formally speaking, Sweden has not been granted an opt-out, but it has decided to stay outside the Euro zone for the time being. At the same time, new EU Member States are expected to strive for introduction of the Euro. In political practice, this complicated constellation has resulted in a core group in the decision making process as a form of differentiated integration, but it some cases countries outside of the Eurozone may influence decision making about the Euro as well. The Functioning of the ECB The three dilemmas within the Economic and Monetary Union have resulted in a complex institutional set up, in which the European Central Bank has to operate. The current ECB is part of the European System of Central Banks. In its daily operations, the ECB supervises the various national Central banks, that have in some sense been reduced to executive bodies of the polices decided upon by the ECB. The European System of Central Banks also encompasses the Central banks of the EU Member States that have not yet joined the Eurozone. Consequently, on top of the European System of Central Banks, the EMU also consists of a Eurosystem that contain solely the ECB and the Central banks of the Eurozone. The ECB is directed by an administrative board consisting of a president, a vice-president and four board members. The governing board of the ECB consists of the administrative board and the presidents of the Central banks of the countries of the Euro zone. The administrative board is appointed by the European Council and nominated by the Council of Ministers of Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN) that is held to ask the European Parliament and the governing board of the ECB for advice. The ECB (and of its predecessor, the EMI) is situated in the so-called Eurotower in Frankfurt, a concession Germany was adamant about at negotiations for the Treaty of Maastricht. The choice of a fully independent bank was consolidated by initially giving the bank clear, but limited responsibility. The key objective of the bank was to maintain price stability. The standard instruments available to a central bank include increasing the supply of money and the adjustment of interest rates. The ECB uses the instrument of interest rates, almost exclusively. The European debt crisis has given the bank new opportunities. After a long period of hesitation, the ECB resorted to buying Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish government bonds. The current responsibilities of

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the ECB according to the Treaty are similar to those of the central banks: ‘defining and implementing monetary policies and the execution of foreignexchange operations’, ‘maintaining and managing the external reserves of the Eurozone’ and the ‘facilitation of a proper functioning of money transfers’.12 The ECB has been on the verge of becoming a more crucial player in the European Union, since it became the supervisory institution of the European banking union (2012), which was one of the main responses from the EU to the European debt crisis. The political independence of the ECB is increased by the Treaty stipulation that the president of the bank must have ample experience in the banking world. The first president Wim Duisenberg (1998-2003) and his successors Jean-Claude Trichet (2003-2011) and Mario Draghi (since 2011) as head of their respective national banks all fulfilled this criterion. The first president Duisenberg actively bolstered the bank’s independence. His position was at first controversial as France preferred its own candidate. The ensuing compromise entailed half a term (of eight years) for Duisenberg and half for Trichet. The staff of the ECB is predominantly recruited from the national banks of the Eurozone. Analysts have explained the behaviour of the presidents and staff of the national banks on at the European level on the eve of the EMU as an ‘epistemic community’. That is to say that their shared knowledge and the ensuing group loyalty allows them to work together relatively smoothly and come up with similar proposals, as they share a number of assumptions and views on the functioning of the economy and the common currency. The same might hold true for the boards of the ECB and the European System of Central Banks. This mechanism is at work in other European institutions too, and is strengthened by the fact that the board members all share the same background in the banking sector. At the moment, the ECB has 2500 direct employees. European Banking Union, numbers are still relatively low, although this is a 50 per cent increase over a period of five years. It should be taken into account that the implementation of policies is largely in the hands the Member States themselves, much as in many other European policy fields. For instance, the national banks of Member States, take care of the production and distribution of coins and bank notes, under the supervision of the ECB. The ECB and the European Debt Crisis Since their creation, the ECB and the Eurozone have faced two major challenges – the non-compliance to the budgetary rules by Member States in the first years after the introduction of the Euro and, more recently, the

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European debt crisis. Immediately after the Euro introduction important countries such as France, Germany and Portugal failed to meet the budgetary criteria. After protracted negotiations, in November 2003, the Council of Ministers refused to heed the Commission’s advice and strictly apply the rules to Germany and France and their excessive budgetary deficits. The Commission’s recommendation was a reaction to other countries’ frustration over the leniency of the Council in the case of these major powers. Next, the Commission decided to sue the Council for the Court of Justice, claiming that the Council of Ministers had failed to enforce the Treaty article and additional regulations concerning the compliance with budgetary rules. In June 2004, the legal proceedings ended in with the Court calling the Council to order, but economic policy was conf irmed as being the responsibility of the Council rather than the European Commission. This implicitly meant that the major Member States could get away with noncompliance of budgetary rules. Further supranationalization of economic policy ended here for the time being, and was not discussed again until the European debt crisis. As a short-term consequence, enforcing the European rules on budgetary discipline became increasingly difficult. The biggest ordeals for the Euro and the ECB have been the European debt crisis, the European reaction to the American mortgage crisis and the ensuing banking crisis. The initial impact in Europe concerned financial problems in the Mediterranean region, most visibly, in Greece. Fears about the creditworthiness of Greek government bonds, brought the Greek government and Greek banks as well as banks elsewhere to the verge of bankruptcy. International trust in the Greek economy sank even further, when the scope of corruption and lack of supervision in the state apparatus became apparent. Greek government bonds became less and less attractive to international investors, which in turn increased pressure on the state budget. What seemed at first sight to be Greece’s domestic problem had wider repercussions, such as declining trust in the Greek economy, which meant declining trust in the European currency. Under the leadership of a troika of ECB, European Commission and the IMF, Greece received financial aid packages and was subjected to a strict regime of budgetary discipline. The same later applied to Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus. Economies in Italy and Spain as well as, to a lesser degree, France and Hungary were in danger, too. Although the origins of the problem had little to do with the Euro, the ECB was forced to take responsibility in view of the international banking crisis and budget crises in various Member States. The ECB conceded to buying up unpopular government bonds and played a critical role in

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def ining a strategy for the countries concerned. Nevertheless, the ECB has largely refrained from using the opportunity to extend its range of instruments of supervision and intervention. Some have argued that the ECB violated the Treaty stipulations by assisting weak economies such as Greece. A possible explanation for the reluctance of the ECB is the ‘epistemic community’,13 locking outside interference. In contrast to most other EU institutions, it is not responding to outside demands and interference that increases the independence and prestige of the ECB. Institutions around the ECB have witnessed far more dynamic changes. The European Commission, for instance, has become an active player in supervision, as the use of the troika indicated. Personified by the Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs and the Commissioner for the Euro and Social Dialogue, the European Commission has acquired an important voice in compliance of the budgetary rules and Euro policy. Ultimately, responsibilities lie with ECOFIN and the Euro group (Member States that have adopted the Euro) in particular, which appointed its own president. A real extension of the responsibilities of the ECB was formulated in the plans for an EU banking union. The most important lesson learned during the European debt crisis is that the impact of banks on government finances and thus on the stability of the economic and monetary union, is far greater than expected. European regulation seems to be crucial, as the impact of major banks crosses national boundaries, not least in the Eurozone. It ought to be possible to better predict and prevent problems by transferring the supervision of international banks to the EU level. The ECB has taken on this role, by means of the ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’ that gives the ECB responsibility for supervising nearly 6000 banks in the Eurozone. However, this European Banking Union is not fully up to speed yet. For instance, in the first two years of its existence, not all Member States have refrained from interference (support) of their domestic banks, bypassing the ECB. Until well into the European debt crisis the institutionalization of economic policies was somewhat indecisive and had little involvement from the ECB. This changed radically as a result of the crisis. For a long time, the ECOFIN was the main institution in this field, but the European debt crisis has attributed greater influence to the Commission. The original mechanism for protection of the EMU was the Stability and Growth Pact that the European Council agreed upon in 1997. The budgetary rules it contained were never really met by all members of the Eurozone. As a response to the debt crisis the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the

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Economic and Monetary Union was signed (2012), designed as an updated version of the Stability and Growth Pact. Respresentative of the special status of economic policy in the EU this treaty was not really an EU treaty, but a separate treaty, signed by nearly all, but not all Member States. It was the capstone to a set of other ad hoc mechanisms and facilities (Euro Plus Pact, European Financial Stability Facility, European Stability Mechanism) that have been formulated as a response to the crisis. Its main ingredients are stricter and more detailed budgetary rules and sanctions, and a more visible role for the Commission in monitoring compliance. A cynic might argue that the European debt crisis has proven the French right – economic union will follow monetary union. German economists, of course, will counter that the European debt crisis would never have got out of hand the way it did, if a full economic union had been in place, at the introduction of the Euro. All in all, the common currency is a perfect example of what neo-functionalists call spillover: integration produces further integration. All the same, the dynamics of the ECB are somewhat different from the other institutions at other moments of the integration process. The European Commission, the Parliament and the European Court of Justice actively pushed for an extension of their staff, status and influence, not so the ECB. The main adjustment of its responsibilities, the European banking union, was brought into the ECB by outsiders. This was largely due to the Euro system, the European System of Central Banks and the ECB leadership’s frame of mind. The ECB, with its strong link to national central banks, seemed to be less exclusively focused on the European project, and kept a keen eye on its independence from national and European politics.

Policy Documents From the Sources

In analysing the processes of late-twentieth century European policy making, the historian has at her disposal a full range of sources: official documents, internal documents and correspondence from the archives, speeches, media reports and the memoires of the civil servants and politicians involved. Perhaps the only limitation to the latter is that some people may no longer be available for interview or that their recollection of motives and choices may be tainted by hindsight. In analysing current or very recent policy processes, however, no systematic archives yet exist, and the historian has to rely only on public documentation and policy documents published at national and European levels; much like national government agencies,

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European institutions today provide access to parliamentary protocols, policy initiatives and ministerial reports, virtually in real time. Historians studying recent developments in integration history will nonetheless have to invest considerable time in reconstructing policy processes – a real challenge given the number of institutions involved at European and national levels, as well as the complexity of the procedures themselves. Every decision-making process begins with the push to land an issue on the political agenda. If these attempts are successful, the negotiations begin – the interplay of various actors, formal procedures, visions, competencies and interests. The dynamics of this process may result in substantial discrepancies between the original issue and the resulting compromise. This constitutes the optimal solution for political actors and the bureaucratic apparatus, even though its net effect on the issue itself may be less than significant. Even without addressing the thorny issues of policy implementation and efficacy, the historian must be aware of the fact that all aspects of decisionmaking are political in nature. Not exempt from this is the report (by a European agency, a national ministry or an independent consultancy) that initially introduced the issue in question. Far from an objective statement of fact, this report already implies a preference for some policy options over others. Policy documents are key to identifying the actors involved, the options that were considered but eventually rejected, as well as the conflicts of interest addressed by the compromises made along the way. The small case study that follows offers a number of important lessons for the analysis of official European Union policy documents. Each such document is a compromise in and of itself, the result of a complex process of negotiation involving several institutions and levels of decision-making. Document texts will always reveal traces of contentious issues to the attentive and well-informed reader, and in order to discern them the historian must be knowledgeable of the relevant formal procedures and institutions, the status of the available documents and the real power relations within the EU. He will have to rely to some extent on insider knowledge such as think tank reports and non-public EU documents acquired through interviews or grey literature, to make real sense of early debates surrounding a given issue, before it entered the agenda and became the subject of political negotiations. Locating such notoriously unsystematic data and enticing collocutors to divulge information requires in-depth knowledge of the issues at hand and diplomatic skills on the part of the researcher. A well-defined research question is equally important, to avoid being sidetracked by diplomatic jargon and technical detail.

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The Origins of Neighbourhood Policy The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), initiated in 2004 as a new policy field between enlargement policy and external relations provides the example for the following case study. The ENP had its own institutions, competencies and strategies for relations with the European Union’s neighbours to the south and east. In 2007-09, the Treaty of Lisbon introduced a European diplomatic service and the European Commissioner for External Relations, which doubled as High Representative for the CFSP, in order to put an end to competency conflicts between the Commission and staff of the High Representative and the Secretariat. The ENP’s origins reveal that both parties tried to claim responsibility for EU relations with neighbouring countries and to decisively shape policy. The CFSP prioritized hard security issues (armed conflict, terrorism) and their corresponding instruments, such as conflict-management and police or military peace missions. The Commission worked on the principle that democracy, rule of law and prosperity ultimately constitute the most effective bulwark against conflict and violence, while also helping to contain soft security risks like human traff icking, smuggling and organized crime. The southern ENP countries represented a relatively minor issue for the EU in 2004, and the promotion of political and socio-economic reforms as well as regional cooperation constituted Europe’s modest objectives for this region. The former Soviet republics to the east, however, posed far more significant security risks, both hard and soft. The border regions of the EU were among the poorest regions of Europe and the outer border, with its thick forests and swamps, could hardly be guarded effectively. Numerous unresolved territorial and minority conflicts added to the EU’s potential threats. While the archives of the national and European institutions involved in neighbourhood policy are not yet open to the public, published policy documents provide the historian with ample material for the exploration of the ENP’s origins. Other sources such as interviews and pertinent (grey) literature are also readily available for such recent topics. Though neighbourhood policy largely failed to attract much media attention, think tanks interested in international affairs, European institutional architecture and conflict management did take a closer look. Their studies and policy recommendations on the periphery of the policy process often featured interviews with policy makers and previews of (conf idential) internal documents at national and European levels.

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The study of these EU policy documents follows two typical analytical processes. The first task is to follow the paper trail back to the original designers and their earliest initiatives. In this case, the process begins with the final policy document, ‘European Neighbourhood Policy,’ by the European Commission, dated 12 May 2004.14 Having established that the roots of the policy date back to 2001, the second task is to follow the trail in the other direction, to identify amendments and compromises in the elaboration of the ENP. Policy documents tell the story of which institutions succeeded in dominating the new policy field and imposing their interests. In this case, the antagonism between the European Commission and the High Representative, both of which had a legitimate claim to responsibility for the EU’s relations with unstable neighbouring countries, is the focus. In other words, was the ENP meant solely to be an instrument of the Commission for democratization and improving economic welfare in order to provide the EU with ‘a ring of well-governed, friendly nations’? Or were the High Representative’s regional stabilization and conflict management efforts explicitly part of the strategy as well? Once it was accepted by the Council and Parliament, the Commission’s strategy paper of 12 May 2004 became the framework for the policy’s implementation by means of action plans and association agreements the following year. As is common in policy papers, its first paragraphs referenced those earlier documents on which this paper was based. Though the original function of this structure may have been to refresh the memories of ageing diplomats, these references are equally useful to historians. In this case the paper refers to an 11 May 2003 communication by the Commission.15 As the well-versed EU analyst knows, such a ‘communication’ is a draft, a non-binding policy by the Commission meant to attract feedback from other interested parties and to identify possible obstructions in the early stages of decision-making. The same method allows the analyst to trace the origins of the ENP even further back – as long as one keeps in mind that such an approach offers no guarantee of being comprehensive. In some cases, ‘missing’ references to inconvenient policy documents are just as telling of the politicking involved. For instance, the communication of March 2003 in turn points to a meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in November 2002, held in preparation for the European Council meeting in Copenhagen a month later. This was again standard procedure. The ENP initiative was a formality during the European Council thanks to the preparatory work by the ministers of foreign affairs. The written Conclusions of the European Council explicitly invited proposals for a strategy to promote democratic

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and economic reform in the southern and eastern neighbour countries.16 Both the Council of Ministers and the European Council again referred to a so-called ‘New Neighbours Initiative,’ which the Council of Ministers had apparently discussed on 15 April 2002.17 The trail of the ENP in the public record ends here, however, with the introduction of an initial idea for a more structural approach to Ukraine as an important new EU neighbour. The documents published online alas offer no clue as to the content of discussions on this topic in the Council of Ministers and, more specifically, in the joint presentation of a first concept by the Commission and the staff of the High Representative at the next meeting of the ministers on 30 September. Recent academic studies on the ENP and think tank reports from those years reveal more details on its origins.18 Analysts have confirmed that the earliest informal plan for a neighbourhood policy came from London. In January 2002, Jack Straw, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, expressed concern over developments in Ukraine under the authoritarian regime of Leonid Kuchma in a letter to the then presidency of the Council, Spain. The British idea was to offer Kiev special status vis-à-vis the EU, in order to promote democracy and rule of law and prevent the isolation of the country behind a new closed outer border of the EU, which would risk a relapse into Moscow’s sphere of influence. The idea only gained traction when Sweden and Poland came out in its favour. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs contributed a number of non-papers (i.e. discussion papers without official status), while think tank reports from Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest elaborated and promoted a number of ideas. This was remarkable considering Poland had yet to become a full member of the EU; other sources indicate that, since its very earliest accession negotiations, Warsaw had been concerned about the effect the closed outer border of the EU would have on local social and trade contacts with Ukraine.19 To complete the second task the historian must go back to the moment when ENP’s forerunners, the ‘New Neighbours Initiative’ and ‘Wider Europe,’ officially became part of the European agenda in 2002-3. Who was able to take control of this initiative, the Commission or the High Representative? It will become apparent that even official documents – debated, edited and rewritten by dozens of staff and policy makers – still contain residual traces of internal conflicts over competence, even if all those involved would have surely denied the existence of such conflicts in the diplomatic process. If one is able to see through the diplomatic phraseology, the conclusions the Council of Ministers of November 2002 contain a number of interesting points.20

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5. The EU also encourages the further development of cross-border co-operation, including the fight against organized crime and illegal immigration, and regional co-operation with and among neighbouring countries in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, co-operation with relevant international organisations in the area, such as OSCE and the Council of Europe, will be an important element in the implementation of the initiative […]. 7. On this basis, the Commission and the High Representative are invited to prepare as soon as possible more detailed proposals on how to take this initiative further. Candidate countries will be consulted in this work.

The text suggests an equal role for both: the Commission and the High Representative were each invited to come up with suggestions. And the co-operation with the Council of Europe and the OSCE mentioned in the text could, apart from monitoring missions at national elections, only refer to human rights, minority rights and conflict mediation. As demonstrated above, the European Commission and some Member States had been the driving force behind the 2003 ‘Wider Europe’ initiative. Its original focus had been on soft security risks in the outer border, particularly as pertained to Poland. Its objective had been political and economic reforms in the EU’s neighbouring countries and the immediate border region. The search for references to hard security risks or the expressed willingness of the EU to take policy action in this respect yields meagre results, to say the least. The preamble highlights ‘promoting reform, sustainable development and trade’; ‘foster[ing] the mutual exchange of human capital, ideas, knowledge and culture’ and ‘avoid[ing] drawing new dividing lines in Europe.’ In contrast, there is only a single reference to ‘tackl[ing] transborder threats – from terrorism to air-born pollution.’21 Border control, poverty, democratization and regional cooperation make up the focus of the remainder of the text; it is noteworthy that conflicts are only mentioned in conjunction with preventive security measures.22 To work with the partners to reduce poverty and create an area of shared prosperity and values based on deeper economic integration, intensified political and cultural relations, enhanced cross-border cooperation and shared responsibility for conflict prevention between the EU and its neighbours.

The unresolved interethnic and secessionist conflicts that are mentioned (for instance, in Western Sahara, Palestine and Transnistria), are discussed as a threat to democracy and prosperity in their respective regions; they account

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for just one out of eleven targets of the strategy. It envisioned a primarily supportive role in EU conflict management, which could expand to one of reconstruction and economic development aid in the (unlikely) event that a durable peace settlement could be found for any of these age-old disputes. The strategy authors readily left crisis management to the OSCE and other international organizations. The European Council explicitly transferred responsibility for the elaboration of this strategy to the Commission and in particular to the Commissioner for Enlargement, Chris Patten, ‘with the contribution, where appropriate, of the High Representative.’23 In sum, in May 2004, the strategy document that was purportedly the result of cooperation between the Commission and Council Secretary remained quite vague as far as hard security conflicts were concerned, despite the fact that it was meant to include the countries of the southern Caucasus into the ENP:24 lncreased efforts to promote the settlement of the conflicts in the region and to develop good neighbourly relations are needed. […] The ENP should reinforce the EU’s contribution to promote these objectives. […] Commitments will also be sought to certain essential aspects of the EU’s external action, including, in particular, the fight against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as abidance by international law and efforts to achieve conflict resolution.

Clearly, the contribution of the High Representative had been minimal. The EU’s approach to territorial and ethnic conflicts was limited to the intensification of political dialogue. In contrast, the economic dimensions of the national action plans for individual countries were elaborated in great detail. In December 2003 of the same period, a first European Security Strategy (ESS) was published under the exclusive responsibility of the High Representative.25 It is instructive to compare the ESS and the ENP strategy document. The ESS referred to the bloody conflicts of Balkans in its preamble as well as to European missions in regions of conflict worldwide, from Congo to East Timor, and identified regional conflicts and failed states as two out of five main threats facing Europe. It devoted an entire chapter to two neighbourhood regions, reiterating the slogans of the Commission – it imagined ‘a ring of well-governed countries’ and stressed the need to prevent ‘new dividing lines in Europe.’ And yet, not a single reference can be found to the new neighbourhood strategy, not even in the chapter on the operational consequences of risk analysis. Given Brussels’ tendency to meticulously reference previous policy documents, the analyst is at liberty

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to draw far-reaching conclusions from this omission. Proof that the High Representative had, in his mind, already bid farewell to the ENP can be found in the following quote from the ESS:26 In contrast to the massive visible threat in the Cold War, none of the new threats is purely military; nor can any be tackled by purely military means. Each requires a mixture of instruments. Proliferation may be contained through export controls and attacked through political, economic and other pressures while the underlying political causes are also tackled. Dealing with terrorism may require a mixture of intelligence, police, judicial, military and other means. In failed states, military instruments may be needed to restore order, humanitarian means to tackle the immediate crisis. Regional conflicts need political solutions but military assets and effective policing may be needed in the post-conflict phase. Economic instruments serve reconstruction, and civilian crisis management helps restore civil government. The European Union is particularly well equipped to respond to such multi-faceted situations.

This wording stresses the crucial role of military and diplomatic means in every phase of conflicts of any kind. In the ESS, the High Representative’s hard power and the European Commission’s soft power instruments are on a par. Conversely, the ENP in its implementation begins to look increasingly like a kind of ‘enlargement strategy light,’ most certainly due to the fact that ENP staff at the Commission were recruited from the Directorate General for Enlargement, which from 2004 had to make do with a far smaller staff. Even before the so-called ‘joint’ strategy document was presented in March 2003, the High Representative had evidently decided that it was no use fighting this trend. Thus, if the analyst is well-versed in the appropriate procedures and institutions and is able to utilize inside information such as interviews and think tank reports to hone the right focus, even published policy documents reveal traces of compromise and conflicts-of-interest in the negotiations that precede their finalization.

Referendum on membership in the United Kingdom, decision to leave the EU Membership application by Bosnia and Herzegovina Entry into force of the Stabilization and Association Agreement with Kosovo

2016

European Commission, White Paper on the Future of Europe Opening of Brexit negotiations

The European Council agrees to create an Energy Union

2015

2017

European elections and Juncker Commission Completion of the Banking Union Association Agreements signed with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine Donald Tusk is appointed President of the European Council and Federica Mogherini High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Opening of accession negotiations with Serbia

2014

6. From Crisis to Crisis Perhaps more so than at any other time in its history, Europe’s future is open-ended. Media coverage of the EU today deals in ever new ‘crises’: the banking crisis, the democratic crisis, the euro crisis, the refugee crisis and so on. It is indeed difficult to find a silver lining for Europe dominated by crisis in this contemporary reality. Instead, scenarios for a potential re-nationalization and disintegration process abound, with Brexit being but a sign of the times. While acknowledging the manifold problems of Europe and its member states, the reader should keep in mind that the term ‘crisis’ is first and foremost a discursive weapon wielded by those who object to European integration in principle or to Europe in its present form. The term itself suggests a reduction or even reversal of the European Union. Nevertheless, our era of crises began with the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the US, or with the subsequent ‘euro crisis’, the European debt crisis. In hindsight, many Europe analysts saw these financial emergencies as serious, but not life threatening. Only the subsequent critical mass of internal and external crises, from 2013-2014 on, has sparked a real existential dilemma for the European project as such. Precisely because it has entangled external and internal conflicts and constraints, the 2015 refugee crisis, more so than the euro crisis or Brexit, demonstrates the quintessence of Europe in dire straits: Europe’s capacity to take united action has now been called into question as much as its value system and internal solidarity. During the Cold War, the EU could decide not to invest in its capacities as a foreign-policy actor or to come up with strategies for (soft-power) projection beyond its circle of member states and candidate countries. Since those days of tense stability, the constellation of world politics has fundamentally changed not once, but twice – first with the end of communism and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, and again with the emergence in recent years of Russia and Turkey as competitive regional powers. Moreover, under the Trump administration, pressure from Washington on European states to pull their weight in terms of military expenditure has increased markedly. Arguably, the US’ readiness to involve itself in military crises and armed conflicts around the globe is on the wane as Washington becomes more selective, based on a narrowed definition of the ‘national interest.’ Donald Trump’s praise for the British decision to ‘free’ itself of Brussels’ regulatory straitjacket was seen, at least in Europe, as an inexcusable and unfair volteface. From the 1940s on, the US had been among the key proponents and

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facilitators of European cooperation and integration. Finally, in unison, a neoliberal US president and Europeans who objected to the neoliberal agenda of globalization they argued the EU was pursuing, put an end to the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Major conflicts in Europe’s vicinity have added real political need and a sense of urgency to the European Foreign and Security Policy. At Maastricht, the common policy was originally something of a paper tiger, but the disintegration of Yugoslavia, various post-Soviet conflicts and the wars in the Middle East have forced member states to invest in real coordination. With the influx of refugees and migrants to Europe from Syria, the Balkans and other conflict zones, the security situation in Europe’s environs has had a direct and serious impact on internal cooperation among member states and public trust in national and European governance. Islamist terrorism in Europe, too, is an external factor with a negative impact on established European projects such as Schengen and freedom of movement within the EU. Conversely, many national governments have effectively chosen to procrastinate enlargement, with the clear exception of relatively unproblematic potential prospects such as Iceland or Switzerland. The process in the south-east is ongoing, but all parties are well aware that full membership will not be an option for the foreseeable future. The cited motive of ‘enlargement fatigue’ among voters is tied to a low level of trust in European policies and the unpopularity of accepting former Yugoslav or even former Soviet republics as new member states. Past reports of belated or simulated reforms in Romania and Bulgaria in particular, as well as ostentatious anti-EU provocations by the Turkish, Polish and Hungarian governments today have been less than helpful. As a consequence, Brussels’ leverage in associated and potential candidate states as well as with their neighbours to the east and south has decreased significantly for lack of a tangible offer and integration prospects. This is exacerbated by the resurgence of Russia and the emergence of Turkey as regional powers intentionally countering European influence. Ankara and Moscow both apply political, military and economic leverage to discourage Kiev, Belgrade, Podgorica or Tbilisi from closer ties with the EU. In sum, both global and regional geopolitics have shifted to the disadvantage of Europe in recent years, and the consequences of these shifts have been directly felt within EU member states. These changes may in fact be conducive to overcoming aversions to enhanced cooperation in external affairs, but, as European history demonstrates, they may also result in increased demands for a turn away from Europe and toward national policies to deal with terrorism, migration, refugees and security threats.

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Internal issues in the EU have taken centre stage in recent years. There is a basic consensus that the first communautarian pillar of the European Union, the common market and related supranational policies, are in crisis. Even Brexiteers would prefer Britain to have access to the Common Market. The EU remains Turkey’s main trading partner in spite of serious political discord. The costs, regulations and spillovers from the common market project, however, are increasingly controversial. The interconnected banking, euro and financial crises put north-south solidarity within the Union to the test. They also underscored the neoliberal image of the European Union. Banks appeared to get away with crimes of speculation and mismanagement to the detriment of the common citizen. Some people had eyed the common currency with suspicion from the very beginning, but the euro crisis made explicit that citizens were paying the bill for lavish spending by governments and bankers. Similarly, concerns about refugees, migrants and terrorism have called into question one of the flagships of the integration process – the Schengen Agreements and the freedom of movement. Europe’s responsibility vis-à-vis refugees, also impinges on the EU’s core value of coherence and solidarity among the member states. Britain’s decision to trade its opt-outs for the trajectory of exiting the Union, is similar, although Brexit is in large part a matter of ingrained aversion to European policy interference and costs, rather than to European norms of rule of law and democracy. Paradoxically, separatist movements in Scotland and Catalonia depend on the EU, although they also raise thorny questions about state sovereignty. Politicians in Barcelona would prefer to shed Madrid’s rule and acquire their own EU membership, while in Edinburgh, the drive for independence is in fact partially motivated by Brexit. The EU, however, remains by and large an economic project based on the common market. Brussels lacks competencies and the power to establish norms as far as more fundamental issues of border disputes, regional or ethnic separatism and the recognition of independent states are concerned. Ultimately, the most pressing structural challenge to the European Union is its democratic deficit, whether real or imagined. Citizens’ euroscepticism has produced an all-time low level of trust in European institutions and a corresponding demand for more ways for citizens to block European decisions, primarily through national referendums. Similar trends are observable in established democracies at national level as well. The rise of populist parties in both old and new member states could be discerned as early as the 2014 European elections, wherein not only left-extremist and rightist-nationalist parties, but also more than a few centre-right coalitions adopted a more critical stance towards Brussels in order to appease voter concerns. Even traditionally loyal

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member states have grown more cautious, with recent tentative French and German proposals to move the European project forward as an exception. At the other end of the spectrum, governments in Hungary and Poland appear determined to garner domestic support by antagonising Brussels. Domestic policy has set these countries on a collision course with European institutions and norms. Outside the Union, Turkey increasingly affronts Europe and its value projection, despite Ankara’s long-term prospects of membership. The European Union has not seen any substantial treaty modifications since the ill-fated European Constitution and Lisbon Reform Treaty a decade ago. However, this should not be understood to imply that the policy­making constellation among European institutions has remained unaffected by years of crisis. Neither has the balance of intergovernmentalism and supranationalism in the interactions of the EU and national capitals gone unchanged. As challenges have had a direct impact on the national polity and not just on the functioning of the Union, member-state governments have tended to prefer national solutions over European coordination and cooperation. In a similar vein, Germany and other larger member states have taken the lead, much to the chagrin of some smaller member states, in European institutions and their leadership. German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, for instance, dominated the shaping of EU policy during the refugee crisis and in the handling of the Greek debt crisis. As previous phases of discord and stagnation have demonstrated, renationalization is but one typical reaction to this. One alternative, though generally less common trend is the strengthening of supranational European institutions’ competencies, once the European heads of state and governments have found common ground in specific policy fields. Despite increased polarization and politicization in European affairs, the net result has ultimately been a more robust role for the ECB and the European Commission. Arguably, the independence of the ECB, with its one and only objective being to maintain price stability, has been compromised by emergency measures put in place during the euro crisis. On the other hand, the ECB president and the president of the euro group have since become political players in their own right. The European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro was charged with supervising the budgetary discipline and economic policies of member states. European interference of this kind, while still controversial, would have been entirely unthinkable a decade ago. The following paragraphs take the narrative of European cooperation and (dis)integration up to December 2017. The final paragraph discusses potential reforms, rather than trying to predict the future for the medium term. The present conflagration of crises constitutes a critical juncture in

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the integration process and in Europe’s unfinished history. Awareness of this existential dilemma may open a window of opportunity for reforms and/or inspire a reassessment of the costs and benefits of EU membership. To conclude on an optimistic note, some indications suggest that European politicians have been emboldened by crisis to propose substantial reforms rather than to engage in rearguard action. The initiatives by the President of the European Parliament and the European Commission (the White Paper on the Future of Europe) were motivated by these anxieties. So far, each push for reform has proven controversial. However, the target of stark criticism from specific parties involved only lukewarm support from most others.

Widening and the External Crises The European Union has always struggled to fulf il its responsibilities in foreign and security policy. Surely this is in part due to the inherent tendency of nation states to see policy competencies of the second pillar as particularly inseparable from state sovereignty. According to Eurobarometer surveys, however, citizens across Europe are increasingly willing to concede coordination of foreign and security policy to Europe. In the fifties, the first ambitious foray in this direction, the European Defence Community, proved abortive. European Political Cooperation introduced some foreign policy coordination in 1970, as did the Treaty of Maastricht two decades later. The Cold War placed defence firmly in the hands of NATO, a monopoly that ended with the explosion of intra-state conflicts and peacekeeping missions in Europe’s neighbourhood as from the nineties. The post-war Balkans demonstrated that Europe needed serious military capabilities and coordination in the nineties. Atrocities in the region flew in the face of Europe’s lofty objectives and principles. Despite successive steps taken since then, including the High Representative, double-hatting, the Helsinki Headline Goals, the European External Action Service and Permanent Structured Cooperation, expectations and ambitions remain modest. Neither citizens nor national governments expect the EU to become a global security actor on a par with the US, Russia or China. After all, most of Europe’s foreign-policy toolbox consists of varieties of enlargement strategy, despite the updating of European crisis-management capacities. Its preference for soft-power projection is not challenged by a modicum of diplomatic or military cooperation. The EU’s objectives are largely limited to its direct neighbourhood – the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Balkans and the former Soviet republics.

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Yet the parameters of world and regional geopolitics are changing. China is emerging as a giant, both economic and otherwise, on the global stage. Russia under Putin and Turkey under Erdoğan have (re-)emerged as regional powers, vying with Europe over spheres of influence. The two most pressing cases in point of such ‘proxy conflicts’ are Ukraine and Syria. The civil war in Syria is in and of itself an uncontrollable religious and political conflict in an extremely volatile region. American, Russian and Turkish interests and interference there were out of Europe’s league. Paradoxically, this relatively distant conflict (geographically speaking) had a much more direct and threatening impact on the European Union domestically than did the simultaneous direct-neighbourhood crisis in Ukraine. Since before the signing of the Association Agreement with Kiev, triggered by Moscow’s interference in Ukraine, EU member states felt obligated to initiate foreign-policy measures vis-à-vis Moscow and Kiev. Russian intervention in Ukraine constituted a crucial violation of the post-war European order, but domestically, the impact on Europe and its member states was limited. In Syria, in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, civil unrest escalated into a protracted armed conflict and humanitarian catastrophe. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad confronted a loose coalition of armed opposition forces; the Sunnis of the Free Syrian Army, Kurdish rebels and the Islamic State. Inconsistent political support and military intervention by regional neighbours and global powers has had a massive impact on territorial gains and losses of the parties in the conflict. Beginning in 2014, NATO countries have launched air strikes against the Islamic State as Russia has supported Assad. Turkey’s main concern has been the emergence of a nascent Kurdish state across its south-eastern border. Several European governments have taken part in US-led NATO operations in and around the country, but for the EU, Syria demands policy coordination with respect to sanctions against the Assad regime and cooperation in anti-terrorist measures within the Union. In line with the prearranged division of labour set out by the Petersberg tasks (i.e. soft-power crisis management and post-conflict reconstruction for the EU as a compliment to NATOs hard-power), Syria has been clearly and solely a NATO operation, with a possible opening for the EU in post-war rebuilding and humanitarian assistance. Syria has thus put additional strain on the EU’s relations with Moscow and Ankara. Unexpectedly, however, Syria has also become pivotal within the Union by driving a mass influx of refugees from war zones to the outer borders of the EU. In 2015, refugees and migrants from North Africa and the Balkans drove the numbers crossing into Europe to a total of close to a million. The Syrian crisis, as both a civil war and a geopolitical proxy conflict, defies all

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strategies for de-escalation. As a regional power Europe has at best a limited influence on the development of the conflict, but bears the brunt of taxing European solidarity at intergovernmental level as well as citizens’ readiness to accept refugees and migrants in their communities. To be blunt, the EU’s objective of a decade ago, ‘a circle of well-governed neighbouring states,’ has come to naught. Quite to the contrary, the revolutions of the Arab Spring and its echo throughout the Middle East have resulted in political volatility and humanitarian crises. Moreover, Turkey, Europe’s projected strategic partner in the region, is determined to become a regional power in its own right. The refugee question has quickly come to dominate EU-Turkish relations, which until Syria had centred on accession negotiations. After a long prehistory, the 1999 Helsinki European Council marked a peak in EU-Turkish relations by activating Ankara’s candidate status, which dated back to 1987, and the opening negotiations. Despite a variety of objections from governments, parties and voters in member states (e.g. Islam in Europe, the size of Turkey’s territory and population, Ankara’s human rights record and the risks of an Anatolian outer border for the EU), the 1995 customs’ union boded well for EU-Turkish relations. Those who at one time pointed to the Europeanization of the major cities on the western coast as pioneers of a new, modern Turkey, become disillusioned by Recep Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian style of leadership as prime minister (2003-2014) and later as president (2014-present). Conflict-ridden and slow-moving EU accession negotiations evidently lost their appeal for Erdoğan and his AKP party. Year after year, Ankara boasted a GDP growth rate no EU member state could match. Turkey’s economic strength furthermore translated into ambitions as a regional power in political and military terms. Thorny conflicts and deliberate provocations mounted in Ankara’s relations with the EU and between individual member states, whilst European concerns mounted over human rights, the rule of law and democracy in Turkey, not least after the July 2016 coup attempt and the April 2017 constitutional referendum that enhanced the president’s powers. Relations have also been strained by the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus, the question of the Armenian genocide, the arrest of several journalists, election campaigning in EU countries as well as dangerous interference in northern Iraq and Syria. Ultimately, accession negotiations were effectively frozen in 2017. This did not resonate much in Turkey, and in Europe political opponents of further enlargement in general and of Turkish membership in particular saw their forewarnings confirmed. In what is likely to be the end of the enlargement strategy for Turkey, bilateral relations between Brussels and Ankara have entered the zone of external relations and geopolitics.

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But the refugee question gives Ankara something of the upper hand in its relations with Europe. In the spring of 2016, Brussels came to a controversial deal with Ankara in to control the influx of migrants and refugees entering via Turkey and Greece. This stipulated that those who entered Greece illegally would be returned to Turkey, that Turkey would receive EU assistance to house refugees locally and to organize a transfer of registered refugees to Europe directly. The deal did serve its short-term goal – a sizable reduction in the influx of refugees and migrants to Europe – but has been criticized for two main reasons: the humanitarian costs of prolonged stays in overcrowded Turkish and Greek camps, and the fact that the deal gave Erdoğan leverage over Brussels. Objections by politicians and considerable parts of the European populace made upholding the deal a priority for Brussels. Here again, the nexus between domestic legitimacy problems and external relations exacerbated the crises of Europe. In a similar vein, Russia’s relations with the US and the EU are frequently characterized as a new Cold War. During the first part of his tenure as President, which began in 1999, and as prime minister from 2008-2012, Vladimir Putin presented himself as a tough but largely reliable negotiating partner. Moscow used energy prices and deliveries to ensure the cooperation of national governments in Europe and to discourage countries in the Russian sphere of influence from seeking closer ties with the EU. Since 2013, however, the world has witnessed an increase in provocative and threatening rhetoric alongside high-profile actions to restore Russia’s great-power status in world politics. Such actions have included cyber-attacks on Estonia, unilateral military intervention in Syria, alleged interference in US and other election processes as well as financial support for right-wing parties and other groups with the potential to destabilize the political status quo in NATO and EU member states. Repressive domestic measures by the Kremlin have made human rights and civil-society freedoms an even more sensitive topic in bilateral relations. Ukraine was the obvious lynchpin in this play of power. The 2004 pro-West Orange Revolution carried massive geopolitical weight because of Ukraine’s national-emotional importance for Russians. Then, in late 2013, pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych agreed to sign an Association Agreement with the EU, a move applauded by a large majority of voters in the western half of the country and decried by equal numbers in the east. Under alleged pressure from Moscow, the president rescinded at the last minute, provoking mass demonstrations and violence in the square well known for the 2004 revolution, now dubbed ‘Euromaidan.’ Once Yanukovych had fled to Moscow, protesters and opposition parties took over, built a new government and scheduled elections.

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In an orchestrated action, local rebels and Russian troops carried out the secession of Crimea from Ukraine and the proclamation of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Eastern Ukraine in early 2014, immediately following the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger flight over the war zone in Eastern Ukraine in July 2014 marked an all-time low in post-Cold War relations. The unprecedented defilement of the post-war principles of territorial sovereignty and the inviolability of borders in Europe resulted in reciprocal regimes of sanctions. Finally, following Washington’s lead, even those EU member states having substantial trade volumes with Russia joined the sanctions, travel bans and freezing of assets. Meanwhile, Putin’s nationalist rhetoric and aggressive policies markedly increased his domestic favourability. The re-incorporation of Crimea into Russia after a referendum in March 2014, Moscow’s condemnation of the new Kiev regime as ‘fascist’ and the continuation of a periodically violent political tug of war in Eastern Ukraine have created a new stalemate. Multiparty talks in Minsk have produced some de-escalation measures, but fragile ceasefires have been broken time and again, either by local separatists, Ukrainian forces or Russian provocateurs. Both the re-annexation of Crimea and the new frozen conflict in Lugansk and Donetsk have been successes for the Kremlin, garnering domestic popularity and foreign policy leverage. The frozen conflict is a pliable instrument to put pressure on Kiev as well as the West. The Ukrainian crisis has sent an unequivocal signal to the states between Europe and Russia that association with the EU and NATO comes at a price. The EU strategies of association and neighbourhood had been the only tangible perspective for these transition countries for more than a decade, but incentives in the form of trade and energy resources, combined with political and military threats from Russia, have fundamentally changed the region’s outlook. The EU still faces the dual objectives of its soft-power incentives. On the one hand, the advantages of closer association and trade agreements with the common market are conditional on fulfilling strict economic governance, democracy and rule of law criteria. On the other, these incentives are also Europe’s counter offer to the deals and threats from Moscow. Enlargement is no longer high on the European agenda and the EU’s attractiveness to candidates may have suffered in the process. Both parties in bilateral relations between the EU and non-EU states are aware that membership is unlikely in the short or even medium term. Since Croatia’s accession in the summer of 2013, progress on the enlargement agenda for the remaining states of former Yugoslavia and Albania has been largely symbolic. All remaining states, including Kosovo have meanwhile signed a

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Stabilization and Association Agreement, despite its disputed international status. Serbia and Montenegro have opened negotiations, while Greek objections continue to block negotiations for Macedonia, a candidate since 2005. Albania has received candidate status, and Bosnia is awaiting a decision on its 2016 application. Among countries that could fulfil the criteria with relative ease, Iceland has withdrawn its application and others, such as Switzerland and Norway, are not expected to consider an application any time soon. Current trends in EU relations with (potential) candidates and the neighbouring countries of the Eastern Partnership are contradictory. The European Union has increasingly used its substantial leverage (e.g. visa liberalization and preferential trade relations) to realise objectives of stabilization and regional cooperation, in dealing with unresolved issues from the Yugoslav conflicts over the years. Progress in relations between Serbia and Kosovo are indicative of the efficacy of this approach. Symbolically, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was closed at the end of 2017, with the life sentence for Ratko Mladić as its last major achievement. On the other hand, full membership for candidates or enhanced relations for associated countries is today a distant promise due to ‘enlargement fatigue’ within the EU. The Dutch referendum on the renewed Association Agreement with Ukraine in April 2016 testified to these public sentiments. Correspondingly, the EU is losing its position as the one and only guiding light, all the more so as Turkey and Russia make alternative offerings without Brussels’ conditionality. The most realistic scenario for the EU’s relations with candidate and associated countries in the foreseeable future is the use of differentiated integration and the inclusion of these states in some of the benefits and cooperation of the EU member states, without a vote in the EU institutions.

Deepening and the Internal Crises In hindsight, of course, the interconnected crises within the communitarian mainstays of European integration – economics, trade, finance, common market and freedom – shrink to more manageable proportions. At the time, however, the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the US as a consequence of the mortgage crisis, together with the general global economic slowdown, strongly impacted eurozone economies, too. In particular structural weaknesses such as high unemployment and ‘bad loans’ revealed the fragility of perceived economic stability in the southern member states

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of Portugal, Spain and Greece, as well as in Ireland. Governments were forced to bail out banks, risking their own international credit ratings. All attention eventually focused on Greece as Athens required massive European assistance to avoid bankruptcy. From the perspective of 2017, these acute economic crises in the south and in the eurozone seem to have subsided somewhat. The massive socioeconomic dependencies and disparities as a structural flaw, however, remain. Financial transfers and austerity measures have had catastrophic effects on popular trust in the European project in both the northern and southern member states. Alongside the 2015 refugee crisis, the euro crisis has facilitated the rise of populist Eurosceptic parties in France, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. In Italy, economic crisis propelled the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo to political prominence. After some earlier successes in local and regional elections, the party won 25 per cent of the national vote to become the largest party in the 2013 parliamentary elections and second place in the European elections one year later. In Greece, more significantly, both the extreme right-wing party of Golden Dawn and the leftist Syriza party thrived in the crisis. Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras became prime minister after a landslide victory in the 2015 elections. Arguably, the original sin of the euro crisis is not to be found in the mortgage bubble or the hubris of bankers, but rather in the incomplete currency union of Maastricht. Member states had failed to complement the grand project of a common currency with the far less appealing and much-loathed fiscal union: stricter European oversight of national budgets and finances and the possible harmonization of taxation systems. Europe learned the hard way that even a small economy like Greece could generate serious trouble for the eurozone as a whole, even though it accounted for only a few per cent of European GDP. Brussels and the European Council were harshly criticized for having allowed Greece into the zone as a latecomer in 2000, amid serious doubts Athens had in fact fulfilled the macroeconomic Maastricht convergence criteria. This monetary decision had been motivated by political concerns over Greece’s intransigence on political issues such as Macedonia’s accession and the Cyprus question, as well as by an underestimation of the risks to the common currency. Despite serious controversy, member states did manage to agree on crisis management measures and structural strategies such as the European Stability Mechanism and the European Semester. The European Central Bank, moreover, has enhanced its role in crisis management and financial policymaking, overstepping, according to many, the formal limits of its constitutional competencies and violating the ‘no bailout’ principle.

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Ever since the accession of Greece, Spain and Portugal in the eighties, Europe had been concerned with growing inter-state and inter-regional disparities as a socioeconomic priority for the European project. Long-term evaluations of the corresponding Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund vary widely. The banking and euro crises of recent years have exacerbated pre-existing north-south disparities in the Union and have undone whatever results the funds may have achieved in previous decades. Extremely high youth unemployment and governments caught between European austerity measures and the need to invest in the national economy constitute a significant impediment to European solidarity. Despairing citizens in southern Europe are turning to left and right-wing populists, feeling abandoned by their national governments as well as by Brussels. Meanwhile, citizens of the more affluent northern countries were flabbergasted by the multi-trillion financial transfers and guarantees for the southern member states. Stories of gross mismanagement by these countries’ apparatuses overseeing taxation and anti-corruption proved detrimental to solidarity, and northern governments were hard-pressed to explain their ‘generosity’ to the public or to counter the simple solutions suggested by populist parties, such as a forced ‘Grexit’ or Greek bankruptcy. Due to financial interdependency and the heavy involvement of northern European banks in the Greek debt crisis, a Greek exit from the euro would not have solved these problems, apart from transition costs and the difficulties of returning to the drachma and renegotiating access to the common market, as Brexit negotiations have since demonstrated. Since the nineties, the rise of movements in the public sphere and new political parties on the left and right has been increasingly common in both old and new EU member states. The rise of populist and xenophobic reasoning has correlated with increasing voter disenchantment with established parties and declining trust in democratic institutions. Brussels has become an obvious scapegoat for these movements, on the one hand because of the EU’s bureaucratic complexity and opaque, undemocratic decision-making and, on the other, because it could be blamed for both neoliberal market mechanisms and the influx of Muslim refugees and other migrants. Some, but not all, of these groups demand more options for citizens to influence or veto unpopular political decisions, both on the national and the European levels. The profiles of these parties vary from country to country – some are predominantly anti-Islam, while others object to the transfer of sovereignty to Brussels or to the alleged neoliberal bias of European integration. Increasingly aware of these sentiments and of the democratic deficit, European leaders and the European Commission have adjusted the balance of efficient policymaking and now allow for more civil society participation

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and democratic control mechanisms. Various instruments from the Lisbon Treaty, such as the citizens’ initiative and the yellow-card subsidiarity check, are cases in point. The strengthening of control over European legislation by national parliaments, in addition to the European Parliament, and the veto power of national referendums (e.g. in the Netherlands on the Association Agreement with Ukraine or in Belgian Wallonia on the trade agreement with Canada), have posed new problems. More often than not, one parliament or one national referendum blocks a decision reached collectively at European level by the member states. Euroscepticism has risen steadily throughout the first decades of the twenty-first century among voters in most member states, new and old, northern and southern. Generally speaking, national politics’ well-known mechanism of blaming unwelcome policy measures on Brussels has become more pronounced. Most governments and parliamentary parties are aware of these sentiments and take a tougher stance on European ‘interference.’ Though most governments are moderately pro-European, toughness in negotiations, defence of national interests and at least a modicum of Eurosceptic rhetoric have become commonplace. Two high-priority, hot-button issues for Europe and its member states can be construed as arguments both in favour of re-nationalization and of deepening Europeanization and transfer of competencies. The first concerns Islamist terrorism in European cities, from the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris in January 2015 onwards. The attacks have given new urgency to plans to enhance Europe’s coordination of national anti-terrorist agencies and measures. The threat of terrorists posing as refugees and abusing Europe’s open national borders has also been a matter of much controversy, more so given the fact that not all terrorist plots have been defeated. More significant in terms of its impact on public sentiment, and perhaps the single most severe existential dilemma the EU has faced in recent years, is the European refugee crisis. Triggered in part by the Syrian war, the influx of refugees and other migrants into the European Union suddenly skyrocketed in 2015. The largest portion of the nearly one million asylum seekers reportedly came from Syria, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Most of them eyed Germany as their final destination. From an EU perspective, the policy dilemma was both humanitarian and political. Europe, with its self-image of openness and humaneness, struggled to reconcile the hundreds of people who had drowned while crossing the Mediterranean and the inhumane situation for many thousands who were prevented from crossing national borders or were living in overcrowded camps in Greece or on the Italian island of Lampedusa. In line with strong public sentiment against this influx

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of foreign nationals from the Middle East, the Balkans and North Africa, nearly all member states were reluctant to accept their share of refugees, leaving Germany to shoulder most of the burden. Removing obstacles to prevent humanitarian catastrophe at the outer border of the EU meant risking intensifying the influx of migrants, a risk none of the member states was willing to take. With the refugee crisis, it became starkly clear that EU policymakers had once again stopped short of fully incorporating the Schengen protocol into the European acquis as a key asset. The trade-off of free travel within the Schengen zone was shared responsibility for the outer border of the European Union. Europe had previously managed to share some of the costs of strengthening infrastructure along the eastern border, where the issue was smugglers rather than migrants. Member states have been far less forthcoming with the human and financial resources for, for instance, Frontex patrolling the Mediterranean and for adequate transit camps in Greece and Italy. Attempts to stem the flow of migrants before they cross the EU’s outer border have met with limited success. Bilateral agreements with North African states have either failed to materialize or have proved ineffective. In the case of the March 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal, Brussels promised substantial funding for refugee camps within Turkey. But with the refugee issue an acute and existential threat to European cooperation, the deal provided the Erdoğan government the leverage it needed to prevent the EU from openly addressing rule of law and democracy issues in Turkey. Numerous member states have adopted a more sceptical attitude towards the European project, and some have been downright reluctant to commit themselves to European solidarity amidst the euro and refugee crises. Poland and Hungary have taken confrontations between national positions and European views to new levels in recent years. Implementing a political agenda geared towards nationalist sentiment and hegemonic party politics, politicians surrounding Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland and Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party have sought confrontation with Brussels. In both countries, political reforms have been introduced to curtail the independent judiciary, demonize the political opposition and curb civil rights. In 2017, the European Commission launched infringement procedures against Poland for breach of EU law, a move that may eventually end in Poland being stripped of EU voting rights. As for rule of law and democracy, Budapest similarly confronts Brussels. Hungary has additionally boycotted European attempts to agree upon and implement a common refugee and asylum policy. Both governments tread

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a fine line, using the EU to mobilize domestic support without intending to follow the British example. Compared to the euphoria of EU accession in 2004, however, much has changed. Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, the EU was invested in facilitating and supervising the accession of new member states, but tellingly had no procedure whatsoever for an exit. Greenland and Algeria had exited when they became independent states decades ago, but this set no precedent for the current Brexit negotiations. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty outlines a two-year negotiation period after a member state has declared its desire to leave. In a bold move to pre-emptively contain the popularity of the vehemently United Kingdom anti-EU Independence Party (UKIP) in the elections, British Prime Minister David Cameron held a referendum on membership in May 2016. A narrow 52 per cent majority voted to leave, and Cameron’s successor Theresa May has now invoked article 50. Since the referendum, two of the most vocal proponents of Brexit – conservative Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and UKIP leader Nigel Farage have resigned. In reaction to the British referendum and the political pandemonium that ensued, support for Eurosceptic parties has declined markedly in many other member states. If anything, protracted Brexit negotiations between London and Brussels have demonstrated the intricacies of membership. These are uncharted waters, in which bilateral EU-British relations are being renegotiated from membership with opt-outs to some form of ‘privileged’ non-membership. In six months of work very little progress has been made. Despite the large sums of money involved, the issue of British payments due to EU coffers is likely to be a minor one. Brussels faces a dilemma here: Demonstrating that a hard Brexit is going to cost London in material and immaterial terms, with major corporations and EU institutions moving to the continent, is a powerful signal to other governments that may have entertained the idea of an exit. The current chaos of British politics, with a weakened conservative government, disunity in Westminster on Brexit strategy, talk of a new referendum and the disintegration of UKIP, makes constructive negotiations virtually impossible. Additionally, some UK demands, such as common market access without jurisdiction for the European Court, are anathema to Brussels. The new outer border between Belfast and Dublin and the rights of EU citizens in the UK are bargaining chips in what promises to be an increasingly agonising negotiation process without precedent. Finally, the strengthening of the movement for Catalan independence and the ensuing Spanish state crisis have demonstrated the ambiguous role of the EU and its membership in issues of territorial integrity and independent statehood. Some years ago, an impossible situation emerged

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as most EU member states recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Other states, particularly those with separatist or sovereignty issues of their own (i.e. Spain, Slovakia, Cyprus and Greece) refused to follow suit. The lack of consensus was incompatible with free travel within the Schengen zone. EU membership similarly played an important role in the Scottish referendum on independence in September 2014, which resulted in a 55 per cent majority against. A British exit from Europe might revive considerations of independence in Edinburgh as a twenty-eighth member state. In Spain, Catalan separatists organized a referendum in October 2017, which was declared illegal by the Spanish government and constitutional court. Based on the vote’s outcome, Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont declared a (suspended) independence and fled to Belgium, creating an awkward extradition issue between two EU member states. Barcelona too has been seeking guarantees from Brussels on EU membership in case of secession, and has asked for EU intervention in its conflict with Madrid, both largely in vain. Thus, recognition of states remains the exclusive domain of sovereign member states, but in many instances the very existence of the EU arbitrarily interferes with these prerogatives.

An Unfinished History and the Future ‘Crisis’ is the keyword in the analysis of European development in this final chapter. The reader should be aware that it may be a most common term these days, but it is nevertheless primarily a politicized and normative framing of European realities. In this respect, its antonym is not ‘progress’ or ‘stability,’ but ‘challenge’ – the framing of problems encountered in an optimistic narrative. In the reality of European integration (or disintegration) today, the crisis-driven framing tends to eclipse what is arguably the critical mass of Europeanization. Both in scope and depth, European policies constitute much of the invisible fabric of societies, economies and politics throughout Europe. Citizens cross national borders without so much as a thought, as does their money. Critics of the European Union as a neoliberal endeavour have rightly pointed to the flipside of open borders and unhampered mobility. If anything, the Brexit negotiations and the preceding Greek crisis demonstrate that the real challenge is in shaping rather than negating real dependencies on Brussels, which cannot be undone just by formally exiting the EU (in the case of the UK) or by insisting on an end to European solidarity (in the case of Greece).

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Political and public reactions to these realities are paradoxical. Eurooptimists tend to frame their opponents as irrational populists and their followings as misinformed or deceived. Conversely, Eurosceptics portray Europe and the euro as elite projects that run counter to any citizen’s best interest. The net result is polarization. Some ruling parties and populist oppositions suggest that without ‘Europe,’ easy solutions to the numerous challenges and crises exist. National interests and identity are pivotal to these lines of argument. At the same time, efforts at European level to accommodate the trend of re-nationalization add to the inherent complexity of a massive polity with half a billion citizens and almost thirty diverse member states. Polarization increasingly dilutes the distinction between those who reject European integration in principle and those who question European competencies in specific policy fields or criticize policy outcomes. What will be the state of the Union in five years’ time? Historians are renowned for their prognostic abilities, as long as it does not concern the future. Numerous contingent factors may have a decisive impact on the EU going forward. Nevertheless, there are both positive and negative structural issues, which stand out today and are not likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. First, the EU is bound to remain a foreign and security policy actor of limited ambitions and capabilities beyond soft-power projection and beyond its immediate environment. In view of the apparent dominance of realpolitik on the world stage and the emergence of hybrid forms of interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states, Europe is likely to remain an economic giant but a political dwarf. Second, dependencies between local, national, European and global levels of policymaking will continue to intensify, and the distinctions between domestic and international affairs will continue to erode. Third, the fall of citizens’ trust in the democratic political process and institutions and a corresponding demand for more participation, control and veto options will not give way to permissive consensus anytime soon. Together with populism, these concerns are no less pertinent for national polities. Fourth, and to end on a positive note, Europeanization has reached a critical mass of often-unsung benefits to citizens and states alike. Differentiated integration may become more common, but a chain reaction of national exits is not evident. In sum, after an odyssey of nearly seven decades, ‘Europe’ remains contested, both as a grand concept and in terms of everyday policymaking: It embodies unfinished-ness as permanent condition.

Notes 1. 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Many Roads to Europe

Europa-Föderationspläne der Widerstandsbewegungen, ed. by Walter Lipgens (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1968); English translation: Documents on the History of European Integration, ed. by Walter Lipgens, 4 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985-1991). Walter Lipgens, Die Anfänge der europäischen Einigungspolitik (Stuttgart: Klett, 1977); English translation: Walter Lipgens, A History of European Integration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Joyce Kolko and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power. The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 2. Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-51 (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 476-477. Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Transnational Western Europe since 1945. lntegration as Political Society Formation’, in Transnational European Union. Towards a Common Political Space, ed. by Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie (London/ New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 17-35 (p. 19). Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer, ‘Non-State Actors in European Integration in the 1970s: Towards a Polity of Transnational Contestation’, Comparativ 20:3 (2010), pp. 7-24 (p. 8). John Tosh, The Pursuit of History. Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2010), pp. 93-96. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2. Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), pp. 183-184. Jean Monnet, Memoirs (London: Collins, 1978), p. 22. Monnet, Memoirs, pp. 15-16. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6. Finest Hour, 1939-1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 558. Leo S. Amery, The Leo Amery Diaries 1929-1945, vol. 2. The Empire at Bay, ed. by John Barnes and David Nicholson (London: Hutchinson, 1988), p. 624. François Duchȇne, Jean Monnet. The First Statesman of Interdependence (New York/London: Norton, 1994), p. 77. Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affaire. The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, I939-40 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 228-229. Quoted in: Avi Shlaim, ‘A Prelude to Downfall: the British Offer of Union to France, June 1940’, Journal of Contemporary History 9:3 (1974), pp. 27-63 (p. 61, fn. 79). Paul Reynaud, Unite or Perish. A Dynamic Program for a United Europe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), p. 6. Monnet, Memoirs, p. 35. Monnet, Memoirs, p. 26.

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The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

19. 20. 21. 22.

Monnet, Memoirs, p. 34. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2. Their Finest Hour, p. 180. Shlaim, ‘A Prelude to Downfal’, pp. 27-63. John Davenport, ‘M. Jean Monnet of Cognac’, Fortune 30:3 (1944), pp. 120-125, 214, 216. 23. Clarence K. Streit, ‘De Gaulle Urged Federal Union on Churchill in 1940’, Freedom and Union 13:7-8 (1958), pp. 14-16. 24. Duchȇne, Jean Monnet; Max Kohnstamm, Jean Monnet. The Power of the Imagination (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1988); Pascal Fontaine, Jean Monnet. L’inspirateur (Paris: Jacques Grancher, 1988).

2. 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

The European Communities Under Construction

European Court of Justice (ECJ) 26/62, NV Algemene Transporten Expeditie Onderneming Van Gend en Loos vs. Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen, European Court Report (ECR) (1963) 1. ECJ 6/64, Flaminio Costa v. E.N.E.L., ECR (1964) 585. This section is based on recent research as found in Antoine Vauchez, Brokering Europe. Euro-Lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) and in the contributions to the special issue of Contemporary European History 21:3 (2012) edited by Morten Rasmussen and Bill Davies. ECJ 26/62, NV Algemene Transporten Expeditie Onderneming Van Gend en Loos vs. Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen, ECR (1963) 1. All ECJ rulings can be found on the court’s website: www.curia.europa.eu. ECJ 6/64, Flaminio Costa v. E.N.E.L., ECR (1964) 585. Bundesverfassungsgericht 37, 271 (‘Solange I’). ECJ 4/73, J. Nold, Kohlen- und Baustoffgroßhandlung v Commission of the European Communities, ECR (1974) 491. ECJ 43/75, Gabrielle Defrenne v Société anonyme belge de navigation aérienne Sabena, ECR (1976) 455. ECJ 33/76, Rewe-Zentralfinanz eG and Rewe-Zentral AG v Landwirtschafts­ kammer für das Saarland (‘Cassis de Dijon’), ECR (1976) 1989. Brigitte Leucht, ‘The Policy Origins of the European Economic Constitution’, European Law Journal (2017, forthcoming) ECJ C-402/05 P and C-415 P, Yassin Abdullah Kadi, Al Barakaat International Foundation v Council of the European Union, Commission of the European Communities, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Official Journal C 285 (8-11-2008), pp. 2-3. For an overview of the historical archives of all EU institutions see https:// europa.eu/european-union/documents-publications/libraries-archives_en or the so-called ‘Blue guide to the Archives of Member States’ Foreign Ministries and European Union institutions’, via https://www.eui.eu/­ Documents/Research/HistoricalArchivesofEU/blueguide-pdf-201404.pdf.

Notes

283

13.

An overview of the archives of EU member states’ Foreign Ministries is provided in the ‘Blue guide’ https://www.eui.eu/Documents/Research/HistoricalArchivesofEU/blueguide-pdf-201404.pdf. Note that, while in for example the Netherlands and the UK archives are transferred to archival repositories called ‘National archives’, for example in France and Germany, the archives of Foreign Ministries are made available for consultation by their original ministries: in Germany, this is the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (http://www.archiv.diplo.de/), in France, this is the Centre des archives diplomatiques de la Courneuve (http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/archivesdiplomatiques/acceder-aux-centres-des-archives-diplomatiques/). 14. Consult http://diplomatic-documents.org/editions for an overview of the various editions and their (online or print) availability. 15. For this section, the author has gratefully used the original findings of Loes van Suijlekom, ‘Agrarisch of Atlantisch? De Nederlandse landbouwbelangen en het eerste verzoek van Groot-Brittannië tot toetreding tot de Europese Gemeenschap (1961-1963) (Ba thesis Utrecht University, 2010). 16. Inventaris van het code-archief van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken 1955-1964 (access no. 2.05.118) (The Hague 2009). 17. The Netherlands and European Integration, 1945-1986, www.europadocs.eu. As the original sources collected in this edition, the language of this online source collection is Dutch. 18. The Netherlands and European Integration, document no. S01380. Originally: memorandum G.E. van Ittersum, 8 August 1962, attached to a letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Council of Ministers, 14 August 1962. National Archives, The Hague (NA-NL), General Affairs AZ/AOK/KMP (2.03.01), inv. no. 2863. 19. Ibidem. Translated from Dutch. 20. Letter from secretary of the Chamber of Agriculture J.W. Biesheuvel to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, 12 July 1962. NA-NL, Foreign Affairs 1955-1964 (2.05.118), inv. no. 20732. 21. Ibidem. Translated from Dutch. 22. Coded message for Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture, no. 6512, 27 June 1962. NA-NL, Foreign Affairs 1955-1964 (2.05.118), inv. no. 27032. Translated from Dutch. 23. Coded message for the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Economic Affairs and Agriculture, no. 7688, 4 August 1962. NA-NL, Foreign Affairs 1955-1964 (2.05.118), inv. no. 27033. Translated from Dutch.

3. 1.

What is Europe For?

Peter Weilemann, Die Anfänge der Europäischen Atomgemeinschaft: zur Gründungsgeschichte von Euratom 1955-1957 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1983); Ann-Christina Knudsen, Farmers on Welfare. The Making of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2009)

284 

2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Simon Hix and Chris Lord, Political Parties in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997), pp. ix, 98. Simon Hix, Abdul Noury and Gérard Roland, Democratic Politics in the European Parliament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Karl Magnus Johansson; Peter A. Zervakis, European Political Parties between Cooperation and Integration (Baden-baden: Nomos, 2002); Amie ­Kreppel, The European Parliament and Supranational Party System. A Study in Institutional Development (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Jürgen Mittag, Politische Parteien und europäische Integration: Entwicklung und Perspektiven transnationaler Parteienkooperation in Europa (Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 2006). Gerrit Voerman, ‘From Federation to Party? The Formation of Political Parties in the European Union’, in 50 Years European Parliament: Experience and Perspectives, edited by Evangelos Chrysos (Athens: Hellenic Parliament Foundation, 2009), pp. 203-228. Voerman, ‘From Federation to Party?’, pp. 219-220. Hix and Lord, Political Parties, p. 18. Simon Hix, Amie Kreppel and Abdul Noury, ‘The Party System in the European Parliament: Collusive or Competitive?’, Journal of Common Market Studies 41:2 (2003), pp. 309-331. Since the extention of its programme, the original Eurobarometer was replaced by a Standard EB and ad-hoc surveys known as Flash EB and thematic Special EB. Eurobarometer. The Dynamics of European Public Opinion. Essays in Honour of Jacques-René Rabier, edited by Karlheinz Reif and Ronald Inglehart (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). With the exception of some early reports, the public Eurobarometer reports are available online at http://ec.europa.en/public_opinion. The dataset are stored at the German institute GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: http://www.gesis.org/eurobarometer Anja Kruke, ‘Opinion Polls’, in Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History, edited by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), pp. 106-122. Cf. Philip Aldrin, ‘From Instruments to Instrumentalization of “European Opinion”. Elements for a Historical Sociology of Community Instruments’, in A Political Sociology Approach in European Studies, edited by Jay Rowell and Michel Mangenot (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 206-224; Philip Aldrin, ‘Les Eurobaromètres entre science et politique. Retour sur la fabrique officielle de l’opinion européennes’, in L’Europe des Européens. Enquête comparative sur les perceptions de l’Europe, edited by Daniel Gaxie and Nicolas Hubé, et al. (Paris: Economica, 2011, pp. 27-48. Philip Aldrin, ‘L’Invention de l’opinion publique européenne. Genèse intellectuelle et politique et de l’Eurobaromètre (1950-1973)’, Politix. Revue des Sciences Sociales du Politique 23 (2010), pp. 79-101. Eurobarometer 1 (1974) 2.

Notes

285

15. 16.

Quoted in: Aldrin, ‘L’Invention’, p. 80. Action Plan to Improve Communicating Europe by the Commission, SEC (2005) 985 final; White Paper on a European Communication Policy, COM (2006) 35 final, 11. 17. Eurobarometer 3 (1975); Aldrin, ‘Les Eurobaromètres’, p. 15. 18. Eurobarometer 72 (2009). 19. Eurobarometer 72 (2009) – 78 (2012). Salvatore Signorelli, The EU and Public Opinions. A Love-Hate Relationship? (Paris: Notre Europe, 2012), pp. 65-66. 20. Aldrin, ‘Les Eurobaromètres’, p. 2. 21. Flash Eurobarometer 151 (2003)‚ ‘Iraq and Peace in the World’. 22. Signorelli, The EU and Public Opinion, pp. 69-70.

4. 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

From Community to Union

Wayne Sandholtz and John Zysman, ‘1992: Recasting the European Bargain’, World Politics 42:1 (1989), pp. 95-128. Gray Marks, Liesbet Hooghe and Kermit Blank, ‘European Integration from the 1980s: State-centric v. Multi-Level Governance’, Journal of Common market Studies 34:3 (1996), pp. 341-378. Elke Krahmann, Multilevel Networks in European Foreign Policy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) Diane Stone and Andrew Denham, Think Tank Traditions. Policy Research and the Politics of Ideas (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Irina Michalowitz, EU Lobbying. Principals, Agents and Targets: Strategic Interest Intermediation in EU Policy-Making (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004) Feasibility Study. Contribution to a Preliminary Draft Constitution of the European Union. Working Document (Brussels: European Commission, 2012) http://ec.europa.eu/ economy_finance/emu_history/documents/treaties/Penelope%20pdf_en.pdf. A Basic Treaty for the European Union. A Study of the Reorganisation of the Treaties (Florence: European University lnstitute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 2000); Werner Weidenfeld, Understanding the European Constitution (Gütersloh: Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2010) Center for Applied Policy Research and Bertelsmann Foundation, Treaty amending the Treaty of Nice (Gütersloh: Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2006) http://www.cap-lmu.de/publikationen/2005/vemag.php. European Court of Justice (ECJ) 26/62, NV Algemene Transporten Expeditie Onderneming Van Gend en Loos vs. Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen, European Court Report (ECR) (1963) Treaty on European Union (1992), article 128. Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (1957), preamble. ‘European Council of Copenhagen, Declaration on European Identity (14 December 1973)’, Bulletin of the European Communities 12 (1973), pp. 118-122. ‘‘European Council of Stuttgart, Solemn Declaration on European Union (19 June 1983)’, Bulletin of the European Communities 6 (1983), pp. 24-29.

286 

13. 14.

5. 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Treaty on European Union (1992), article 128. 1st Report on the Consideration of Cultural Aspects in European Community Action. COM (96) 160 final, 17 April 1996.

A Constitution for a Larger Europe?

‘From Confederacy to Federation. Thoughts on the Finality of European Integration’, Speech by Joschka Fischer at the Humboldt University in Berlin (12 May 2000). Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde, ‘The Two Sides of Euroscepticism: Party Positions on European Integration in East-Central Europe’, European Union Politics 3:3 (2002), pp. 297-304. David Marquand, Parliament for Europe (London: Cape, 1979); Simon Hix, What’s Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008); Yves Meny, ‘De la démocratie en Europe: Old Concepts and New Challenges’, Journal of Common Market Studies 41:1 (2003), pp. 1-13; Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the Emerging Europolity: Citizenship, Representation, Decision-Making (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). Andrew Moravcsik, ‘In Defense of the Democratic Deficit. Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies 40:4 (2002), pp. 603-634; Beate Kohler-Koch and Berthold Rittberger, Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union (Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Giandomenico Majone, Regulating Europe (London: Routledge, 1996). Jos de Beus, ‘Quasi-National European Identity and European Democracy’, Law and Philosophy 20:3 (2001), pp. 283-311; European Citizenship. National Legacies and Transnational Projects, ed. by Klaus Eder and Bernard Giesen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Citizenship and Governance in the European Union, ed. by Richard Bellamy and Alex Warleigh (London: Continuum, 2001); Willem Maas, Creating European Citizens (Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). See the ‘Europe for Citizens Programme 2007-2013’ by the European Commission: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/citizenship/. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization 46:2 (1992), pp. 391-425. Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘Why Comply? Social Norms Learning and European Identity Change’, International Organization 55:3 (2001), pp. 553-588. Christian Democracy in Europe since 1945, ed. by Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser (New York: Routledge, 2004); see also the special issue of the Journal of European Integration History 17:1 (2011). Ann-Christina L. Knudsen, Farmers on Welfare. The Making of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). Emma de Angelis, ‘The European Parliament’s Identity Discourse and Eastern Europe, 1974-2004’, Journal of European Integration History 17:1 (2011), pp. 103-116.

Notes

12. 13.

287

Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, article 127, paragraph 1. Amy Verdun, ‘The Role of the Delors Committee in the Creation of the EMU: an Epistemic Community?’, Journal of European Public Policy 6:2 (1999), pp. 308-328. 14. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission. European Neighbourhood Policy, strategy paper, COM (2004) 373 final (Brussels 2004). http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/pdf/strategy/strategy_paper_en.pdf (hereafter: Strategy Paper 2004). 15. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament. Wider Europe – Neighbourhood: A new framework for relations with our Eastern and Southern neighbours, COM (2003) 104 final (Brussels 2003). http://ec.europa.eu/ world/enp/pdf/como3_w4_en.pdf (hereafter: Wider Europe 2003) 16. Presidency conclusions, European Council of Copenhagen 12 and 13 December 2003 15917/02 (Brussels 2003) 7. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ ueDocs/cms_Data/docs /pressData/en/ec/73842.pdf 17. Council of the European Union, Relations with Ukraine. Draft Council report to the European Council on the implementation of the Common Strategy of the European Union on Ukraine, 15074/02 (Brussels 2002). http:// register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/02/st15/ st15074.eno2.pdf 18. Marek Cichocki, ‘European Neighbourhood Policy or Neighbourhood Policies?’, in The Black Sea region and EU policy. The Challenge of Divergent Agendas, ed. by Karen Henderson and Carol Weaver (Farnham/Burlington: Routledge, 2010); The European Neighbourhood Policy in Perspective: Context, Implementation and Impact, ed. by Richard G. Whitman and Stefan Wolff (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); European Neighbourhood Policy. Challenges for the EU Policy towards the New Neighbours, ed. by Johannes Varwick and Kai Olaf Lang (Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2007). 19. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, Non-paper with Polish proposals concerning policy towards new Eastern neighbours after EU enlargement, (Warsaw [2002]); K. Petczynka-Natecz, A. Duleba et al., Eastern policy of the EU: the Visegrad countries’ perspective. Thinking about an Eastern dimension (Warsaw 2003). 20. General Affairs and External Relations. 2463rd Council meeting. General Affairs. Brussels, 18 November 2002, 14183/02 (Brussel 2002) 1-11. http://register. consilium. europa.eu/pdf/en/02/st14/st14183.eno2.pdf 21. Wider Europe 2003, 3-4. 22. Wider Europe 2003, 9. 23. Strategy Paper 2004, 2. 24. Strategy Paper 2004, 12-13. 25. Council of the European Union, A secure Europe in a better world. European security strategy (Brussels: 2003). http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf (hereafter: ESS 2003) 26. ESS 2003, 7.



About the authors

While this book is the product of intense collaborative reflection, each author has assumed responsibility for one chronological chapter (including theory and historiography) in the latter stages of writing and editing, and for one or more thematic sections: Robin de Bruin (1. Many Roads to Europe); Karin van Leeuwen (2. The European Communities Under Construction) and the sections on the court and national archives; Carla Hoetink (3. What is Europe For?) and the sections on political parties and opinion polls; Carlos Reijnen (4. From Community to Union) and the sections on the treaties and the ECB; Liesbeth van de Grift (5. A Constitution for a Larger Europe?) and the sections on European civil servants and egodocuments; Wim van Meurs (Introduction and 6. From Crisis to Crisis) and the sections on think tanks and policy documents. Robin de Bruin (1971), Assistant Professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He lectures on Modern European History, including the History of European Integration. His current research focuses on relationships between the processes of decolonisation and European integration. He was previously a lecturer at the VU University Amsterdam and Utrecht University. Elastisch Europa. De integratie van Europa en de Nederlandse politiek, 1947-1968 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2014). Liesbeth van de Grift (1978), Assistant Professor of the History of International Relations. She lectures on the History of the European Union, now at Utrecht University and previously at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Governing the Rural in Interwar Europe, edited with Amalia Ribi Forclaz (London: Routledge, 2017); Securing the Communist State. The Reconstruction of Coercive Institutions in the Soviet Zone of Germany and Romania, 1944-1948 (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2011). Carla Hoetink (1980), Assistant Professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen specialising in the history of political institutions in the Netherlands and the EU in the twentieth century. She lectures on the Political History of European Integration. Macht der gewoonte. Regels en rituelen in de Tweede Kamer na 1945 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2018). Karin van Leeuwen (1981), Assistant Professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, where she lectures on the History of European

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Integration and Europeanization. She was previously a researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands Huygens ING) in The Hague and lecturer on EU History at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Her research focuses on the history of European (constitutional) law. Uit het spoor van Thorbecke. Grondwetsherziening en staatsvernieuwing in naoorlogs Nederland (1945-1983) (Amsterdam: Boom, 2013). Wim van Meurs (1964), Professor of European Political History at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. He was a senior researcher at the Center for Applied Policy Research at the University of Munich from 1997 to 2004. He has lectured on the origins and recent history of the European Union in both Nijmegen and Munich. His research on comparative European and EU history and politics focuses on accession and neighbourhood strategies in the EU and environmental policy. Diplomacy, Development and Defense: A Paradigm for Policy Coherence, edited with Stefani Weiss and Hans-Joachim Spanger (Wiesbaden: VSW, 2007); Prospects and Risks beyond EU Enlargement, edited by Iris Kempe (Opladen: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2003); Enlarged EU – Enlarged Neighbourhood. Perspectives of the European Neighbourhood Policy, edited with Nicolas Hayoz and Leszek Jesień (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005). Carlos Reijnen (1975), Associate Professor of East European Studies and European Studies, as well as Director of the Graduate School of the Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, lecturer at the universities of Leiden and Maastricht. He lectures on International Relations and European Integration. His research focuses on East-West relations in Europe and the EU. European Encounters: Intellectual Exchange and the Rethinking of Europe 1914-1945, edited with Marleen Rensen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014); Op de drempel van Europa: de Tsjechen en Europa in de twintigste eeuw (Kampen: Klement, 2005).

Abbreviations The list below contains all acronyms and abbreviations used in this book. An English abbreviation is provided for nearly all institutions. In some exceptional cases, the French or German original name is added in brackets. For official translations of EU terminology and abbreviations in all EU languages, see: IATE (http://iate.europa.eu/) or the EU glossary (https://europa.eu/ european-union/documents-publications/language-and-terminology_en). ACP Group CAP CARDS CFSP CIVCOM COPA COREPER CSCE CSDP DCECI DG EAEC EC ECB ECHR ECHR ECJ ECOFIN ECOSOC ECSC EDC EEA EEAS EEC EESC EFSF EFTA EIB EMI

Group of African, Caribbean and Pacific States Common Agricultural Policy Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation Common Foreign and Security Policy Committee on Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management Agricultural Association (Comité des Organisations Professionelles Agricoles) Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States (Comité des Représentants Permanents; COREPER) Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe; since 1995 OSCE Common Security and Defence Policy Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation Instrument Directorate-General of the European Commission European Atomic Energy Community (also: Euratom) European Community; until 1993 European Communities European Central Bank European Convention on Human Rights European Court of Human Rights European Court of Justice Economic and Financial Affairs Council Economic and Social Committee (also: EESC, ESC) European Coal and Steel Community European Defence Community European Economic Area European External Action Service European Economic Community European Economic and Social Committee (also: ECOSOC, ESC) European Financial Stabilization Facility European Free Trade Association European Investment Bank European Monetary Institute

292  EMS EMU ENP ENPI EP EPC EPC EPU ERDF ERP ESC ESF ESM ESPRIT ESS EU EU-ISS EUI EUMC EURATOM EUROJUST EUROPOL EUROSTAT FRONTEX GATT ICTY IGC INTERREG IPA Meda NATO OECD OEEC OMC OSCE PCA PHARE PJCC

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

European Monetary System Economic and Monetary Union European Neighbourhood Policy European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument European Parliament European Political Community European Political Cooperation European Political Union European Regional Development Fund Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program) Economic and Social Committee (also: ECOSOC, EESC) European Social Fund European Stability Mechanism European Strategic Program for Research and Development in Information Technology European Security Strategy European Union EU Institute for Security Studies European University Institute EU Military Committee European Atomic Energy Community European Union Judicial Cooperation Unit European Police Office Statistical Office of the European Union European Border and Coast Guard Agency (frontières extérieures) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Intergovernmental Conference Community Initiative for Regional Development Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance Financial instruments for the implementation of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation (Mesures d’accompagnement) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Organisation for European Economic Cooperation; since 1947 OECD Open Method of Coordination Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Partnership and Cooperation Agreements Poland and Hungary: Aid for Restructuring of the Economies Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters

Abbreviations

PSCD PSC QMV SAA SAP SEA SGP SIS TACIS TEU TFEU TTIP WEU WTO

293

Permanent Structured Cooperation in Defence Political and Security Committee Qualified Majority Voting Stabilisation and Association Agreement Stabilisation and Association Process Single European Act Stability and Growth Pact Schengen Information System Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States Treaty on European Union – Maastricht Treaty, first part of the Treaty of Lisbon Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – Treaty of Rome, second part of the Treaty of Lisbon Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Western European Union World Trade Organisation

Chronology For a chronology from the Second World War to the present day with extensive explanations and illustrations, see the EU website (https://europa.eu/ european-union/about-eu/history). Whenever relevant, one or two priority items on the agenda of a European Council have been added. For countries that have not yet become EU member states, the year of candidate status has been listed. 1923 October

Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi: Pan-Europa

1930 May

Aristide Briand: memorandum

1941 July

Altiero Spinelli: Ventotene manifesto

1946 September December

Winston Churchill: speech ‘United States of Europe’ in Zurich Founding of the Union of European Federalists in Paris

1947 March May June

Treaty of Dunkirk Founding of the United Europe Movement Proclamation of the Marshall Plan

1948 January March April April May

Entry into force of the Benelux Treaty Brussels Pact Entry into force of the Marshall Plan Founding of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation European Congress in The Hague

1949 May

Founding of the Council of Europe in the London Treaty

296 

1950 May June October 1951 February April

1952 May July-August August September

1953 March

1954 August October 1955 June July December 1956 May June

1957 March

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Schuman plan for the European Coal and Steel Community Negotiations for the European Coal and Steel Community Pleven plan for a European Defence Community

Negotiations for the European Defence Community Signing of the Paris Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community

Signing of the Treaty for the European Defence Community Entry into force of the European Coal and Steel Community Inaugural meeting of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community Inaugural meeting of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community in Strasbourg

The ad hoc Assembly presents a ‘constitution’ for a European Political Community

Blockade of the European Defence Community Treaty by the French Parliament Founding of the West-European Union in Paris Conference of Messina Spaak Committee Introduction of the European flag

Report of the Spaak Committee Negotiations on the European Economic Community and Euratom

Signing of the Treaties of Rome: European Economic Community and Euratom

297

Chronology

1958 January March May July October

1959 January 1960 January May September December

1961 July-August November 1962 January January March April April 1963 January January February July

Entry into force of the Rome Treaties Opening of the Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg Opening up of the Economic and Social Committee Conference of Stresa: Common Agricultural Policy Founding of the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg

First phase of transition to the Common Market

Stockholm Convention: creation of the European Free Trade Association Entry into force of the European Free Trade Association Establishment of the European Social Fund Founding of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, formerly the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation

Membership application by the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland First Fouchet plan for the European Political Community

Second Fouchet-plan for the European Political Community Second phase of the transition to the Common Market Introduction of the name ‘European Parliament’ by the Parliamentary Assembly Failure of the Fouchet plans Membership application by Norway

Veto by De Gaulle on United Kingdom accession Elyseé Friendship Treaty between France and Germany Judgment in Van Gend and Loos: European Court of Justice Yaoundé Convention between the European Communities and seventeen African states and Madagascar

298 

1964 July 1965 April

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Costa/ENEL judgment: European Court of Justice

Signing of the Merger Treaty of the executive organs of the European Communities

July

Empty chair crisis

1966 January January

Third phase of the transition to the single market Luxembourg compromise: end of the empty chair crisis

1967 May July November

Second application for membership by the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Norway Entry into force of the Merger Treaty Second veto by De Gaulle on United Kingdom accession

1968 July

Completion of the customs union

1969 February July December 1970 April June October October 1971 August

Raymond Barre: Memorandum on an Economic and Monetary Union Reopening of the application for membership by the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Norway The Hague Summit: Economic and Monetary Union

Signing of the Luxembourg Convention Resumption of accession negotiations with the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Norway Werner plan for economic and monetary cooperation Introduction of European Political Cooperation

End of the Bretton Woods system through the devaluation of the US dollar

299

Chronology

1972 April September October

1973 January 1974 April December 1975 February March March March June

Limitation of the currency fluctuation margins: the monetary snake Referendum in Norway Paris Summit: regional, environmental, social, energy and industrial policies.

Accession of the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland

Renegotiation of membership conditions by the new British government Decision establishing the European Council

Signing of the Lomé Convention between the European Community and 46 developing countries Inaugural meeting of the European Council Founding of the European Regional Development Fund Opening of the European University Institute in Florence

July

Membership application by Greece Founding of a European Court of Auditors

1976 January

Tindemans report: European Union

1977 March July

Membership application by Portugal Membership application by Spain

1978 July

1979 February March June

Decision of the European Council establishing the European Monetary System

Judgment Cassis de Dijon: European Court of Justice Entry into force of the European Monetary System First direct elections for the European Parliament

300 

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

September October November November December

Spierenburg Report on Reform of the European Communities Second Lomé Convention Report of the Committee of Wise Men British budget question Rejection of the first budget by the European Parliament

1981 January November

Accession of Greece Genscher-Colombo Plan: European Act

1982 February

Referendum in Greenland

1983 June December

Stuttgart European Council: European Union Agreement on the Common Fisheries Policy

1984 February June December

European Parliament’s acceptance of the draft Treaty establishing the European Union (the ‘Spinelli draft’) Fontainebleau European Council: British ‘rebate’. Third Lomé Convention

1985 March June

Report of the Dooge Commission Signing of the Schengen I agreement by France, Germany and the Benelux countries June Publication of the White Paper on completion of the internal market by the European Commission September-December Intergovernmental conference: European Act 1986 January February

Accession of Portugal and Spain Signing of the Single European Act

301

Chronology

1987 April July September

1988 January February February 1989 June July July December 1990 April May June June July July October October November December

Membership application by Turkey Entry into force of the Single European Act Strengthening of the European Monetary System by the Ministers of Finance

Edouard Balladur: Memorandum on European Monetary Union Hans-Dietrich Genscher: Memorandum on European Monetary Union Brussels European Council: Delors I Budget Package

Delor report: Economic and Monetary Union Application for membership by Austria Aid programme for Poland and Hungary (PHARE) Strasbourg European Council: Economic and Monetary Union

Extraordinary European Council in Dublin: German unification and Eastern enlargement Signing of the charter of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Dublin European Council: intergovernmental conferences Signature of the Schengen II agreement by France, Germany and the Benelux countries First stage of Economic and Monetary Union Membership application by Cyprus and Malta Reunification of Germany: East Germany part of the European Union United Kingdom’s membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism Signing of the Transatlantic Declaration by the United States and the European Community Intergovernmental conferences in Rome on Economic and Monetary Union and Political Union

302 

1991 July December 1992 February March May May June June November 1993 January May June November December

1994 January January March March March April July November December 1995 January June June June

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Membership application by Sweden Maastricht European Council: European Union

Signing of the Maastricht Treaty Membership application by Finland Signature of the Agreement for the European Economic Area Agreement on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy Referendum in Denmark Referendum in Ireland Membership application by Norway

Completion of the European internal market Referendum in Denmark Copenhagen European Council: Accession criteria Entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty, founding of the European Union Publication of the White Paper on economic growth by the European Commission

Second stage of the Economic and Monetary Union Entry into force of the European Economic Area loannina compromise Opening of the Committee of the Regions Membership application by Hungary Membership application by Poland Founding of the European Monetary Institute Referendum in Norway Signing of the European Energy Charter

Accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden Reflection group in preparation for the Intergovernmental Conference Stability Pact for Central and Eastern Europe Membership application by Romania

303

Chronology

October November November December December

Membership application by Latvia Membership application by Estonia Barcelona Declaration of the European Union and twelve Mediterranean countries Membership application by Lithuania Membership application by Bulgaria

1996 January March June December

Membership application by the Czech Republic Intergovernmental Conference for the Treaty of Amsterdam Membership application by Slovenia Dublin European Council: Stability and Growth Pact

1997 June July October December

Amsterdam European Council Publication of Agenda 2000 by the European Commission Signing of the Treaty of Amsterdam Luxembourg European Council: Eastern enlargement

1998 March March June 1999 January January March March May June December 2000 January February March

Inaugural session of the European Conference in London Accession negotiations with Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus Establishment of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt

Introduction of the euro Third stage of Economic and Monetary Union Resignation of the Santer Commission Berlin European Council: Agenda 2000 Entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe Helsinki European Council: Turkey’s candidate status

Accession negotiations with Malta, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria Intergovernmental conference European Council Lisbon: Lisbon Strategy

304 

September December December

2001 January February June 2002 January February June October 2003 February June

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Referendum in Denmark Nice European Council Proclamation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

Accession of Greece to the euro zone Signing of the Treaty of Nice Referendum in Ireland

Introduction of euro notes and coins, completion of Economic and Monetary Union Opening of the Convention on the Future of Europe in Brussels End of the European Coal and Steel Community Referendum in Ireland

Entry into force of the Treaty of Nice Thessaloniki conference: prospects for accession of the Western Balkans

September October

Referendum in Sweden Intergovernmental conference on the European Constitutional Treaty

December

European Security Strategy

2004 May December

Accession of Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia

December

Candidate membership of Macedonia Signing of the European Constitutional Treaty

2005 May May June

Introduction of the European Neighbourhood Policy Referendum in France Referendum in the Netherlands

305

Chronology

2007 January January December December

Introduction of the euro in Slovenia Accession of Bulgaria and Romania Signing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights Signing of the Lisbon Treaty

2008 January June December

Introduction of the euro in Cyprus and Malta Referendum in Ireland Membership application by Montenegro

2009 January April July October December December

Introduction of the euro in Slovakia Membership application by Albania Membership application by Iceland Referendum in Ireland Entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty Membership application by Serbia

2010 June June December

Economic strategy: Europe 2020 Founding of the European Financial Stability Facility Candidate membership of Montenegro

2011 January March December

Introduction of the euro in Estonia Adoption of the Euro Plus Pact by the European Council European Council: fiscal union

2012 January March September-October December

Founding of the European Stability Mechanism Candidate membership of Serbia Entry into force of the European Stability Mechanism

December

European Council: banking union Nobel Peace Prize for the EU

2013 January July

Entry into force of the fiscal union Accession of Croatia

306 

2014 January January March May July September

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

November

Introduction of the euro in Latvia Opening of accession negotiations with Serbia Application for membership withdrawn by Iceland European elections; Juncker Commission Association Agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine Appointment of Donald Tusk as President of the European Council and Federica Mogherini as High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Completion of the European Banking Union

2015 January March

Introduction of the euro in Lithuania Decision of the European Council to establish an Energy Union

2016 February April June

2017 March June

Membership application by Bosnia and Herzegovina Entry into force of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Kosovo Referendum on EU membership in the United Kingdom; withdrawal decision

European Commission, White Paper on the Future of Europe Opening of the Brexit negotiations

Bibliography The following bibliography contains just a small selection from the seemingly limitless corpus of literature on the European Union. The list corresponds to themes addressed in the text, but is primarily intended as an initial orientation for students writing term papers and theses. The selection is limited to English-language publications, and includes studies from various disciplines other than history, e.g. political science, law and sociology. Monographs, and to a lesser extent edited volumes, have been preferred over the numerous articles in historical and other journals (e.g. the Journal of European Integration History) or on Internet sites such as those of Réseau International de Jeunes Chercheurs and Histoire de l’Intégration Européenne (RICHIE). Except for some studies and (auto)biographies from a more distant past, only publications from the past twenty to twenty-five years have been included in the bibliography. Printed source publications are represented only to a limited extent, given the rapidly expanding availability of source material online, for example through the History of European Integration Research Society (HEIRS), the Archives of European Integration at the University of Pittsburgh and the multimedia collections at the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’ Europe in Luxembourg. These entries are also useful as a hub for institutional archives both large and small, such as the Historical Archives of the European Commission and the EU-wide archives in Florence at the European University Institute (www.eui.eu). Larger archives in particular are currently engaged in the retro-digitalisation of their collections. The EU’s extensive website (europa.eu/european-union/index_en) offers sources from the last two decades. Publications are arranged alphabetically and numbered. For thematic access, the B-numbers in the register refer to publications in the bibliography. For instance, the keyword ‘Federalism’ in the register contains a reference to Burgess’ topical monograph; the register therefore includes additional keywords such as ‘egodocuments’ and ‘theories’. For some publications, the title of the non-English original is indicated in brackets. B1. B2. B3.

A ‘Macro-Regional’ Europe in the Making: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Evidence, ed. by S. Gänzle and K. Kern (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Adler-Nissen, R., Opting Out of the European Union. Diplomacy, Sovereignty and European Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). After Lisbon: National Parliaments in the European Union, ed. by K. Auel and T. Christiansen (London: Routledge, 2016).

308  B4. B5. B6. B7. B8. B9. B10. B11. B12. B13. B14. B15. B16. B17. B18. B19. B20. B21. B22. B23. B24. B25. B26. B27. B28.

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Alter, K.J., Establishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Altiero Spinelli and the British Federalists: Writings by Beveridge, Robbins and Spinelli 1937–1943, ed. by J. Pinder (London: The Federal Trust, 1998). Anderson, K.M., Social Policy in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Anderson, P., The New Old World (London/New York: Verso, 2009). Asbeek Brusse, W., Tariffs, Trade and European Integration 1947-1957. From Study Group to Common Market (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). Åslund, A. and M. Dabrowski, Europe after Enlargement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Atikcan, E.O., Framing the European Union: the Power of Political Arguments in Shaping European Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Austermann, F., European Union Delegations in EU Foreign Policy: A Diplomatic Service of Different Speeds (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Avery, G. and F. Cameron, The Enlargement of the European Union (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). Azoulai, L., The Question of Competence in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Bache, I., S. George, et al., Politics in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Bachtler, J., I. Begg, et al., EU Cohesion Policy in Practice: What Does It Achieve? (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Baker, D. and P. Schnapper, Britain and the Crisis of the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Baldwin, R. and C. Wyplosz, The Economics of European Integration (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2015). Bange, O., The EEC Crisis of 1963. Kennedy, Macmillan, de Gaulle and Adenauer in Conflict (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Baun, M.J. and D. Marek, Cohesion Policy in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Baun, M.J., A Wider Europe: The Process and Politics of European Union Enlargement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). Baun, M.J., An Imperfect Union: The Maastricht Treaty and the New Politics of European Integration (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). Berend, I.T., The History of European Integration: A New Perspective (London: Routledge, 2016). Berglund, S., J. Ekman, et al., The Making of the European Union: Foundations, Institutions and Future Trends (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006). Best, E., Understanding EU Decision-Making (Cham: Springer, 2016). Beyond the Crisis. The Governance of Europe’s Economic, Political, and Legal Transformation, ed. by M. Dawson, H. Enderlein, et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Beyond the Customs Union. The European Community’s Quest for Deepening, Widening and Completion, 1969-1975, ed. by J. van der Harst (Brussel: Bruylant, 2007). Bickerton, Ch., European Integration. From Nation-States to Member States (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Bindi, F.M., The Foreign Policy of the European Union: Assessing Europe’s Role in the World (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2010).

Bibliogr aphy

309

B29. Boin, A., M. Ekengren, et al., The European Union as Crisis Manager: Patterns and Prospects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). B30. Borg, S., European Integration and the Problem of the State: A Critique of the Bordering of Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B31. Bozo, F., Two Strategies for Europe: De Gaulle, the United States, and the Atlantic Alliance (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001). B32. Brown, S.A., The European Commission and Europe’s Democratic Process: Why the EU’s Executive Faces an Uncertain Future (London: Springer, 2016). B33. Brugmans, H., Fundamentals of European Federalism (London: British Section of the European Union of Federalists, 1948). B34. Bulmer, S. and C. Lequesne, The Member States of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). B35. Buonanno, L., Policies and Policy Processes of the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B36. Burgess, M., Federalism and European Union: The Building of Europe, 1950-2000 (London: Routledge, 2000). B37. Calleo, D.P., Rethinking Europe’s Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). B38. Cameron, F., An Introduction to European Foreign Policy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). B39. Checkel, J.T. and P.J. Katzenstein, European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). B40. Christian Democracy in the European Union 1945–1995, ed. by E. Lamberts (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997). B41. Christian Democrat Internationalism, ed. by J-D. Durand (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2014). B42. Coffey, P., The European Monetary System: Past, Present, and Future (Stuttgart: Springer, 1987). B43. Cole, A., François Mitterrand: A Study in Political Leadership (London: Routledge, 1994). B44. Common Commercial Policy after Lisbon, ed. by M. Bungenberg and C. Herrmann (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). B45. Communicating Europe in Times of Crisis. External Perceptions of the European Union, ed. by N. Chaban and M. Holland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). B46. Comparing European Societies: Towards a Sociology of the EU, ed. by G. Bettin and E. Recchi (Bologna: Monduzzi Editore, 2005). B47. Connolly, B., The Rotten Heart of Europe: The Dirty War for Europe’s Money (London: Faber & Faber, 1995). B48. Conrad, M., Europeans and the Public Sphere: Communication Without Community? (Hannover: Ibidem Press, 2014). B49. Cooper, R., The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (London: Grove Press, 2004). B50. Copsey, N., Rethinking the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B51. Corbett, R., The European Parliament’s Role in Closer EU Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). B52. Corbett, R., The Treaty of Maastricht: From Conception to Ratification (Harlow: Longman, 1993). B53. Costa, O. and N. Brack, How the EU Really Works (London: Ashgate, 2014). B54. Courting the Common Market. The First Attempt to Enlarge the European Community, 1961–1963, ed. by R.T. Griffiths and S. Ward (London: Lothian Foundation Press, 1996). B55. Crowson, N.J., Britain and Europe: A Political History since 1918 (Oxford: Routledge, 2011).

310 

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B56. Crowson, N.J., The Conservative Party and European Integration since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2007). B57. Daddow, O.J., Britain and Europe since 1945: Historiographical Perspectives on Integration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). B58. Daddow, O.J., Harold Wilson and European Integration: Britain’s Second Application to Join the EEC (London: Routledge, 2003). B59. Davies, B., Resisting the European Court of Justice: West Germany’s Confrontation with European Law, 1949-1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). B60. Debates on European Integration. A Reader, ed. by M. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). B61. Dee, M., The European Union in a Multipolar World. World Trade, Global Governance and the Case of the WTO (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B62. Deighton, A., Building Postwar Europe: National Decision-Makers and European Institutions, 1948-63 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995). B63. Dell, E., The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). B64. Delreux, T., Environmental Policy and Politics in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). B65. Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, ed. by O. Cramme and S.B. Hobolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). B66. Dinan, D., Europe Recast: A History of European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). B67. Dinan, D., Ever Closer Union: An Introduction to European Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). B68. Dinan, D., Origins and Evolution of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). B69. Distant Voices. Ideas of Democracy and the Eurozone Crisis, ed. by L. Rye (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2013). B70. Divided Nations and European Integration, ed. by T.J. Mabry, J. McGarry, et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). B71. Documents on European Union, ed. by A.G. Harryvan and J. van der Harst (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1997). B72. Documents on the History of European Integration, ed. by W. Lipgens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985-1991). B73. Documents on the History of European Integration: The Struggle for European Union by Political Parties and Pressure Groups in Western European Countries 1945-1950, ed. by W. Lipgens and W. Loth (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988). B74. Dragneva-Lewers, R. and K. Wolczuk, Ukraine between the EU and Russia: The Integration Challenge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B75. Drake, H., Jacques Delors. Perspectives on a European Leader (London: Routledge, 2000). B76. Dûchene, F., Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994). B77. Dunphy, R., Contesting Capitalism? Left Parties and European Integration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). B78. Duranti, M., The Conservative Human Rights Revolution. European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Bibliogr aphy

311

B79. Dyson, K. and K. Featherstone, The Road to Maastricht: Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). B80. Dyson, K., States, Debt, and Power: ‘Saints’ and ‘Sinners’ in European History and Integration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). B81. Economic Crisis in Europe: What It Means for the EU and Russia, ed. by J. DeBardeleben and C. Viju (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B82. Egan, M.P., Constructing a European Market: Standards, Regulation, and Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). B83. Eijken, H. van, EU Citizenship and the Constitutionalisation of the European Union (Groningen: Europa Law Publishing, 2015). B84. El-Agraa, A.M., The European Union Illuminated: Its Nature, Importance and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B85. El-Agraa, A.M., The European Union: Economics and Policies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). B86. Elbasini, A., European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans: Europeanization or Business as Usual? (London: Routledge, 2013). B87. Ellison, J., Threatening Europe: Britain and the Creation of the European Community, 1955–1958 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). B88. Ellwood, D.W., Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, the United States and Post-War Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 1992). B89. Energy and the Environmental Challenge: Lessons from the European Union and Australia, ed. by L. Wylie and P. Winand (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011). B90. Eriksen, E.O., The Normativity of the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). B91. EU Policy Responses to a Shifting Multilateral System, ed. by E. Barbé, O. Costa, et al. (Berlin: Springer Nature, 2016). B92. Europe Is our Story: Towards a New Narrative for the European Union, ed. by D. Scott (Dublin: IIEA, 2014). B93. European Banking Union: Prospects and Challenges, ed. by J.E. Castañeda, D.G. Mayes, et al. (London: Routledge, 2016). B94. European Basic Treaties: Treaty on European Union, Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, Treaty of Lisbon, ed. by R. van Ooik and T. Vandamme (Deventer: Kluwer, 2013). B95. European Citizenship at the Crossroads: The Role of the European Union on Loss and Acquisition of Nationality, ed. by S. Carrera Nunez and G-R. de Groot (Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2015). B96. European Economic Governance and Policies: A Critical Commentary on Key Documents in Economic and Monetary Union, ed. by K. Dyson And L. Quaglia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). B97. European Integration Theory, ed. by A. Wiener, A. and T. Diez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). B98. European Integration, Processes of Change and the National Experience, ed. by S. Börner and M. Eigmüller (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B99. European Parties and the European Integration Process, 1945-1992, ed. by L. Bonfreschi, G. Orsina, et al. (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2015). B100. European Public Spheres. Politics is Back, ed. by T. Risse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

312 

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B101. European Security, Terrorism and Intelligence: Tackling New Security Challenges in Europe, ed. by C. Kaunert and S. Leonard (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B102. European Union Development: Challenges and Strategies, ed. by J. Dyduch and R. Murphy (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ASPRA, 2013). B103. European Union Enlargement: A Comparative History, ed. by W. Kaiser and J. Elvert (London: Routledge, 2004). B104. European Union History. Themes and Debates, ed. by W. Kaiser and A. Varsori (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). B105. European Union in International Organisations and Global Governance: Recent Developments, ed. by C. Kaddous (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2015). B106. European Union Politics, ed. by M. Cini (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). B107. European Union. Power and Policy-Making, ed. by J.J. Richardson (London: Routledge, 2015). B108. Europeanization and European Integration: from Incremental to Structural Change, ed. by R. Coman, T. Kostera, et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). B109. Europeanization in the Twentieth Century: Historical Approaches, ed. by M. Conway and K.K. Patel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). B110. Euro-Politics. Institutions and Policymaking in the ‘New’ European Community, ed. by A. Sbragia (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992). B111. Experiencing Europe. 50 Years of European Construction 1957–2007, ed. by W. Loth (BadenBaden: Nomos, 2009). B112. Explaining Policy Change in the European Union’s Eastern Neighbourhood, ed. by J. Langbein and T. Börzel (London: Routledge, 2014). B113. Explorations in OEEC History, ed. by R.T. Griffiths (Paris: OECD, 1997). B114. Extending Experimentalist Governance? The European Union and Transnational Regulation, ed. by J. Zeitlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). B115. Fabbrini, S., Which European Union? Europe after the Euro Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). B116. Favell, A., Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). B117. Featherstone, K., Socialist Parties and European Integration: A Comparative History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). B118. Fennell, R., The Common Agricultural Policy: Continuity and Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). B119. Fertile Ground for Europe? The History of European Integration and the Common Agricultural Policy since 1945, ed. by K.K. Patel (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009). B120. Fifty years of European Integration. Foundations and Perspectives, ed. by A. Ott and E. Vos (The Hague: Asser Press 2009). B121. Fitzgerald, M., Protectionism to Liberalisation. Ireland and the EEC, 1957 to 1966 (London: Ashgate, 2000). B122. Fligstein, N., Euroclash. The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). B123. Fransen, F.J., The Supranational Politics of Jean Monnet: Ideas and Origins of the European Community (Westport: Greenwood, 2001). B124. Freedom, Security and Justice in the European Union: Internal and External Dimensions of Increased Cooperation after the Lisbon Treaty, ed. by R.L. Holzhacker and P. Luif (New York: Springer, 2014).

Bibliogr aphy

313

B125. Freyburg, T., S. Lavenex, et al., Democracy Promotion by Functional Cooperation: The European Union and its Neighbourhood (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B126. From the Werner Plan to the EMU: In Search of a Political Economy for Europe, ed. by L. Magnussen and B. Stråth (Brussels, Peter Lang, 2001). B127. Fursdon, E., The European Defense Community: A History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1980). B128. Gallie, D., Economic Crisis, Quality of Work, and Social Integration: The European Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). B129. Garavini, G., After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South 1957-1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). B130. Gateva, E., European Union Enlargement Conditionality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). B131. Geary, M., Enlarging the European Union: The Commission Seeking Influence, 1961-1973 (New York: AIAA, 2013). B132. Geddes, A., A. Taylor, et al., The European Union and South East Europe: The Dynamics of Europeanization and Multilevel Governance (London: Routledge, 2013). B133. Geddes, A., Britain and the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B134. Geeroms, H., S. Ide, et al., The European Union and the Euro: How to Deal with a Currency Built on Dreams (Mortsel: Intersentia, 2014). B135. Genschel, P. and M. Jachtenfuchs, Beyond the Regulatory Polity? The European Integration of Core State Powers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). B136. George, S., An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). B137. George, S., Britain and the European Community: The Politics of Semi-Detachment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). B138. Gerhards, J. and H. Lengfeld, European Citizenship and Social Integration in the European Union (London: Routledge, 2015). B139. Giauque, J.G., Grand Designs and Visions of Unity: The Atlantic Powers and the Reorganization of Western Europe, 1955-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). B140. Gilbert, M., European Integration: A Concise History (Lanham: Rowman & Littlef ield Publishers, 2011). B141. Gillingham, J., Design for a New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). B142. Gillingham, J., European Integration 1950-2003: Superstate or New Market Economy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). B143. Gillingham, J.R., Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955: The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). B144. Glencross, A., Politics of European Integration: Political Union or a House Divided? (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). B145. Governing Europe’s Spaces: European Union Re-Imagined, ed. by C. Carter and M. Lawn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). B146. Grant, C., How to Build a Modern European Union (London: Centre for European Reform, 2013). B147. Grant, W., The Common Agricultural Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997). B148. Griffiths, R.T., First Constitution: The European Political Union 1952-1954 (London: Federal Trust, 2000). B149. Griffiths, R.T., Thank You M. Monnet: Essays on the history of European Integration (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014).

314 

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322 

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B347. The European Council and European Governance: The Commanding Heights of the EU, ed. by F. Foret and Y-S. Rittelmeyer (London: Routledge, 2014). B348. The European Integration from the Schuman Plan to the Treaties of Rome, ed. by G. Trausch (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1993). B349. The European Neighbourhood Policy’s Challenges, ed. by E. Lannon (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011). B350. The European Parliament. Moving toward Democracy in the EU, ed. by B. Steunenberg and J.J.A. Thomassen (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). B351. The European Union and Global Engagement. Institutions, Policies and Challenges, ed. by N. Witzleb, A.M. Arranz, et al. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015). B352. The European Union and Supranational Political Economy, ed. by R. Fiorentini and G. Montani (London: Routledge, 2015). B353. The European Union and the Member States, ed. by E.E. Zeff and E.B. Pirro (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2015). B354. The European Union as a Diplomatic Actor, ed. by J.A. Koops and G. Macaj (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B355. The European Union in Crisis: Explorations in Representation and Democratic Legitimacy, ed. by K.N. Demetriou (Cham: Springer, 2015). B356. The European Union Neighbourhood: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. by T. Cierco (London: Ashgate, 2013). B357. The European Union: Democratic Principles and Institutional Architectures in Times of Crisis, ed. by S. Piattoni (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). B358. The European Union: From Jean Monnet to the Euro, ed. by D.J. Kotlowski (Athens Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000). B359. The European Union’s Broader Neighbourhood. Challenges and Opportunities for Cooperation beyond the European Neighbourhood Policy, ed. by S. Gstöhl and E. Lannon (London: Routledge, 2015). B360. The European Union’s Non-Members. Independence under Hegemony? ed. by E.O. Eriksen and J.E. Fossum (London: Routledge, 2015). B361. The Europeanization of European Politics, ed. by C. Bretherton and C. Mannin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B362. The Expanding European Union: Past, Present, Future, ed. by J. Redmond and G.G. Rosenthal (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998). B363. The External Relations of the European Union: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by A. Benvenuti, M. Guderzo, et al. (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2015). B364. The Field of Eurocracy: Mapping EU Actors and Professionals, ed. by D. Georgakakis and J. Rowell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B365. The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory 1945–1992, ed. by A.S. Milward, F.M.B. Lynch, et al. (London: Routledge, 1993). B366. The Great Catalyst: European Union Project and Lessons from Greece and Turkey, ed. by B. Temel (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014). B367. The Green Pool and the Origins of the Common Agricultural Policy, ed. by R.T. Griffiths, R.T. and B. Girvin (London: Lothian and Bloomsbury, 1995). B368. The History of the European Union: Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity 1950-72, ed. by W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, et al. (London: Routledge, 2009). B369. The History of the Idea of Europe, ed. by K. Wilson and J. van der Dussen (London: Routledge, 2002).

Bibliogr aphy

323

B370. The International Responsibility of the European Union: European and International Perspectives, ed. by M. Evans and P. Koutrakos (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2013). B371. The Making of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, ed. by F. Laursen (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2012). B372. The Netherlands and the Integration of Europe 1945-1957, ed. by R.T. Griffiths (Amsterdam: NEHA, 1990). B373. The New European Community: Decisionmaking and Institutional Change, ed. by R.O. Keohane and S. Hoffmann (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991). B374. The New Member States and the European Union: Foreign Policy and Europeanization, ed. by M. Baun and D. Marek (London: Routledge, 2013). B375. The Palgrave Handbook of National Parliaments and the European Union, ed. by C. Hefftler, C. Neuhold, et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B376. The Palgrave Handbook of Social Democracy in the European Union, ed. by J-M. De Waele, F. Escalona, et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). B377. The Road to a United Europe: Interpretations of the Process of European Integration, ed. by M. Rasmussen and A-C.L. Knudsen (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009). B378. The Road to the European Union, ed. by J. Rupnik and J. Zielonka (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). B379. The Treaty on European Union (TEU): a Commentary, ed. by H-J. Blanke and S. Mangiameli (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). B380. The Treaty on European Union, 1993-2013: Reflections from Maastricht, ed. by M. de Visser and A.P. van der Mei (Mortsel: Intersentia, 2013). B381. The UK Challenge to Europeanization: The Persistence of British Euroscepticism, ed. by K. Tournier-Sol and C. Gifford (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). B382. Thody, P.M.W., An Historical Introduction to the European Union (London: Routledge, 1997). B383. Thomson, R., Resolving Controversy in the European Union: Legislative Decision-Making before and after Enlargement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). B384. Tomann, H., Monetary Integration in Europe: Studies in Economic Transition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). B385. Tömmel, I., The European Union: What It Is and How It Works (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). B386. Trachtenberg, M., A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). B387. Transnational European Union. Towards a Common Political Space, ed. by W. Kaiser and P. Starie (London: Routledge, 2005). B388. Transnational Networks in Regional Integration. Governing Europe 1945-83, ed. by W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, et al. (New York: AIAA, 2010). B389. Trenz, H-J., Narrating European Society: Toward a Sociology of European Integration (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016). B390. Tsoukalis, L., In Defence of Europe: Can the European Project Be Saved? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). B391. Ungerer, H., A Concise History of European Monetary Integration: from EPU to EMU (Westport: Quorum Books, 1997). B392. Urwin, D.W., The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration since 1945 (London: Routledge, 1995). B393. Vanthoor, W.F.V., A Chronological History of the European Union, 1946-2001 (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002).

324 

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B394. Varwick, J. and K-O. Lang, European Neighbourhood Policy: Challenges for the EU policy Towards the New Neighbours (Opladen & Farmington Hill: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2007). B395. Verdun, A., The Euro: European Integration Theory and Economic and Monetary Union (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). B396. Visions, Votes, and Vetoes: The Empty Chair Crisis and the Luxembourg Compromise Forty Years on, ed. by J-M. Palayret, H.S. Wallace, et al. (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006). B397. Waele, H. de, The European Union’s Emerging International Identity: Views from the Global Arena (Leiden: Brill, 2013). B398. Wall, S., A Stranger in Europe: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). B399. Walter Hallstein The Forgotten European? ed. by W. Loth, W. Wallace, et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998). B400. Walters, W., J.H. Haahr, Governing Europe: Discourse, Governmentality and European Integration (London/New York: Routledge, 2005). B401. Wartime Plans for Postwar Europe, 1940–1947, ed. by M. Dumoulin (Brussels: Bruylant, 1995). B402. Weatherill, S., Law and Values in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). B403. Weiler, J.H.H., The Constitution of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). B404. Wendler, F., Debating Europe in National Parliaments: Public Justification and Political Polarization (London: Springer, 2016). B405. Werts, J., The European Council (London: John Harper Publishing, 2008). B406. What Form of Government for the European Union and the Eurozone? ed. by F. Fabbrini, E. Hirsch Ballin, et al. (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2015). B407. Whitman, R.G. and S. Wolff, The European Neighbourhood Policy in Perspective: Context, Implementation and Impact (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). B408. Widening, Deepening and Acceleration: The European Economic Community, 1957–1963, ed. by A. Deighton and A.S. Milward (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999). B409. Wilkes, G., Britain’s Failure to Enter the European Community, 1961-63: The Enlargement Negotiations and Crises in European, Atlantic and Commonwealth Relations (London: Routledge, 1997). B410. Young, J.W., Britain and European Unity, 1945-1999 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). B411. Zelikow, P. and C. Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). B412. Zielonka, J., Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). B413. Zielonka, J., Explaining Euro-Paralysis: Why Europe is Unable to Act in International Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998).

Index B-numbers refer to titles in the bibliography. Absorption capacity: 178 Accession negotiations: 81, 90, 107−10, 120−21, 221, 224−27, 231, 262, 269 Acquis, harmonization of the: 221, 225−27, 276 Adenauer, Konrad: 37−42, 73, 78 Adonnino report: 204 Afghanistan: 115, 231, 275 Africa: 24, 34, 63, 82, 89, 218, 220, 229−31, 268, 276, B159 Agenda 2000: 162, 184 Agricultural policy: 51, 73−77, 81−92, 107, 109, 115, 118−120, 133, 142, 146, 192, 243, B118, B119, B147, B192, B367 Airbus: 234 Albania: 183, 220, 225−27, 271–72 Albright, Madeleine: 231 Algeria: 42, 79, 277 Amato, Giuliano: 213 Amsterdam, Treaty of (1997/1999): 162, 181–84, 230, B225, B338, B380 Andorra: 218 Annan Plan: 222 Armenia: 225, 228, 269 Ashton, Catherine: 214−15 Assad, Bashar al: 61, 73, 268 Association agreement: 178, 224, 226, 229, 257, 262, 268, 272 Asylum seeker, policy: 104, 275−76 Austria: 61, 79, 162, 164 Azerbaijan: 228 Bailout: 236−37, 273 Balkans, see South-East Europe Balladur Stability Pact: 222 Baltic Soviet Republics, Baltic States: 13, 120, 174, 178, 180, 221−22 Bank crisis: 88, 247 Banking union: 247, 251−54, 262, B93 Barcelona Process: 229 Barroso, José Manuel: 56 Belarus: 220, 228−29 Belgium: 25, 30−38, 42, 49, 55, 59, 69−72, 80, 87, 171−72, 182, 214, 278 Benelux: 30−31, 183, 217 Beyen plan: 39−40 Beyen, Wim: 39−41 Biesheuvel, Barend: 116 Big Bang Enlargement: 163, 176, 223 Biographies: 18, 57−58, 64, B43, B75, B76, B205, B229, B246, B399 Black Monday: 172 Blair, Tony: 183, 230 Bologna Process: 233

Border policy: 13, 43, 68, 181 Bosnia-Herzegovina: 175, 183, 194, 226 Brandt, Willy: 85, 88 Bretton Woods system: 29, 88 Brexit: 9, 13−14, 220, 262−265, 274, 277−78, B16 Briand Memorandum, Briand Plan: 20, 24 Briand, Aristide: 14, 20, 24, 28, 34 British budget issue: 118 British Commonwealth: 91, 109, 218 British-French Union: 59, 63 Brugmans, Hendrik: 28, 44 Brussels, Treaty of (1948): 182 Budget, Budget discipline: 12, 51−53, 78, 82, 86−91, 114, 118−26, 132, 146, 168−70, 176, 229− 37, 249−54, 266, 273 Buitenen, Paul van: 185 Bulgaria: 165, 178−80, 208, 219−223, 264 Cameron, David: 277 Canada: 23, 32, 275 Candidate states: 154, 157, 159, 180, 199, 211, 217, 220−29, 259, 263−64, 271−72 Carr, Edward H.: 95 Cassis de Dijon judgment: 102−03, 129 Catalonia: 265, 278 Caucasus: 220, 260 CERN: 234 Charlie Hebdo: 275 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU: 104, 186, 201, 208, 210, B308 Check, Jeffrey: 244 China: 232, 267−68 Chirac, Jacques: 183 Churchill, Winston: 29, 32, 59−62 Citizens’ initiative: 11, 214, 239, 241 Citizenship of the Union: 53, 206, 241, 245, B39, B48, B78, B83, B92, B95, B122, B154, B162, B176, B203, B242, B270, B285, B289, B294, B298, B340, CIVC0M: 230 Civil rights: 276 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) see Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) Civil war: 175, 229−32, 268 Coalition of the willing: 232 Co-decision procedure: 136, 167, 171, 173, 181, 246 Cohesion fund, Cohesion policy: 168−69, 176, 184, 187, 192, 206, 274, B1, B15, B19, B238 Collège de l’Europe: 54 Colombo, Emilio: 130−31, 137 Colonies: 22, 24, 29, 32, 35, 42, 69, 79, 82, 118, 120, 218−22, 289, B129, B199 Comenius program: 233 Comitology: 197 Committee of the Regions: 173, 193, 197, B278

326 

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Committee of Wise Men: 115−17 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), see agricultural policy Common foreign and security policy (CFSP): 181, 199, 209, 214, 219, 230−31, 256, B11, B21, B28, B38, B127, B157, B175, B189, B237, B310, B343, B354, B363, B412, B413 Common Market: 24−25, 40−43, 67−68, 75−78, 84, 102−03, 113, 123, 130, 134, 139, 144−45, 154, 163, 168, 172, 197, 202−04, 217−20, 232, 235, 265, 271, 274, B8, B26, B54, B82, B121, B193, B221, B224, B255, B333, B384, B408 Common Assembly: 35−37 Communism: 11, 23−31, 37−38, 42, 44, 47, 54, 68, 149, 163−165, 172, 176−180, 189, 221, 223, 238, 263 Conceptual history: 17 Concours: 53−57 Conditionality: 217, 272, B130 Conflict management: 16, 56, 113, 231, 256−57, 198, 224−26, 230−31, 260, 268, 273, B29, B237 Congo: 261 Constitution: 37−39, 59, 131, 154, 157−59, 186, 200−01, 209−15, 238−39, 266, B83, B172, B308, B310, B311, B317, B380, B403 Constitutional court: 101, 278 Constructivism: 16, 141, 238−244 Consultation process: 125−26, 136−37, 157, 171−72, 176 Containment: 29 Convention on the Future of Europe: 208, 210, 262, B230 Convergence criteria: 170, 249, 273 Cooperation procedures: 126 COPA: 75, 291 Copenhagen Criteria: 162, 177−79, 220−27, Coreper: 43, 74−78, 230 Costa/ENEL judgement: 100−01, 202 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard: 20, 23−26, 61 Council of Europe: 20, 32−39, 54, 72, 163, 186, 194, 205, 211, 233, 259, B196, B347 Court of Auditors: 50, 86, 136, 171, 212 Court of Justice: 12, 18, 32, 37, 50, 57, 70−72, 76−77, 99−04, 125, 186, 202−03, 211, 247, 252−54, B4, B59 Cresson, Édith: 185 Crimea: 271 Crisis management, see conflict management Croatia: 174−75, 183, 208, 225−228, 271 Cultural policy: 187, 203−07, 245 Customs union: 25−26, 31, 39−43, 48, 67−77, 81, 84, 92, 102, 134, 168, 220−24, B26 Cyprus, north Cyprus, Cyprus question: 179, 208, 221–22, 225, 238, 252, 269, 273, 278 Czech Republic: 175, 178−80, 208, 221 Czechoslovakia: 37, 85, 165, 174, 178 Dayton, Convention of (1995): 175, 230 Debt crisis: 247−54, 263, 266, 274

Declaration on European Identity: 204 Decolonisation: 35, 42, 47, 82 Deepening: 10−12, 67, 84−86, 90−92, 113−14, 117−22, 127, 133, 137, 215−20, 238, 272, 275 Defence community: 10, 20, 38, 40, 61, 172, 267 Delors, Jacques: 15, 132−34, 137−41, 157, 164, 167−70, 179, 186, 190, 195, 209−10, 232, 244, 248, B75 Democracy: 16, 28, 63, 102, 142, 154−56, 177−78, 193, 197, 204, 209−10, 220, 223−26, 229, 233, 238−41, 245, 256−59, 265, 269−71, 276, B3, B32, B51, B165, B167, B172, B176, B183, B198, B208, B209, B218, B232, B261, B270, B278, B281, B286, B294, B295, B350, B404 Democratic deficit: 10, 17, 46, 197−98, 211, 214, 239−41, 265, 274, B69, B194, B232, B329, B355 Democratic legitimacy, Democratization: 16, 46, 83, 123−26, 137, 147, 155, 210, 214−16, 226−29, 238, 241, 257, 259, B125 Denmark: 25, 32, 53, 66−67, 79−81, 84, 86, 90−92, 122, 125, 135, 148, 169, 172, 174, 177, 218, 232, 250 Differentiated integration: 114, 118, 128, 216−21, 237, 250, 272, 279, B211 Dinan, Desmond: 145, 194−95 Disintegration: 13−14, 163−64, 263−64, 277−78 Donetsk: 271 Dooge Committee: 133−37 Dooge, James: 133 Double hatting: 200, 231−32, 267 Draghi, Mario: 251 Duisenberg, Wim: 251 Dumoulin, Michel: 98, 145 East Germany, see German Democratic Republic (GDR) East Timor: 231, 260 Eastern bloc: 40, 120, 263 Eastern Europe: 68, 154, 162−63, 170−72, 175−80, 185, 191, 220−28, 231, 238, 259 EC0FIN: 116, 250, 253 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU): 87−89, 168, 175, 195, 209, 218, 232−37, 247−53, B42, B79, B126, B134, B151, B224, B333, B384, B391 Economic crisis, Economic policy: 22−25, 59, 69, 78, 87−91, 92, 113−14, 120, 139−41, 146, 155, 236, 247, 249, 252−54, 266, 273 Economic government: 236−37 ECOSOC: 72, 76 Edinburgh, Convention of (1992): 174 EEC Treaty, see Treaty of Rome EESC: 72, 136, 171, 212 Egodocuments: 57−61, 64 Elysée Treaty (1963): 124 Empty chair, crisis of the: 66, 82−86, 93, 97, 99, B220, B223, B265, B396 Energy policy: 92, 115, 199 Energy union: 262, B89 Enhanced cooperation: 11, 215−16, 219, 264

Index

Enlargement: 12, 56−57, 67, 80−81, 84, 86, 90, 92, 113−22, 132, 135, 162−63, 176−91, 209, 216−24, 228, 240, 256, 260−61, 264, 267−272, B12, B20, B54, B130, B131, B132, B152, B153, B163, B178, B209, B244, B269, B288, B328, B362, B374 Environmental policies: 92, 138, 154, 202, 223, B64, B89, B103, B309, B367 EPS0: 53 Erasmus programme: 127, 233 ESPRIT: 129 Estonia: 178−79, 208, 221−22, 225, 235, 270 EU Institute for Security Studies (EU-ISS): 200, 230 EU Military Committee (EUMC): 230 Euratom: 20, 37, 42−44, 68, 71−72, 78−79, 146−48 Euro bonds: 237 Euro crisis: 12, 16, 209, 217, 233−239, 263−66, 273−74, B69, B320, B344 Euro group: 235, 253, 266 Euro Plus Pact: 236, 254 Euro: 12, 16, 87, 140, 154, 168, 177, 208−09, 216−22, 227, 233−39, 247, 250−54, 263−66, 273−76, 279, B134, B151, B224, B384, B391 Eurobarometer: 18, 153−60, 239, 267 Euromaidan: 270 Europe 2020: 232−33 European Banking Union: 247, 251−54, 262 European Central Bank (ECB): 199, 236−37, 247−54, 266 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC): 20−21, 26, 35−52, 59−60, 68−72, 78, 93, 98−00, 123, 126, 147, 156, 163, 167, 172, 189, 192, 202−03, B143, B325 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR): 33, 104, B78, B197 European Court of Human Rights: 186 European Defence Community (EDC): 38−41, B148, B161, B258, B304 European Economic Area (EEA): 168, 176−77, 227, B11, B152, B343, B354, B363, B412, B413 European elections: 124, 214, 222, 241, 246, 262, 273 European External Action Service (EAAS): 56, 214, 232 European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF): 236−38 European Free Alliance: 148 European Free Trade Association (EFTA): 66, 79, 168, 176, 181, 227, B152, B409 European Fund for Regional Development (EFRD): 121 European Investment Bank (EIB): 69 European Monetary Institute (EMI): 250 European Monetary System (EMS): 112, 128, 131−33, 248, B42, B151, B224, B255, B384, B391 European Monetary Unit (Ecu): 128, 248 European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI): 229

327 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), see Neighbourhood Policy European Parliament (EP): 11−12, 37, 43, 50, 70−72, 82, 86, 104, 113−116, 124−27, 130−32, 136, 138, 147−53, 156, 166−67, 170−71, 179, 185−86, 192−97, 204−07, 210, 212−218, 239, 241, 245−46, 250, 267, 275 B40, B41, B51, B99, B117, B165, B183, B187, B200, B213, B261, B286, B287, B293, B321, B350, B375, B376, B404 European Payment Union (EPU): 31 European People’s Party (EPP): 148−53 European Political Community (EPC): 39−40, 66, 89, 115, 135, 172, B148, B304 European Political Cooperation (EPC): 138 European Security Strategy (ESS): 260, B101 European semester: 273 European Social Fund (ESF): 69, 121 European Stability Mechanism (ESM): 236, 254, 273 European University Institute (EUI): 200 Europeanization: 11, 16, 50, 223, 241, 269, 275, 278−79, B86, B108, B109, B114, B125, B153, B163, B209, B294, B295, B360, B374 Europol: 171, 227 Euroscepticism, Euroscepticists: 10, 12, 149−51, 159, 170, 184, 199, 216, 236, 239−41, 265, 273−79, B150, B208, B296, B326, B381, B404 Eurosclerosis: 103, 113, 139 Eurostat: 235 Eurozone: 218−19, 234−37, 250−53, 272−73, B69, B406 Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM): 248−49 Exit procedure: 170, 214, 248 Expansion: 15, 25, 29, 43, 52, 56, 67, 81, 92, 97, 126, 130−31, 138, 154, 157, 175, 178, 185−187, 190, 197, 220 External border: 82, 86, 183, 200, B30 External relations: 11, 39, 56, 182, 200, 214−15, 224, 231, 256, 269−70 Extradition: 226, 278 Eyskens, Mark: 171 Failed states: 260−61 Farage, Nigel: 277 Faroe Islands: 90, 218 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) see Germany Federalism: 9−11, 15−16, 26−28, 32−33, 39−40, 44−47, 62, 79, 94, 98−01, 114, 123, 131, 137, 166, 170, 173, 193, 246, B5, B33, B36, B279, B401 Federation of Liberal and Democratic Parties: 148 Federation of Socialist Parties: 148 Fidesz: 276 Finalité: 210 Financial stabilization, Financial policy, Financial transfer: 208, 236, 254, 273 Finland: 162, 176 Fiscal union: 168, 208

328 

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Fischer, Joschka: 11, 210 Fontainebleau: 119, 133−35 Fouchet plan: 66, 80, 89 Fouchet, Christian: 80, B304 France: 22−23, 30−35, 38−43, 59−62, 66, 69−71, 74−75, 79−89, 96−99, 107−08, 116−20, 124−25, 128, 132, 145, 148, 164−166, 169−72, 178−85, 195, 212, 217, 221, 230, 234, 250−52, 273, B31, B222, B223, B315, B332 Franco, Francisco: 120 Free trade zone: 41−42, 78−79, 82, 168, 229 Frontex: 276 Frozen conflict: 271 Functionalism: 12, 16−17, 33, 35, 44−46, 49, 79, 93−98, 123, 129, 141, 144, 163, 171−72, 189−93, 209, 240−43, 246, 254 Galileo: 234 Gaulle, Charles de: 33, 60−63, 67, 78−85, 94, 99−100, 107, 124, 189, B18, B31, B205, B223, B246 Gaullism: 98−99, 148 General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): 74, B44, B206 Genocide: 175, 229, 269 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich: 130, 137, 178 Genscher-Colombo Plan: 131, 137 Georgia: 230 German Democratic Republic (GDR): 38, 85, 165 German Question: 28−29, 38 Germany: 23−34, 37−40, 53, 59, 62, 66, 71−75, 80, 85−89, 92, 102, 118−19, 124, 128, 132, 138, 164−66, 169−72, 178−85, 195, 217, 230, 234, 237, 248−52, 266, 273−76, B315, B411 Gillingham, John: 145 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry: 124, 211 Globalization: 11, 47, 188, 191−94, 232, 264, B61, B105, B206, B334, B335 Gorbachev, Michael: 166 Governance: 16−17, 27, 98, 120, 122, 141, 146, 163, 187−194, 241, 246, 253, 264, 271, B209, B400 Greece: 81, 112–13, 117−21, 128, 135, 168, 172, 223−24, 235−38, 252−53, 270, 273−78, B366 Greenland: 90, 122, 218, 277 Greens: 148 Grexit: 274 Grillo, Beppe: 273 Gulf War: 174 Haas, Ernst: 45, 93−94, 147, 242 Habsburg, Otto von: 165 Hague, Congress of The (1948): 20, 32 Hague, summit of The (1969): 66, 85−90 Hallstein, Walter: 43, 52, 73, 83−84, B399 Harmonization: 22, 41, 68, 78, 87−88, 103, 135, 221, 224−25, 273 Havel, Václav: 179−180 Heath, Edward: 90−91 Helsinki Headline Goals: 183, 230, 267 Herzog, Roman: 210

High Authority: 12, 34−37, 41, 43, 49, 51, 78, 98, 100, 147, 167, 189, 202, B325 High Representative: 56, 181, 198−00, 214−15, 224, 230−32, 256−62, 267 Historiography: 14−17, 44−50, 93, 96−99, 105, 139, 145, 169, 187, 238, 246, B104, B141, B142, B216 Hitler, Adolf: 26−27, 34, B234 Hix, Simon: 151, 240 Hoffmann, Stanley: 94−98 Hollande, François: 230 Human rights: 32−33, 37, 104, 176−77, 186, 190−91, 194, 204, 211, 229, 259, 269−70 Hungary: 13, 165, 175−80, 208, 221, 225, 252, 266, 276 Iceland: 184, 227, 264, 272 Icesave: 227 ICTY: 226, 272 India: 60, 232 Indochina: 24 Industrial policy: 92, 127−30 Infringement proceedings: 276 Institutionalism: 17, 188−91, 195 Instrument for Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation (DCECI): 229 Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA): 229 Intergovernmental conference: 135, 166, 180, 203, 209 Intergovernmentalism: 11−12, 16−17, 32, 46, 93−98, 123, 132, 139−47, 189, 194, 211, 242−43, 266 Internal market: 103, 119−20, 131−38, 145, 166−68, 177, 183, 206, 233−34, 247 Iran: 160 Iraq: 230−32, 269 Ireland: 32, 66−67, 80−81, 84−91, 218, 252, 273, B121 Islam: 225, 268−69, 274−75 Isoglucose case: 125 Israel: 89, 160, 228 Italy: 32, 35, 40, 69−71, 89, 120, 128, 135, 145, 149, 182, 185, 218, 232, 235, 238, 252, 273, 276 Jenkins, Roy: 128, 248, B259 Johnson, Boris: 277 Judt, Tony: 145 Juncker, Jean-Claude: 262 Kadi judgment: 104 Kaiser, Wolfram: 50, 195 Kaliningrad: 228 Kennedy, John F.: 74, 81 Keohane, Robert: 242 Kinkel, Klaus: 181 Kinnock, Neil: 52 Knudsen, Ann-Christina: 146 Kohl, Helmut: 132−35, 164, 166, 169, 181 Kolko, Gabriel: 48 Korea: 38, 40, 160

Index

Kosovo: 180−84, 194, 223, 226−27, 230−31, 262, 271−72, 275, 278 Kreisau Circle: 27 Kuchma, Leonid: 258 Kwasniewski, Aleksander: 224 Lampedusa: 275 Latvia: 178−80, 197, 208, 221−22 League of Nations: 23−28 Liberal intergovernmentalism (LIG): 96−98, 139−47, 194, 242−43 Liberal International: 147 Libya: 160, 229 Liechtenstein: 184, 218 Life Long Learning Program: 233 Lindberg, Leon: 45 Lipgens, Walter: 17, 47−48 Lisbon Agenda: 208, 232−33 Lisbon, Treaty of (2007/2009): 56, 104, 174, 198, 201, 207, 209, 212−16, 231, 256, B3, B186, B204, B277, B371, B380 Lithuania: 178−80, 208, 221, 228 Lomé, Convention of (1975): 82 Ludlow, N. Piers: 99, 145 Lugansk: 271 Luns, Joseph: 107, 110 Luxembourg, compromise of (1966): 66, 97, 98, 117, 135, B396 Luxembourg: 25, 30−38, 51, 55, 71, 87, 98−99, 116, 124, 159, 170, 182, 235 Maastricht, criteria of, see convergence criteria Maastricht, Treaty of (1992/1993): 85, 103, 150, 162−95, 203−07, 213−15, 244, 248−50, 267, B21, B52, B79, B225, B235, B379, B380 Macedonia: 174, 223−24, 227, 230−32, 272−73 Macmillan, Harold: 80−81, 90 Mali: 230 Malta: 179, 208, 221 Mansholt, Sicco: 75−76, 84 Marjolin, Robert: 73, 115 Marshall Plan, -aid: 20, 30−32, 44, 48, B170, B190, B307 Marshall, George: 30 Martens, Wilfried: 138−39 May, Theresa: 277 Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification: 219 Meda program: 229 Mediterranean region: 120−22, 168, 221, 228−29, 252, 267, 275, 276 Merger treaty: 66, 78, 141, 203 Mesić, Stjepan: 226 Messina, Conference of (1955): 20, 41, 142 Middelaar, Luuk van: 97−99 Middle East: 9, 68, 115, 224, 229, 264, 267, 269, 276 Migration policy: 104, 199−00, 264 Milosević, Slobodan: 180, 183, 225 Milward, Alan: 17, 48−50, 142, 145, 242 Mitrany, David: 45

329 Mitterrand, François: 132−35, 164, 166, 169, 187, B43 Mladić, Ratko: 272 Mogherini, Federica: 262 Moldova: 220, 228−31, 262 Mollet, Guy: 41−42 Monaco: 218 Monetarism: 87, 249 Monetary union: 9, 66, 87, 90, 128, 139, 162−66, 169−74, 178, 181, 186, 188, 195, 203, 243, 247, 250, 253−54 Monnet program: 34, 205 Monnet, Jean: 12, 33−41, 45−52, 59−64, 67−68, 76, 79, 98, 114−16, 134, 142, 193, 205, 209−10, B76, B123, B180 Monnet-Salter-Amery-Memorandum: 61 Montenegro: 227, 272 Moravcsik, Andrew: 140−46, 194−95, 241−43 Morgenthau, Hans: 95 Morocco: 228−29 Mortgage crisis: 252, 272−73 Multilayered governance, Multilevel governance: 17, 98, 141, 146, 187−94, 246, B25, B114, B173, B198, B247, B406 NATO: 38, 40, 79−81, 84, 130, 175, 179−82, 194, 231, 268−71, B297 Negative integration: 118, 134, 218 Neighbourhood policy: 228−29, 256−61, 224, 228, 256−59, B20, B74, B112, B125, B178, B209, B288, B349, B356, B359, B394, B407 Neofunctionalism: 44−49, 93−98, 189−93 Neo-institutionalism: 17, 189−91, 195 Neo-liberalism: 243−44 Neorealism: 16, 95, 140, 242−44 Netherlands: 25, 30−32, 35−43, 59, 69, 71, 80, 87−88, 102, 106−28, 118, 138, 165, 172, 182, 197, 212, 218, 226−27, 248, 273, 275, B160, B172, B372 Neutrality: 28, 38, 91, 155, 158, 172, 176−77, 194, 202, 213, 227 New Neighbours Initiative, see Neighbourhood policy Nice, Treaty of (2001/2003): 103, 135, 143, 162−64, 171, 174, 184−87, 209−10, 215, 219, 239, B380 Non-governmental organisations (NGOs): 196, 199, 243, 260, 264, B232, B322, B329, B388 North Africa: 218, 220, 229, 268, 276 Norway: 25, 32, 66, 79−81, 84, 86, 90−92, 176−77, 184, 218, 227, 232, 272, B152 Nouvelles Equipes International: 147 Nye, Joseph: 242 Oder-Neisse border: 166 Oil crisis: 14, 92, 95, 113, 115, 119, 130, 139−40 OPEC: 140 Open Method of Coordination (OMC): 219, 233 Opinion poll: 153−56 Opt-out: 174, 177, 218−20, 250, 265, 277 Orange Revolution: 224, 270 Orbán, Viktor: 276

330 

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE): 89, 176, 194, 259−60 Oslo, Convention of (1930): 25, B299 Ouchy, Convention of (1932): 25, 31 Palestine: 89, 231, 259 Pan-Europe: 20, 23−26, 61, 147, 165 Papandreou, Andreas: 121 Paris, summit of (1972): 93 Paris, Treaty of (1951/1952): 20, 35−36, 39, 123, 136, 141, 144, B174, B190, B348 Parliamentary Assembly: 32−33, 72, 123−26, 147, 246 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA): 228 Partnership for Peace: 175 Patten, Chris: 260 Pax Europeana: 199, 227 Penelope Project: 201 Permanent Representative: 43, 73−76, 83 Permanent Structured Cooperation (PSCD): 216, 220, 267 Petersberg tasks: 182−83, 231, 268 Pillars: 103−04, 171, 173, 181, 213, 218−19, 265−67 Pleven Plan: 20, 38, 61 Pleven, René: 38, 61 Poidevin, Raymond: 98 Poland and Hungary Assistance for Reconstruction of Economy (PHARE): 162, 165, 177 Poland: 13, 26, 54, 115, 165−66, 175−80, 208, 219−21, 258−59, 264, 266, 276 Political and Security Committee (PSC): 230 Pompidou, Georges: 85, 88, 91 Popular vote, see referendum Populism: 12, 238−40, 265, 273−74, 279, B296 Portugal: 79, 112−13, 117−21, 128, 168, 185, 235, 250, 252, 273−74 Prodi, Romano: 185, 201, 227 Puigdemont, Carles: 278 Putin, Vladimir: 268−71 Qualified majority (QMV): 70−71, 83−84, 130, 135, 138, 144, 185, 209, 216, 220, 236 Realism: 17, 93, 95 Realpolitik: 143, 279 Rebate: 112, 119−21, 132, 169 Reconstruction: 30, 35, 48, 60, 165, 232, 260−61, 268 Referendum: 39, 91, 122, 169, 174, 177, 201, 212−13, 218, 222, 227, 240, 262, 265, 269−72, 275, 277−78, B176, B245 Reflection group: 180−81 Refugees, Refugee crisis, Refugee camps: 12, 16, 200, 263−70, 273−76, B242 Regional policy, Regional development: 92, 115, 122, 126, 137, 168, 206, B1, B238, B337 Relaunch: 10

Renationalization: 216, 241 Revolution: 224, 269−70 Right of initiative: 126, 239, 241 Risse, Thomas: 242 Romania: 165, 178−80, 208, 219−23, 264 Rome, Treaties of (1957/1958): 15, 20, 42−43, 67−77, 81−86, 92−93, 97−01, 113, 121−25, 129, 133−36, 139−44, 163, 167−68, 173, 202−04, 213, 218, 233, 246, B123, B174, B190, B348 Rompuy, Herman Van: 214, 236 Roosevelt, Franklin D.: 29 Rougemont, Denis de: 44 Royal Institute of International Affairs: 61, 199 Ruhr area, International Authority for the Ruhr (IAR): 34−35, B143 Rule of law: 154, 177, 204, 220, 223, 228−29, 240, 256−58, 265, 269−71, 276, B402 Russia: 12, 23, 176−80, 222−24, 228−29, 263−72, B74 Saarland: 34 Saddam Hussein: 160 Saint Malo, Convention of (1998): 183 Saint-Simon, Henri: 21−23 Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira: 120 Salter, Arthur: 60−61 San Marino: 218 Sanctions: 101, 104, 191, 231, 234, 236, 254, 268, 271 Santer, Jacques: 15, 179, 185 Sarkozy, Nicolas: 224, 230 Schengen area, Convention of Schengen: 112, 181−84, 217−19, 227, 264−65, 276−78, B116, B302 Schmitter, Philippe: 93−94 Schumacher, Kurt: 38 Schuman plan: 20, 34−35, 59, 79, 141, B63, B174, B339, B348 Schuman, Robert: 34−35, 45, 79 Science and Technology Policy: 92, 233 Scotland: 265, 278 Security policy: 38, 56, 114, 130, 133−35, 163−64, 181−83, 187, 198−99, 230, 264, 267, 279 Separatism: 198, 265, 278 Serbia: 175, 180−83, 223, 227, 262, 272 Single European Act (SEA): 103, 113, 126, 136−42, 163, 166, 195, 215, 244 Slovakia: 178−80, 208, 221, 228, 238, 278 Slovenia: 174−75, 178−79, 208, 221, 226, 228, 235 Snake in the tunnel: 88, 128, 248 Soames, Christopher: 110 Sochi, Olympics: 271 Social Democratic Party of Europe (PES): 151−53, B117, B213, B321 Social policy: 69, 78, 89, 92, 134, 138, 168, 174, 203, 232, B6, B320 Socialist International: 147 Solana, Javier: 182, 230 Solange I, ruling: 102

Index

Solidarność: 115 Somalia: 160 Source editions: 106−09, B60, B71, B72, B73, B94, B157, B204, B291, B305, B324 South Africa: 89 Southeast Europe: 13, 172, 174−75, 183, 194, 208, 220, 223−29, 260, 264, 267−68, 276, 303−04, B132, B268, B328 Southern Europe: 13, 113, 120−21, 137, 209, 228, 273−75 Soviet Union, Soviet republics: 23−30, 38, 41, 47, 79, 85, 96, 115, 120, 163−66, 172−76, 223, 228−29, 256, 264, 267 Spaak Committee: 41, 133 Spaak, Paul-Henri: 41, 72 Spain: 112−13, 117−21, 128, 149, 168, 185, 235, 250−52, 258, 273−74, 277−78 Speer, Albert: 26 Spierenburg, Dirk: 98 Spill-over: 17, 45−49, 55, 76, 93, 141−43, 167, 190, 254, 265 Spinelli, Altiero: 32, 44−45, 131, 137, B5, B401 Srebrenica: 175, 229 Stability and Growth Pact (SGP): 234−36, 253−54 Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe: 226 Stabilization and Association Process and Agreements: 226, 262, 272 Stalin, Joseph: 29−31, 34, 38, 40 State bankruptcy, state crisis: 235−37, 274, 277 Stock market crash: 24 Straw, Jack: 258 Structural funds: 225, 274 Subsidiarity: 27, 173, 193, 205, 211, 214, 275, B3, B261, B286, B375, B404 Suez crisis: 41 Sweden: 25, 32, 57, 79, 162, 176−77, 218, 250, 258, B152 Switzerland: 79, 176−77, 184, 186, 218, 227, 264, 272, B152 Syria: 12, 160, 264, 268−70, 275 Syriza party: 273 Szász, André: 170 Tacis: 229 Terrorism: 11, 104, 171, 256, 259−61, 264−65, 268, 275, B101 Textbook: B66, B67, B68, B85, B103, B104, B106, B111, B140, B141, B142, B185, B216, B219, B236, B239, B280, B327, B368, B392 Thatcher, Margaret: 12, 118−19, 134, 166, 187, B398 Theories: B97, B155, B156, B262, B300, B306, B313, B373, B395 Think tank: 18, 155, 196−01, 255−58, 261 Thorn, Gaston: 116 Tindemans report: 112, 114−17, 130, 204, 233 Tindemans, Leo: 92, 114−17

331 Tories: 149 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP): 264 Transnistria: 259 Treaties: B94, B379 Treaty on European Union (TEU): 173, 213 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU): 213, 236 Trichet, Jean-Claude: 251 Truman doctrine: 29, 32 Truman, Harry S.: 29 Trump, Donald: 263 Tsipras, Alexis: 273 Tudjman, Franjo: 225−26 Turkey: 12−13, 31, 81, 162, 220−26, 263−72, 276, B366 Tusk, Donald: 262 Two plus four (1990): 166 Ukraine, eastern Ukraine: 12, 220, 224, 228−29, 258, 262, 268−72, 275, B74, B112 Unemployment: 77, 90, 120, 132, 139, 232, 272, 274 Union of European Federalists: 28, 32, 40, B279 Unionism see intergovernmentalism United Kingdom (UK): 22−25, 32, 38, 42, 55−61, 66, 78−92, 95, 107−08, 110, 113, 118, 124−25, 128, 133, 135, 138−39, 148, 159, 164−74, 177, 182−86, 195, 199, 214, 218−20, 227, 230, 236−37, 248, 250, 277−78, B2, B5, B16, B18, B55, B56, B57, B58, B63, B87, B133, B136, B137, B150, B170, B188, B222, B223, B233, B259, B319, B326, B381, B398, B409, B410 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP): 277 United Nations (UN): 28, 33, 89, 104, 177, 222 United States of America (USA): 22−24, 27−32, 35−42, 45−48, 74, 79, 84, 92, 110, 115, 129, 166, 172−76, 182, 194, 199, B31, B139, B170, B190, B290 Van Gend and Loo’s ruling: 66, 76, 100−02, 202 Vatican City: 218 Verheugen, Günther: 179 Visa liberalisation, Visa freedom: 220, 227−31, 272 Visegrád States: 178 Wallonia: 275 Waltz, Kenneth: 95−96, 242 Warsaw Pact: 40, 172−74, 177 Wendt, Alexander: 242, 244 Werner Plan, Werner report: 87−88, 128, 248, B126 Werner, Pierre: 87−88 West Germany, see Germany Western Balkans, see Southeast Europe Western European Union (WEU): 40, 182−83, B297

332 

The Unfinished History of European Integr ation

White Paper: 134−35, 167, 232, 262, 267 Wider Europe, see Neighbourhood Policy Wilson, Harold: 84, B58 World Trade Organization (WTO): B193, B206

Yaoundé, Treaty of (1963): 82 Yellow and orange card: 214, 239, 275 Yugoslavia Tribunal: see ICTY Yugoslavia: 163−64, 175, 180, 225, 264, 271