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Relaunching the European Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Roy Pryce
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Extract

THE OUTCOME OF THE FONTAINEBLEAU MEETING OF THE European Council in June marked the end of one phase in Western Europe's search for greater unity, and opened another – and potentially more positive – period.

The agreement reached after several years' painful search at last secured a number of long-overdue adjustments to the basic compact between the Community's present ten members, and removed the obstacles to the entry of Spain and Portugal. At the same time it opened up a new agenda for the future. The crucial problems which the current and prospective members of the Community now have to face will no longer be those which have dominated the headlines over the past five years – reform of the CAP, increase of budgetary resources and the UK's contribution to the budget. The central issues will be those concerned with how to develop further the complex of relationships between this group of countries so that their developing union can serve them better and become more effective. Many proposals to achieve this are already Fontainebleau to a new Spaak-type committee makes clear, several of the existing members now seek to make this the beginning of a period as constructive and as decisive as that which in the mid-1950s led to the relaunching of the Six and the signature of the Rome treaties.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1984 , pp. 486 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

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References

1 See, for instance, Towards European economic recovery in the 1980s, report presented to the European Parliament by Albert, Michel and Ball, Professor R. J., Luxembourg, 08 1983;Google Scholar Report on European institutions, presented by the Committee of Three to the European Council, Brussels, October 1979; and Proposals for reform of the Commission of the European Communities and its services, report by an independent review body under the chairmanship of Mr Dirk Spierenburg, Brussels, September 1979.

2 European Union, Report by Mr Leo Tindemans to the European Council, Bulletin of the European Communities, Supplement 1/76. For a discussion of this episode, see Schneider, Heinrich and Wessels, Wolfgang (eds), Auf dem Weg zur Euro‐paischen Union?, Bonn, Europa Union Verlag, 1977.Google Scholar

3 A new precedent was set by the Danish and Greek governments which insisted that their reservations on a number of issues should be marked by asterisks and footnotes in the published text. Previous disagreements had been decently hidden from view in separate, confidential minutes.

4 See also Neville‐Jones, Pauline, ‘The Genscher‐Colombo proposals’, Common Market Law Review, 12 1983;Google Scholar and Weiler, Joseph H. H., ‘The Genscher‐Colombo Draft European Act: the politics of indecision’, Revue d’Integration Européenne/Journal of European Integration, vol. vi, Winter‐Spring 1983.Google Scholar

5 The first volume of his autobiography gives a vivid portrait of this period of his life, up to 1943. See Spinelli, Altiero, Come ho tentato di diventare saggio. 1. 10, Ulisse, Bologna, II Mulino, 1984.Google Scholar See also article by Burgess, Michael, ‘Federal Ideas in the European Community: Altiero Spinelli and “European Union”, 1981‐84’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 19 No. 3, Summer 1984, pp. 339–47.Google Scholar

6 Text published by the European Parliament. I am grateful to the Nuffield Foundation for a grant which enabled me to follow the discussions in committee and plenary session which led to its approval.

7 For further details, see Richard Corbett, ‘The European Parliament’s proposal for a Treaty on European Union’, paper presented at a workshop of the European Consortium of Political Research, Salzburg, Spring 1984.

8 Such a scenario is also implicit in the Parliament’s own project, though not in the form originally proposed by Spinelli. He had suggested that the new Union should automatically come into existence once the treaty had been ratified by a majority of the member states of the Community whose population represented two‐thirds of the total of the Ten. This formula was designed to enable it to go ahead on the basis of the original Six. The text finally agreed is less explicit, leaving it to a conference of those governments which ratify to decide what to do.

9 The confused scramble in which the European Council concluded its meeting is reflected in the fact that only part of the published conclusions were discussed and agreed by the participants themselves. The others ‐ including those relating to the two ad hoc committees ‐ were drafted and issued on the authority of the presidency.