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The Effect of the Enlargement of the EEC on the Institutional Evolution of the Community1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

SIX MONTHS AGO THE EFFECT OF THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE Community after one year seemed to be a purely academic subject. But soon afterwards, a chain of events and of setbacks led to the state of weariness and of profound uncertainty in which the Community finds itself today.

To restrict oneself, in these circumstances, to a purely institutional balance-sheet would be an empty exercise. How convincing or even useful is it to say that, in general, the institutions functioned almost normally in 1973 when through lack of political will or spontaneity they neither obtained the wished-for results nor supplied the answers expected by European public opinion? When there is no agreement on a minimum of common orientations or on the background of a common strategy, the institutional content of the Community loses its meaning. Not seldom national constitutions, when deprived of popular support, have seemed to be at the mercy of the slightest upheaval. The same thing could happen to a European constitution.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1974

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Footnotes

1

This article is based on a paper presented to the Colloquium of the Institute of European Studies at the Free University of Brussels on 29 March 1974. It was prepared with the assistance of M. Henri Etienne, Chief Counsellor, and M. Giusseppe Ciavarini-Azzi, Chief Administrator to the General Secretariat of the European Commission.

References

Footnotes

1 This article is based on a paper presented to the Colloquium of the Institute of European Studies at the Free University of Brussels on 29 March 1974. It was prepared with the assistance of M. Henri Etienne, Chief Counsellor, and M. Giusseppe Ciavarini-Azzi, Chief Administrator to the General Secretariat of the European Commission.