Speaking Notes With Émile Noël on the Administration of Europe

Extract

No one, friend or foe, of the European Community could deny that its emergence, growth and consolidation in a very brief time as a ready-made administration, with all the powerful institutions it comprises, has been one of the most impressive achievements of modern political imagination and organizational skill. In Brussels, in Luxembourg, in Strasbourg, institutions appeared almost overnight created by the Treaty of Rome, the names of which inspire such contrary feelings in Europe and in the world at large: the European Court of Justice, the European Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee; and last but not least, the European Commission, the most controversial of all these institutions, the most hated or the most admired, precisely because people believe and know that the Commission is the motor of this extraordinary development in European political history.