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The Future of the European Community: A Strategy for Enlargement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WIDENING AND DEEPENING HAS been a recurrent theme since the foundation of the Community, when Britain refused to join in taking what the Schuman declaration, which launched the European Coal and Steel Community in May 1950, called ‘a first step in the federation of Europe’. When Britain sought membership in 1961, Jean Monnet, who had drafted the Schuman declaration, got his Action Committee for the United States of Europe to affirm that the British would be joining, not just the Community as it then stood, but ‘the economic and political union which is in the process of formation’; and the Committee called -for the establishment of a European Reserve Union as ‘the first step’ towards the goal of a European currency. Both the widening to include Britain and the deepening in the direction of a union were vetoed by President de Gaulle. But both projects outlasted him; and, when British membership was once again considered after his departure in 1969, the French government devised the formulation that widening must be accompanied by ‘completion’ and ‘deepening’.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1992

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References

1 Declaration by Robert Schuman. French Foreign Minister, 9 May 1950. For an impression of the British attitude, see Michael Charlton, The price of Victory, London, BBC, 1983, ch. 4.

2 Action Committee for the United Slates of Europe: Statements and Declarations, London, Chatham House and PEP, 1969, pp. 61–2.

3 See Tsoukalis, Loukas, The Politics and Economics of European Monetary Integration, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1977, pp. 88–9Google Scholar.

4 Eurobarometer; Public Opinion in the European Community, No. 36, Dec. 1991, Brussels, Commission of the EC, Tables 28, 32, 55, 57, 58.

5 Eurobarometer, Trends 1974–1991, April 1992, Table B7.

6 Anna Michalski and Helen Wallace, The European Community: The Challenge of Enlargement, European Programme Special Paper, London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992, p. 6.

7 Downing Street Press Statement of 2 October 1977, cited in Loukas Tsoukalis, The Europian Community and its Mediterranean Enlargement, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1981, p. 153.

8 Maclay, Michael, Multi‐Speed Europe? The Community beyond Maastricht, London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992, p. 14. Google Scholar

9 This is analysed in more detail in John Pinder, The Community after Maastricht: How Federol?, special issue of New European Quarterly Review, Bradford, MCB University Press, 1992.

10 See Michalski and Wallace, op. cit., pp. 13–16; Vlad Constantinesco, Jean‐Victor Louis, Otto Schmuck, Jacques Vandamme, Wolfgang Wessels, Institutional Adaptations Necessary for an Enlarged Community, Brussels, Bonn, Trans European Policy Studies Association, June 1992; Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, on the structure and strategy for the European Union with regard to its enlargement and the creation of a Europe‐wide order, Rapporteur: Mr Klaus Hänsch, PE 152.242/fin., European Parliament, 21 May 1992.

11 Michalski and Wallace, op. cit., p. 62.

12 ‘Draft Opinion of the Committee on External Economic Relations’, in Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, op. cit., p. 32.

13 Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, op. cit., p. 18.

14 Michalski and Wallace, op. cit., p. 16.

15 Ferdinand Mount, The British Constitution Now: Recovery or Decline?, London, Heinemann, 1992, pp. 86–90.

16 Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, op. cit., p. 16.

17 Some are outlined in ibid., pp. 20–21; the citation is From p. 20.

18 Shils, Edward, ‘The Virtue of Civil Society’, Governmental and Opposition, Vol. 27, No. 1, Winter 1991, p. 93 Google Scholar.

19 Wallace, William, ‘From Twelve to Twenty‐Four? The Challenges to the EC Posed by the Revolutions in Eastern Europe’, in Crouch, Colinand Marquand, David (eds), Towards Greater Europe? A Continent without an Iron Curtain, special issue of The Political Quarterly, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1992, p. 45. Google Scholar

20 Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs, op. cit., p. 24. A number of ideas on the subject are considered in pp. 24–7 of the report.

21 ‘Draft Opinion of the Committee on External Economic Relations’, in ibid., p. 34.