The imposing structure of European laws, institutions, and policies has been erected on the basis of a few operational principles that have remained mostly implicit, but nevertheless have shaped the political culture of the European Union. These principles – which taken together form what may be called the operational code of the EU – are not mentioned in official documents, nor discussed in the academic literature, but I submit that it is impossible to understand the current predicament of the European project – the EU's legitimacy crisis and the growing alienation of the citizens from the European institutions – without starting from them. Arguably the most important of these implicit operational principles says that integration has priority over all other competing values, including democracy. Hence the monopoly of legislative initiative granted to the non-elected European Commission – a sacrifice of basic principles of representative democracy on the altar of integration. The rationale of this rule, the key element of what came to be called the Community Method, will be explained in later chapters. A second principle enjoins EU decision-makers to follow, wherever possible, the strategy of the fait accompli – the accomplished fact which makes opposition and public debate useless. This was, according to insiders, Jean Monnet's approach: ‘since the people aren't ready to agree to integration, you have to get on without telling them too much about what is happening’ (Pascal Lamy, cited in Ross 1995: 194).