The New European Community; European Community: The Building Of A Union
In the first volume, first-rate observers and participants provide a highly useful account of the changes that have taken place in the European Community, largely in the context of the Single European Act. Separate essays describe, inter alia, the EC Council, the "democratic gap" (for example, the degree to which "pooled sovereignty" has diminished accountability) and the European Court of Justice. Peter Ludlow's chapter on the European Commission and its role under Jacques Delors in giving European institutions a strong new impetus is particularly valuable. Introductory efforts to find theories to account for new realities are a bit cumbersome. The John Pinder volume is a concise and valuable short history of the Community, with a prescription for a "neo-federalist" future.
Related
The Paris summit of the heads of the nine member-governments of the European Communities last October presented another in a long series of theatrical non-events that have come to characterize international politics in Western Europe. To be sure, the final declaration of the meetings paid lip-service to a list of central problems that now confront the EC group: the need to coördinate economic and monetary policies and to establish communal regional, social, energy, environmental and industrial policies; and finally the desirability of creating institutional structures for the development of common policies toward the outside world. But the vague final reference to the transformation of the current institutions into a "European union" by the end of this decade was an attempt to camouflage continued political divisions among the nine and the paralysis of each of their governments.
"Deficit" seems to be the word for Europe these days. The Community of the Nine, so we are told, has a democratic deficit, a social deficit, a deficit of visionary power and, most noticeably, a deficit of unified political will in world affairs. It is hard to deny that there is a great deal of truth to such jeremiads. The Community does indeed find itself in the awkward position of being neither here nor there. Its member-states no longer possess a number of important political instruments; collective tools have not yet been fashioned. Clearly, the evolution of joint political institutions has not reached the point where they match the problems in the world.
If ratified, the new EU constitution will change the way the union works. It cannot take effect unless approved by all 25 members, but in only one country -- the United Kingdom -- do polls show that a majority oppose the document. Still, a rejection there would throw Europe into a constitutional crisis. And it could ultimately harm transatlantic relations as well.
