Analysts and observers of social and political change sometimes have difficulty separating enthusiasms from science. This has been particularly the case in the brief history of European integration. The high hopes of the initial common market years gave way to numerous worries in the 1970s. This moment was followed by renascent European energy, led by Commission activism, around the single market and Maastricht treaty. Many observers then concluded that Europe's growing pains had given way to forwards movement, a judgement that deeply marked scholarly thinking. By the mid-1990s, however, it seemed that this might not be the case. As time went on, it became clearer that what had been greeted as a golden age was really a moment of transition toward significant changes in the EU's constitution that brought their own problems. This essay briefly discusses the golden age and the less golden transition that followed.

From Eurosclerosis to Euro-optimism

By the late 1970s, many observers had written off the EC as a noble but stagnating experiment. Europe's postwar boom had ended in high inflation, low growth, and high unemployment, leading member states to protect their national interests in EC decision-making and erect non-tariff barriers threatening the common market. The European Monetary System (EMS), designed to align currencies and avoid competitive devaluations, had instead revealed the Deutschmark's power and spawned member state discontent. The early 1980s then brought “Eurosclerosis”, with the British blocking EC decision-making to win reductions in their budgetary contribution and France's “Mitterrand experiment” crashing and burning.

France's new-found desire for different EC directions and Helmut Kohl's ascension to the German chancellorship renewed Franco-German collaboration, however. The 1984 Fontainebleau European Council reduced the UK's budgetary contribution and brought the British back into the fold, agreed on enlarging to Spain and Portugal, and led to the appointment of Jacques Delors as president of the Commission.

Having been a Euro-parliamentarian and Mitterrand's minister of the economy after 1981, Delors had in-depth knowledge of the challenges. A progressive Catholic “social liberal,” he was familiar with the EC's many unenacted reform plans, aware of the changes underway in the global economy, in touch with progressive business interests, and, above all, convinced that the EC had to renew itself. In his initial speech to the European Parliament in January 1985, Delors proposed a new initiative to build a single market: a “space without borders.”