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The European Community and the state: assumptions, theories and propositions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

Students of the European Community in the early 1990s cannot but be struck by an apparent paradox. On the one hand, pressures towards an increasing centralization of arrangements under the heading of political and monetary union seem to have increased, and are frequently linked in public discussion with the concept of federalism. On the other hand, a number of members, most obviously Spain, Portugal and Greece, even the new Germany, are obviously using the Community to develop a sense of their own identity as separate states, and, although the British have been most prominent in opposing federalism, no member government has shown any inclination in speciic terms to abandon its sovereignty. This paradox is hard to understand and is perhaps too easily dismissed with the retort that the Community is sui generis, or that the supporters of further integration have simply not understood its constitutional implications, as the Bruges Group has argued.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991

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References

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22 For instance the British Government sought to protect its position as overseer of applications to the structural funds of the EC from local authorities and other organizations in Britain, and, indeed, appeared to be using EC disbursements not, as had been intended, to increase the size of available funds (the principle of Additionality) but rather as an alternative to what would otherwise have been available from the British Treasury.

23 The rhetoric of the Thatcher administration regarding the EC frequently implied that the motives of the partners were either foolish or dishonourable. Particularly noteworthy, however—indicative of an attitude though not directly about the EC—was the Prime Minister’s statement when a guest of President Mitterand at the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution in Paris in July 1989, that this was not much to celebrate and that in any case the English thought of it first. A distinguished English historian, Christopher Thome, commented in The Guardian, Saturday, 15 July that this had made him ashamed to be British: Thatcher’s comments had been impertinent and wrong in fact.

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35 As on 25 October, 1989. This was the lead front page story in The Guardian, 26 October, 1989.

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