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The Politics of the European Communities: The Confederal Phase

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Abstract

In the Confederal phase of integration in the European Communities since 1969, governments on the one hand have been confirmed as essential actors because of the way in which decisions are taken and because of their reaction to the growing range of interdependencies among member states. On the other hand, they are compelled to enter into alliances with other governments and with other actors within the state: they have lost some of their traditional powers and authority, as nongovernmental actors have increased theirs; the Commission of the European Communities reflects these changes in abandoning its claim to be a European government in embryo. Consequently, governments tend to oscillate, in their policies toward each other, between advanced schemes for integration and the reassertion of their separate interests.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , April 1975 , pp. 336 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1975

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References

1 The Eurocrats (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press 1966)Google Scholar.

2 For a useful account of Neo functionalist ideas, see Pentland, Charles, International Theory and European Integration (London: Faber and Faber 1973)Google Scholar.

3 For a preliminary account of the Confederal phase, see Taylor, Paul, “The Common Market and the Forces of History” Orbis xvi (Fall 1972), 743–59Google Scholar.

4 For an account of the powers of the Commission, see Pryce, Roy, The Politics of the European Community (London: Butterworths 1973), 55–64Google Scholar.

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18 See President Ortoli's Introduction to the Sixth General Report of the Communities (Brussels: European Communities Information Service, February 1973), 4Google Scholar.

19 In this area, a special role for the Commission is foreseen in the making c “parallel legislation,” a notion which has been developed in the context of the Con munities by Otto Kahn-Freund.

20 See Noel, Emile, How the European Community's Institutions Work, Communii Topics 38 (London: European Communities Information Service 1972)Google Scholar.

21 Coalition governments tend to reflect the kind of agreements which parties ca make between themselves in the Assembly: to subject ministers in Brussels to contro by an inter-party committee is not so very different from what already happens at home. Ministers in the British parliamentary system, and in the French Fifth Republic, however, would be unused to receiving instructions from any formally constituted all-party committee.

22 Communiqué of the Meeting of the Heads of State or Government at The Hague, December 1 and 2, 1969 (Brussels: European Communities Information Service)Google Scholar, par. 13.

23 Ibid., par. 5.

24 Ibid., par. 8.

25 Ibid., par. 9.

26 Ibid., par. 15.

27 Mally, Gerhard, The European Community in Perspective: The New Europe, the United States, and the World (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath 1973), 196–98Google Scholar.

28 Treaty Amending Certain Budgetary Provisions … as presented to Parliament, January 1972, Cmnd. 4867, 8–9.

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31 Communique of the Summit Conference (in. 17), par. 7, Preamble.

32 Ibid., par. 1, Preamble.

33 Ibid., par. 15.

34 Ibid., par. 2.

35 The Commission produced a number of suggestions for detailed improvemen in the work of the Assembly. See Communication to the European Parliament (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, May 30, 1973)Google Scholar, Com. (73) 999.

36 In a public lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science, in May 1974, Rosecrance argued that one of the consequences of interdependence was the placing of some of the goods or personnel of one state on the territory of other states. These could be compared with “hostages,” which increased in numbers as interdependence increased, and their possession could be exploited by the host country against the “donor” country. A similar argument is developed in his International Relations: Peace or War? (New York: McGraw-Hill 1973), 291–92Google Scholar.

37 Pladoyer fur die Europdische Union (Munich: Piper Verlag 1973)Google Scholar. Dahrendorf does not distinguish between the older style of Functionalism of Mitrany and its derivatives, particularly Neofunctionalism as developed in the 1960's by such scholars as Ernst B. Haas. Those who advertise the “necessary logic” of political union, within the Commission and outside it, are influenced more by Neofunctionalism, although it is not suggested that this was the intention of the Neofunctionalist theorists. The “necessary logic” approach was the result of an uncritical adaptation for purposes of political strategy, by those involved with the European Communities, of the Neofunctionalists' scholarly account of the ways in which a regional political system might be described and explained. For an analysis and critique of both approaches, see Groom and Taylor (fn. 10).

38 Dahrendorf (fn. 37), 86.