The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration Since 1945 (The Postwar World) by Derek W. Urwin

Author:Derek W. Urwin [Urwin, Derek W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317892519
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-09-19T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Revival of Ambition

While the European Community had made steady, if slow, progress throughout the 1960s in implementing some of the provisions of the Treaty of Rome, for example on tariffs and the common agricultural policy, by the end of the decade there was a widespread feeling that new stimuli were needed to prod the organisation into more effective activity. It was the Hague summit meeting of December 1969 which was credited with generating a renewed sense of ambition. The summit not only opened the way to enlargement of the Community, it also debated and provided guidelines on the initiation and development of policies, especially on how closer political cooperation and economic union might be achieved. The discussions on advancement within the EC that were set in motion by the government leaders of the Six took place over the next few years simultaneous with the negotiations between the EC and the four applicant states. Obviously, the potential members of the Community followed these discussions very closely, as they would be affected by them, indeed bound by them if their findings were implemented before enlargement. To some extent, this factor lay behind the urgency that pervaded the Hague summit. The desire was not just to get the EC moving again, but to place it firmly on a particular path of development that could not be blocked or diverted when enlargement did occur. This period of exploration can be said to have ended with the next two summit meetings, in Paris in 1972 and Copenhagen in 1973. That in Paris also marked the beginning of a new phase since, in anticipation of their countries’ formal entry into the EC in January 1973, the government leaders of the applicant states were also in attendance. While the EC would have variable success during this period in seeking political cooperation and a variety of policy objectives, it was the question of economic integration which increasingly dominated as the international economic outlook steadily darkened.

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