ABSTRACT
When political scientists write about the European Community, they often describe the impressive process of European integration since 1957. But the same authors could also tell a second story emphasising the difficulties, setbacks and as yet unachieved steps of shaping an integrated Europe and its identity. Certainly, these two stories about the European Community are not mutually exclusive; they merely feature different sides of the same process. In this paper I am more interested in the second story and the tendencies which point to the fragile and tentative character of EC political development (Gottweis 1998).
