INTRODUCTION

The politics of European integration is a fascinating and complex subject. The unique mixture of international organisation and transnational polity that is the European Union (EU, the Union) does not lend itself to easy classification in traditional academic categories. Moreover, the last two decades have seen an amazing rate of change in the structures, processes and competences of the EU. Indeed, since the Treaty on European Union (TEU) was signed at Maastricht in 1992, there have been two more intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) dedicated to changing the EU’s founding treaties (Amsterdam, 1997; Nice, 2000), and a Convention on the Future of Europe, whose task was to prepare yet another round of treaty change. In the coming year, despite the failure to ratify the Draft Constitution (DC) produced by the Convention, there may yet be a further new treaty. The days when the EU could be written off as an irrelevance are long gone.