ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to provide answers to three essential questions. First, in what way has the EU evolved? Second, why has it had this particular developmental trajectory? And third, how can the current stage in the EU’s evolution be characterised? The argument of the chapter is that the EU’s development has been indelibly marked by conflict and difficult collaboration, but has nonetheless reached the point at which it constitutes a novel transnational polity. This polity has been meshed, or ‘fused’ (Wessels 1997) with its member states, but has not replaced them. This is largely because the EU has been primarily viewed by its member states as a tool to be used in solving otherwise intractable problems, rather than as the product of idealism. Thus, the increasing recourse to the EU as a device for the making of public policy has provoked the ‘Europeanisation’ of the member states. It has locked them together, both vertically (with the EU structures and processes) and horizontally (with each other). The chapter is in three parts, with a section devoted to each of the three questions raised at the beginning of this paragraph.
