ABSTRACT
The EU’s institutional architecture is uniquely hybrid, combining both intergovernmental and supranational aspects, a legacy of the founding bargain which had sought to reconcile quite different views of European integration within the Community’s institutional architecture. The prospect of an enlargement, whereby six states would account for some three-quarters of the population, was bound to complicate these institutional arrangements. As Hughes sees it, ‘until now the EU has managed successfully, despite occasional tensions, to reach an institutional and organisational balance that took account of both sovereignty and size’. Whereas an enlarged EU of 27 states was bound to raise ‘serious challenges as to how to re-engineer that balance’.1 Negotiations on these matters stalled after tense exchanges at the Biarritz and Nice European Councils, and subsequently at the Seville Council in June 2002.2 Yet the issue remained on the table. Reforming the institutions so as to improve their capacity for efficient decision-making was one of the objectives agreed at Laeken; indispensable if the EU is to adjust to a historic enlargement.
