ABSTRACT
From the mid-1970s, it had been clear that the Commission had ambitions to take over competence in external relations: it had also been clear from that point that the Member States, including those who were later in the vanguard of liberalizations, were opposed to the loss of important foreign policy sovereignty over the negotiation of bilateral ASAs. By 1990, the Commission’s formal achievements in this sphere were meagre, amounting to Regulations 69/494 on progressive standardization and 80/50 on consultation procedures.3 There were a host of reasons for the opposition which had restricted the Commission to such paltry gains. Not all states subscribed to all of them, and the importance they attributed to each varied and changed over time, but collectively they amounted to a formidable obstacle to the progress of the Commission’s agenda.
