ABSTRACT
At the outset of the 1980s, critics of the European Council claimed it was ill-prepared to negotiate technical issues and insisted that the British budget dispute proved incompetence. By 1988, the Delors Plan taught the opposite lesson. The European Council skillfully negotiated a maze of inter-linkages, resolving numerous difficult distributional issues from grain production thresholds to a revised system of funding the Community. The ability to negotiate complex details was in part owing to the presence of national delegations of key experts. It was also owing to politicians seasoned in Community bargaining. United in their aims, European politicians and Eurocrats enabled the close working relationship between the Council and Commission to flourish. European elites made decisions about Europe with confidence. They believed they knew what was best for European citizens and that they were representing citizens' interests, perhaps in that order.
