ABSTRACT
The major thesis of this book is that the establishment and development of the European Community can only be assessed and understood in the context of both the wider international environment and the domestic economics and politics of actual and potential member states. The process of integration was a specific European response to the external context – issues of war and peace, the German problem and the then new bipolar world. Subsequent developments within the Community have been a function of the normal maelstrom of political ideas and concepts, but the key decisions to extend the process of integration have always been based on realism and practical politics. Successive governments of France and the Netherlands – two founder members of the Community – have not differed from successive governments of Britain and Denmark – notorious Eurosceptics – in making so-called ‘national interest’ a first priority in their involvement in international issues in general and European construction in particular. The difference is that the former, unlike the latter, have normally seen the development of European integration and the processes of supra-nationalism as a quintessential part of that national interest.
