ABSTRACT
The essential political objective of the Treaty of Rome had been spelled out in its preamble: to achieve ‘an ever closer union among the European peoples’. Earlier chapters have traced how during the first decade of operation progress on this political front was limited and painful, with de Gaulle and the issue of enlargement as stumbling blocks. It was the Hague summit of 1969 which prepared the ground for further advances, with its momentum and enthusiasm carrying through to the Paris summit of 1972. By the time of enlargement the EC had, through its adoption of the Davignon Report, accepted a framework for European Political Cooperation that was to bear some immediate results. As for political movement on the domestic front, the capstone of progress was to be EMU, with the commitment by the member states to a transformation of ‘the whole complex of their relations into a European Union before the end of the present decade’.
