ABSTRACT
In the European Community agreement on common goals has frequently been reached only after long-drawn-out negotiations and carefully cobbled-together compromises. But the original aim of the 1957 Treaty of Rome – that all obstacles which impeded the free movement of goods, capital and services, such as insurance and banking, within the Community of 360 million people should be lifted – had still not been entirely met in the early 1990s. The Europe of the twelve members of the Community was still fissured by customs frontiers and blocked by mountains of paper forms as well as hidden obstructions. Nevertheless, the three major continental West European nations – Germany, France and Italy – backed the drive for closer union. Britain was more reluctant to hand over control to the Commission in Brussels, whose president from 1985 was the former French minister of finance, Jacques Delors. Margaret Thatcher stood at the forefront of those who believed that to elevate the Commission as the ultimate source of power would be profoundly undemocratic and that the European Parliament was too weak to play the role of existing national parliaments.
