ABSTRACT
Ten years ago we were about to take a decisive leap forward:1 the Single European Act. Predictions had already been made as to the costs of failing to Europeanize, about the effects of neo-protectionism, and about falling behind Japan industrially. Yet this leap had become caught up in a quarrel over initial questions (enlargement, completion, extension of powers) in the on-going conflict over the fair financial repayment claimed by Mrs Thatcher, and the extent to which systematic closures in unprofitable sectors with no future, however small they might be, had to be programmed. The analysis had also been based on the assumption of Europe’s impotence and fragmentation against the background of planetary domination established by Russians and Americans.2 The strategic initiative launched by President Reagan, known as ‘star wars’, had revealed the potential cost of European division in the sector of high technology. Thus, President Mitterrand came up with the civil alternative to the threat to the defence industries, known as Eureka. For his part, Etienne Davignon had instigated the creation of a lobby for the major industrial undertakings with the aim of obliging Europe to take charge of its problems in industry: competitiveness, research and development, fragmentation of the Community market, regulatory obstacles, etc. The road had therefore been mapped out for a European revival, which required two approaches: a voluntarist one, promoting the setting up of a basis for European industrial co-operation in the hightech sectors, these being, Esprit, Eureka, Brite, Race, Euram; the other, institutional, promoting the creation of a real single market, with its famous directives leading to the creation of a complete European internal market.
