ABSTRACT
The weight of European Community decisionmaking has grown considerably. Community legislation has expanded greatly in scope, especially since the coming into force of the Single European Act in 1987. This chapter considers the Council as an institutional reaction to a basic dilemma facing European states: how to cope with interdependence among them while ensuring the economic performance and providing the social services that contemporary European electorates demand. It examines the evolution of the Council over time, providing specific information, in quantitative form, about the time lags in the legislative process and relationships among the Council, Commission, and European Parliament. The chapter assesses the Council's performance. The procedures of decisionmaking in the Community, with the Council at its center, have increased in number and complexity. The Single European Act has added two new variations that are less examples of clearly designed rules than the result of intensive bargaining giving some power to the European Parliament.
