ABSTRACT
This chapter looks back over the historical development of the European Community/European Union seeking to identify moments when the notion of ‘informality’ may help to understand and assess its development. In the process, it suggests that there are at least two important sub-categories of ‘informal’ development. The first – and perhaps more extensively discussed, although seldom labelled as ‘informality’ by historians – are those multiple instances when actual patterns of behaviour and institutional development have diverged markedly from the ‘formal’ paths prescribed by the legal texts upon which the EC/EU is grounded. The second, by contrast, is represented by the way in which formal diplomatic interaction between state representatives over European integration has, from the outset, been flanked by transnational interaction amongst political parties, activists, lobbies, epistemic communities and many more. Here too historians need urgently to consider how best to work this type of more informal transnational activism into their story of how the Community began and has developed. The study of such informal linkages cannot replace that of the more official state-to-state discussion and bargaining; but equally the formal cannot be properly understood without attention being paid to the role of more informal connections and patterns of cooperation.
