ABSTRACT
The low-point of Europessimism was probably around 1982 when the European economy was in a dismal state, the EC was still bogged down in the budget conflict between the UK and the other member states, and no new forward steps on the integration road were envisaged. The low-point, however, was also the turningpoint as a number of historical events (to be discussed below), born out of underlying structural forces, created the preconditions for an unexpected relaunching of European integration in the mid-1980s. This relaunching was preceded, however, by a phase in which the different member states of the EC chose to follow their own path out of the crisis. It was in the wake of the subsequent failure of these diverging national strategies that the road to a successful restructuring of Europe was then paved.
