ABSTRACT
The December 1969 European Summit at the Hague was generally seen as the starting point of a great European revival. To a considerable extent, it was. Rebuffed by his people, an increasingly recalcitrant General de Gaulle had stalked away from power and was soon to die. His successor, Georges Pompidou, was far more amenable to elements of further integration and to the prospect of accession by the United Kingdom. The Heads of State and Government at that momentous summit decided to go way beyond a simple customs union by agreeing, in principle, to create a true Economic and Monetary Union. This was an extraordinary quantum leap in conceptual terms-easy to forget in the postMaastricht age. In its wake, like the thaw of the polar ice fields in the summer, flowed a series of conceptual corollaries-industrial, regional and social policies, and talk of a social union. The logic was clear-Economic and Monetary Union would be unthinkable without the sort of flanking policies which would, simultaneously, make it workable and acceptable.
