ABSTRACT
The atmosphere at the time of Maastricht was as we have seen, a strange and heady mixture: the EU felt summoned, inevitably, to assume new and weighty roles, but both it and its member states were timorous and unself-trusting in the contemplation of those urgent tasks. In the mid-and later 1990s, it seemed that the magnitude of the tasks and the paucity of leadership combined to accentuate a sense of failure. Delors might have little cause to regret passing on ‘the torch’ to Santer.
