ABSTRACT
The mid-1980s were dominated by claims of a ‘neofunctionalist comeback’; modified in nature, yet easily discernible in scope.1 Processes of negative integration at the market level were linked to a wide range of policies, while new pressures towards task expansion were facilitated by an emergent neoliberal consensus among the member governments. Neofunctionalist spillovers were expected to make their impact on a difficult transition from a ‘Business Europe’ to a ‘People’s Europe’. The functions of the general system seemed to have produced new expectations for further integration. Yet, the evolution of the Community was lagging behind its renewed neofunctionalist ambitions. The SEA did not in the end represent too much of a qualitative leap towards political community and, hence, towards significant levels of autonomy on the part of supranational institutions. Although the then Delors Commission tried to develop an independent strategy for both managing the single market programme and exploiting its enormous publicity – a project supported even by the most ‘reluctant’ Europeans – the states discovered ways of resisting any substantive move to a profound transformation of the larger unit; supranationalism was championed in areas where the states wanted to see progress such as the completion of the single market. Moreover, no subsequent alteration of the locus of sovereignty has emerged as a result of the SEA, although it did intensify the level of sovereignty-sharing. A further line of criticism came from scholars who argued that neofunctionalism did not take into account the international setting within which political change was to occur.2
