ABSTRACT
During the mid-1980s the forces that sought liberalization of the airline industry combined and recombined in changing strategic patterns. Sometimes they worked in harmony, at others they differed over tactical judgements about what was possible of achievement, or over how quickly reform should be implemented, or over how it might be achieved, or over how radical it should ideally be. The movement towards creating the SEAM was not straightforward. It was a messy process partly by design and partly because of the political landscape and institutional configurations within the EC. These two reasons for ‘messiness’ need some consideration. The design factor, the reaction it provoked in the guise of Memorandum 2 and the context of increased momentum towards the Single Market that emerged in the mid-1980s, will be dealt with here. Political and institutional features will be examined throughout the body of the next chapter as Memorandum 2 metamorphosed into the first package of reform.
