Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in this book. The book focuses on the development and difficulties of European integration. It explains the connection between Western Europe and the United States and the nature of the European entity. Much has changed with respect to both over the past thirty years. The book highlights rather relentlessly how much the United States dominated the West European scene in the cold-war period—both as a model of society and as the hegemonic power in an uneven alliance. It deals with the new recovery that led first to the "1992" single market program and later to the Maastricht Treaty of European Union. The book discusses the drastic change in the international context: the collapse of the Soviet empire in Europe and the effects on the European Community, or Union, of Germany's unification and the end of the cold war.