ABSTRACT
The political theory behind the institution of the Council is straightforward. The architects of the Treaty were not building either the United States of Europe or the European Federation that was foreshadowed in the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950. All the members of the Community were equal – Jean Monnet’s dictum – and all maintained their identity as nation-states. The Treaty had foreseen that at a later stage there would be majority voting, with weights assigned in a rough proportion to population size, skewed in favour of the less populous. The new Scottish Executive and the British government have to settle upon a stable solution to how Scottish interests will be represented post-devolution. All is not well with the General Affairs Council. The development of networks across parallel ministries has been elevated to what has been described as ‘fusion theory’.
