ABSTRACT
From 1987 to the turn of the millennium, European integration was one of Wilton Park’s two main programmes. Immediately following the collapse of Communism, the European Community (EC) was seen as a world power in waiting, although it was still seen to lack the political will and capability to assert itself fully. Considerable attention was paid to the EC’s, later European Union (EU)’s, institutional and policy evolution and the debates surrounding them. Of the three pillars of the watershed Maastricht Treaty, a coherent Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) proved the most elusive, hampered by EU unanimity requirements. By the end of the millennium, Wilton Park’s discussions showed the UK leading pan-European initiatives and policy-making in the Single Market and competitiveness, leading calls for reform of the EU budget and Common Agricultural Policy but adopting largely inter-governmental approaches in the CFSP and Justice and Home Affairs (especially immigration), and ultimately deciding not to participate in Economic and Monetary Union and the Social Community. The UK’s Labour government’s cautious European policy stance just before the millennium left the door open for the growth of Euroscepticism.
