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Analysis of the Integration Process (I) - Stage 4
From the SEA to the foundation of the European Union
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Why was a new Treaty revision needed after such a short period? |
This the fourth stage of our history of the EU covers the period from the Single European Act (SEA), mid 1987, to the coming into force of the Treaty on European Union at the end of 1993. One of the most noticeable aspects here is that only five years had passed from one fundamental treaty revision to the next, or rather, only a quarter of the time needed from the Treaty of Rome to the SEA! But what were the reasons for this? Well, there were several factors with a distinction being made between internal and external determinants. |
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Internal Community determinants |
As far as the internal, community-based influencing factors were concerned, these were connected to the clear way in which the process had gathered its own momentum through the internal market project and the SEA. Indeed, the the internal market had a far-reaching bearing on areas such as community monetary policy, immigration and asylum policy, the fight against cross-boarder criminality and social policy, otherwise known as "social dumping. This created a situation in which many protagonists viewed as essential the creation of more community policies in the areas mentioned. In addition to this, the enormous growth of community patrimony had brought back painful memories of EU democratic deficit and German reunification had prompted several member states to regard closer integration of a larger and more powerful Germany as sensible.
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External impulses |
As far as external challenges, which were suggesting the need for increased deepening of integration and, with it, a new treaty revision so soon after the SEA, were concerned, I can limit my summary to a handful of issues:
 | Increasing uncertainty in international and European relationships caused by the grave upheavals in the former communist East European countries; |
| The prospect of at least some of these countries wanting to join the EU, which, without sweeping revisions especially to the EU's decision-making processes, seemed impossible without causing lasting damage to the EU's ability to act;
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| Globalization of the world's economies, which was making the economic and social policies of individual national states increasingly ineffective. |
A combination of all these factors led the Commission, the European Parliament, but also the overwhelming majority of member states to come to the conclusion that further steps toward deepening were desperately needed, despite being vehemently rejected by Great Britain in particular.
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Negotiations on the Treaty of Maastricht very difficult |
As far as the entire and, indeed, extremely interesting background story which eventually led to the two intergovernmental conferences on monetary union and political union being called in 1991 and, indeed, as far as the course of these conferences were concerned, I will have to limit myself to a few brief comments.
The negotiations at these conferences proved extraordinarily difficult because of differing interests and some extremely wide gaps between member states on the question of if and how the EU should develop further. Some of the core issues, especially Great Britain's continued resistance to any form of expansion of Community social policies and its refusal to participate in the plans for monetary union, had to be dealt with by heads of states and governments themselves at the Maastricht summit meeting. And even then, agreement was only reached after a series of exceptions and and supplementary protocols had been granted.
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Post-ratification problems |
The difficulties with this new set of agreements were still not overcome even after ratification in February 1992. After the Treaty of Maastricht was rejected by Denmark in June 1992 following a closely contested referendum (50.7% for and 49.3% against rejection), the entire plan was called into question because Treaty changes have to be accepted by all member states. Only after further negotiations and concessions including an opt-out clause for monetary union, did Denmark accept the Treaty following a second referendum in May 1993 (56.8% for the treaty and 43.2% against).
Other nations also experienced difficulties in winning the necessary approval. Examples here include the extremely tight referendum result in France (51.05% for and 48.95% against) and legal action against the Treaty in Germany, which was eventually defeated following a ruling by Germany's Constitutional Court in October 1993. All these events meant that the Treaty on European Union was subjected to considerable delays and had to wait until November 1, 1993 to come into force. [Back to top of page]
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Maastricht Treaty reforms |
That concludes our look at the factors influencing the Treaty of Maastricht and its background story. I would now like to provide a summary of the Treaty's core contents. One of the most noticeable differences was that a new organisation, the European Union, had been established which encompassed three pillars under one common European Union roof - as can be seen from the illustration.
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Union with three pillars
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| The EC pillar, meaning the ECSC under the Treaty of Paris, the Treaties of Rome as well as the cooperation supported by the SEA, which, with the introduction of the Treaty of Maastricht, would receive several important amendments and changes.
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| The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) formed the "second pillar", building upon the intergovernmental cooperation in foreign policy EPC which had existed since the early 70s and giving it a contractual foundation.
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| Cooperation in justice and home affairs formed the "third pillar". Here, too, this pillar had hardly come from nowhere and took up existing, if somewhat rudimentary, beginnings toward European agreement in these areas.
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| The Union is held together by its overriding objectives and its structure, as set down in the general provisions of the Treaty.
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Reforms to the first pillar |
There was to be a multitude of changes at an institutional level and in the newly incorporated policy areas within the EC pillar, which, taken together were to create lasting supranationalization. Some examples:
| The introduction of a new decision-making procedure, aimed at creating real coodecision powers for the European Parliament; |
| more decisions using qualified-majority voting in the Council;
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| the creation of a Committee of the Regions;
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| Expanding the European Court of Justice's power of sanction for cases in which member states ignore its rulings or in which they fail to implement EU law according to the set timetable.
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| Expanding Community responsibilities in the areas introduced with the SEA such as research and technology policy, environmental policy and regional policy;
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| Monetary Union! If the internal market program was at the core of the SEA, provisions for monetary union formed the main focus of the Treaty of Maastricht; |
| new areas, in which the Community was either not active or was active but without an explicit treaty provision, were to be incorporated; such areas included consumer-protection policy, education etc.; |
| A completely new and, until now, unknown cooperation arrangement was agreed upon for the EU's social policy. Given Great Britain's determination to reject even a small-scale expansion of the Community's powers in this area, the remaining eleven member states agreed on a special protocol which would allow them to expand and deepen the Community's activities in this area alone!
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Second and third pillars: intergovernmental |
In contrast to this, however, cooperation within the second and third pillars, in which areas with a clear bearing on the EC pillar were particularly taken into account, retained its strong intergovernmental characteristics. |
[Author: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schumann]
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