The Report of the Three Wise Men

Abstract

These days, the institutions of the European Community, and especially the Commission, are criticised for being, if anything, too effective and for submerging the sovereignty of member states in the interests of a concept of European union not universally shared. In the late 1970s the perceived problem was very different. The economic crisis following the breakdown of Bretton Woods and the oil price hike had caused a resurgence of nationalism within the Community and the reemergence of barriers to trade. ‘[S]ince about 1973, trade integration among the original six members has largely stagnated, as new market barriers outweighed new liberalising action, and economic growth was cut in half.’2 The one recent achievement, the European Monetary System (EMS), had been largely created outside the machinery of the Treaty of Rome. There was resentment within the Community at its failure to protect member states against the onset of crisis or to help them to find a way out of it. There was resentment at the way in which, at a time of crisis, France, Germany and the UK tended to ignore the Community, and their obligations under the Treaty of Rome, and to enter into consultations with the USA and Japan about matters which affected all member states.