European Integration and the Maastricht Compromise
A historically informed, highly authoritative exploration of the negotiations that led to the Treaty on European Union, "The Road to Maastricht" significantly contributes to our understanding of the process of European economic integration. By highlighting the role of the structure of beliefs of the various participants, both individuals and institutions, in determining the ultimate outcome of the intergovernmental negotiations, the authors underscore the notion that the Maastricht treaty was the outcome of political elitism to the seeming detriment of democratic polity. Opposition to the ratification of the treaty in France and Denmark demonstrated the diminution of the so-called European permissive consensus: political elites no longer held sway over a Europe which was governed for four decades from the top.

The key actors were themselves straitjacketed by the dynamics of the intergovernmental negotiations. Debate, according to the authors, was managed in such a way that negotiating positions agreed "at the top" would not be undermined. Criticism was constrained by the prospect of exclusion in the policy process, and influence in the negotiations depended on toeing the line established by the executive elite, the authors contend. Most telling in this regard was a quotation in the book from Erik Hoffmeyer, Danish Central Bank governor at the time of the negotiations: "It would be wonderful if I could break free by yelling like the boy, Oskar, in Gunther Grass's Tin Drum or write like one of the favorite authors of my youth, Voltaire, who so effectively demolished the hypocrisy and stupidity of the conventional wisdom of his age in the four days it took him to write Candide. But I can do neither."

Obviously, the outcome of the negotiations was a set of compromises with long-term implications for the political and economic milieu of the Continent. The treaty deferred a number of critical issues for later resolution, such as the requirements of political union for a sustainable European union. Whether European political union will be decisively addressed by future agreements, given the limbo that the European Constitution is currently in, remains to be seen. ( )

Featherstone, Kevin (Author)