Abstract
Far from suddenly appearing in the 1980s, the French "style" of the European Commission is in fact the result of early investments made by French national civil servants when seconded to Brussels. Arriving in 1958 at a time of great incertitude and when they were marginalized within their own country, these civil servants strongly influenced the community-level administration, its practices in general and its relationship to politics in particular. If this investment was for many years resisted by members of Galullist governments responsible for European policy, it laid the groundwork for a more legitimate generation of civl servants, led by Jacques Delors, to push for this style of administration within the Commission. If the institutional and ideological positions observed are marked by great stability, it is the rise in social and professional profiles of seconded officials which provides explanations for the change observed in the 1985-90 period, a change which also necessitates the adaptation of the concept of path dependency.
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