Monetary and Economic Co-Operation in the EEC

Abstract

T | HE institutional machinery of the Community is deceptively simple: the EEC Commission (the bureaucracy), the Council of Ministers (the decision taker), the European Court of Justice (the final interpreter of the Treaties) and the European Parliament (the genesis of democratic control). In fact it is a complex, kaleidoscopic system buffeted by political pressures. In economics and money, the subject of this paper, the EEC Council of Ministers and the EEC Commission interact with each other and are influenced by inter-governmental committees, including the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper), the Monetary Committee and the Steering Committee. Another layer has been added by the decision of heads of government of the Nine in Paris in December 1974, to hold at least three summit meetings a year. At these meetings, which have been rebaptised European Councils, prime ministers and presidents, afraid of the bad political fallout of failure, sketch out superstructure agreements. It is left to the lower ordersministers, national government officials and the Commission-to do the bricklaying, carpentry and plumbing. The Commission has a small staff of about 7,000 (some 1,600 fewer than the Scottish Office) of which only 2,000 are in the highest grades. Until the mid-1960s it was in the centre of the EEC stage, pushing the implementation of the basic provisions of the Treaty in such matters as the customs union, the common agricultural policy, external trade and, with more mixed success, the harmonisation of laws, regulations and administrative practices. But it ran into trouble trying to nudge the Community towards greater economic integration, a contentious issue of national sovereignty. This provoked the unanimity rule of the famous Luxembourg compromise of 1965. Demanded by France, which insisted, with tacit support from others, on having a power of veto, the Luxembourg compromise saved a member-state from being outvoted and forced to submit to the majority will on issues touching on what it saw as vital national interests. A consequence of this, and of the fading of the vision of a federalist Europe, has been a weakening of the Commission's power of initiative. The entry of sovereignty-conscious Britain and Denmark has made its 499