Dilemmas of European integration: the ambiguities and pitfalls of integration by stealth

Providing an analysis of the pitfalls and ambiguities of 50 years of European integration, the author assesses the future of Europe after the new Constitutional Treaty. In conclusion, he suggests that the EU has failed as a federation, but has a chance of becoming an effective confederation of sovereign states

Providing an analysis of the pitfalls and ambiguities of 50 years of European integration, the author assesses the future of Europe after the new Constitutional Treaty. In conclusion, he suggests that the EU has failed as a federation, but has a chance of becoming an effective confederation of sovereign states.

If one lesson emerges clearly from fifty years of European integration it is that political aims should be pursued by overtly political means, and not by roundabout economic or legal strategies. The functionalist strategy of promoting spillovers from one economic sector to another has failed to achieve a steady progress towards a federal union, as Jean Monnet and other functionalists had hoped. On the other hand, the unanticipated results of 'integration through law' have includedover-regulation and an institutional framework which is too rigid to allow significant policy and institutional inn