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THIS ARTICLE' PUTS FORWARD SOME GENERAL reflections on the Single European Act, on the conditions in which it was negotiated and on its first consequences. But a detailed description of the modalities of the Single Act, of the entire range of changes which it will introduce and of its potential would be beyond its scope. The Single Act has been extremely controversial, during its negotiation, after its conclusion, and for different reasons, during the ratification process. Some decried it as inadequate, even derisory, but others saw in it a threat to national sovereignty. Two referendums (in Denmark and in Ireland) were needed before it could be ratified. Today, on the contrary, the Single Act and its best-known feature — the achievement of the internal market in the Community by the end of 1992 — are presented in the media as the basis of a new Europe, the foundation of all European policy. The Single European Act does not deserve so much honour, any more than it deserved the past indignity, but it contains important innovations, which might lead to significant changes in the behaviour of the institutions and in the way in which the Community itself will develop. This is what I shall try to put forward by recalling briefly first the background of the Single Act, describing the details of the negotiations and, lastly, by singling out some of the original features of the new Treaty.

THE DISTINGUISHING FEATURE OF THE COMMUNITY IS ITS institutional system. The establishment of that system and the changes and distortions it has undergone have very much moulded its development. But the Community is also a complex ongoing process: the institutional side alone does not give the full picture. The economic, the financial and the institutional aspects are closely interwoven, and together determine the course of its affairs. I propose to consider the state of the Community today, its current crisis and the outlook for the years ahead from both these angles.

THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY HAS BEEN IN A STATE OF ALMOST perpetual crisis since 1979: a financial crisis, institutional drift, the lack of long-term objectives. Nevertheless the patient efforts to bring back order into its affairs which were undertaken after the European Council at Stuttgart (1983) and tenaciously pursued by the European Commission under Mr Thorn's presidency, as well as by the successive presidents of the Council of Ministers, are at last coming to fruition. For the first time in many years, the heads of state or of government have been able to devote themselves in Milan to genuinely political reflections – to concentrate their thoughts on the future Europe and the means of building it. Even if the dialogue was only too often replaced by confrontation, nevertheless, the debate has begun and is bound to continue.

THAT THERE IS ROOM FOR DOUBT TODAY ABOUT WHAT LIES ahead for the Communities nobody will deny. The Community has been in trouble for at least five years, and despite the succession of summits the trouble has not been fully disposed of. The enlargement negotiations are the demonstration - or one more demonstration - of the difficulty the Community is having in coming to terms with itself. And, worse, a further process of what I might call 'institutional drift' is making its operation yet more intergovernmental.I should like first to review the position as it now stands and how it is likely to develop in the short term. I will then go on to try to establish what can be done to rectify, or even reverse, the present trends. For unless they do change in the months ahead the prospects for progress in the longer term will be in jeopardy.