EXACTLY FIVE YEARS AGO THIS JOURNAL PUBLISHED A SPECIAL ISSUE devoted to ‘The Politics of European Integration’. British-European relations were then at one of their lowest ebbs and our endeavour might have seemed singularly untimely. Yet the issue has been exhausted, and the demand for it continues. But, when faced with the decision to reprint, we thought that the subject matter had evolved so much that we preferred to prepare a new collection of studies. Hence this issue on the new politics of European integration.

But there is continuity between the two numbers of the journal. Our subscribers will not fail to notice that many of the articles which appeared in 1966 on basic historical and political aspects of European integration have not been superseded. Indeed the historical articles from the previous issue, together with the political articles of the present issue, supplemented by two historical surveys of British, and British Labour attitudes to the EEC, by Stephen Holt and Michael Wheaton respectively, are to be published in book form in the near future by Messrs Macmillan.

THE NINETEEN YEARS DURING WHICH THE TREATY OF PARIS HAS been in force and the thirteen years of the Treaties of Rome have led to a development in the Communities which, in its extent, variety and depth, exceeds anything the signatories could have hoped for. The volume of derived Community legislation has increased considerably and it now governs important sectors of economic activity. The enlargement of the Communities provides the best confirmation of this success.

Furthermore, the dynamic force of the Community system has been such that the deepening of the Communities has extended far further than the areas delimited by the Treaty. More and more action has been undertaken in sectors at or beyond the limit of the Communities’ responsibilities – not to speak of decisions taken on ‘foreign policy’, which, since 1970, have led to the introduction of procedures for political co-operation.

A CURIOUS PHENOMENON MAY BE NOTED WITHIN THE EUROPEAN Community, and also in the negotiations on the entry of other European countries into it. This is the absence of any move towards European integration among the political parties in the member states. Rather surprisingly, an obstinate silence prevails in Europe and within the national political parties regarding this deficiency. One cannot help wondering what is the reason for this and what can be done to break this silence.

Outwardly the process of European integration presents in the main an economic aspect. The EEC Treaty is a classic example of this. The goal striven for is a customs union with a common policy in the economic sphere. Thus the first steps are being taken in the Community towards a common policy in a number of sectors (agriculture, transport, energy, external trade). Recently attempts have been made to link this sector-by-sector policy through the inauguration of a common economic and monetary policy.

THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE PARLIAMENT OF THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN Community may, wholly or in part, be elected directly within the next few years must excite both advocates of European unification and students of that curious political phenomenon, the European Community. The event is still exceedingly problematical; no attempt is made here to assess just how much so. But the demand for direct election, and specific proposals to that end, have been actual for just over a decade and are worth analysing both as they relate to the possible future event and as they relate to other known factors – the existing state of organized political forces in Western Europe and the role of elections in the political life of member-states.

AMONG THE TOOLS USED TO STUDY SOCIAL, AND MORE PARTICULARLY political phenomena, the part played by public opinion surveys continues to grow, in spite of the tentativeness of some and the blunders of others. The study of the process of European integration and, more generally, of every process of regional integration has not escaped this. Indeed, it can be asked whether the most decisive progress in the theory of European integration has not been brought about by the very close co-operation between political scientists and the opinion poll experts Carrying out the intention which was expressed in this journal in 1967, the Press and Information Services of the Commission of the European Communities have tried, in the last two years, to promote a study in depths of the attitude towards the Common Market and the unification of Europe in the six founder countries.

THE MEDITERRANEAN POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY FORMS an important part of its general external policy. Since this paper can, therefore, be considered as a case study, it is worth trying to define at the outset the concept of ‘external policy’. The Treaties did not delegate to the common European institutions any of the powers of foreign policy-making traditionally exercised by the nation state, but the granting of wholesale economic competences and the consequential obligation of evolving a common commercial policy ensured that the Community would come into direct contact with non-member states. Through its diplomatic relations with other countries, the Community has become an actor on the international stage, whilst the scope of its external relations has frequently exceeded that of purely commercial policy. It is both meaningful and useful to consider the Community as exercising an external policy – a kind of half-way house to full foreign policy.

THE NOW FAIRLY EXTENSIVE LITERATURE ON THE EUROPEAN Communities, much of which sets out to analyse ‘the European decision-making process’, has tended to concentrate on how this process looks from the perspective of the Community itself and of its institutions. National governments and actors in the six political systems have been discussed primarily in so far as they are participants in the Community system. However, if we are to reach an understanding of the impact of the Communities on national processes, then some attention must be given to how the Communities are viewed from the national capitals, to the extent to which Community business impinges on the governmental systems in the member states and to the importance given to European matters among the competing issues which vie for prominence in national politics. Any analysis of the politics of European integration which looks from the Communities outwards makes the assumption that European issues are the only ones that count; but if those same issues are examined from a national perspective, we need to ask whether they represent simply one bundle of issues among many, or whether they have come to add a new dimension to the full range of governmental business and political debate. In other words, has the advent of the European Communities changed the political configuration of the six national systems, and, if so, marginally or fundamentally?

ONE HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT ASPECT OF THE PROCESS OF INTEGRATION in the European Community is the transfer of social sectors from the national political systems to the Community system. One such sector is agriculture. This article will focus on a limited, but significant part of the activities performed by the Community institutions: the collective decision-making process with reference to the common agricultural policy.