The European Commission: Promoting EU Governance

Abstract

The European Union has evolved as a densely institutionalised site of governance in contemporary Europe. The tentacles of the Union reach into the economies and societies of the member states and its regimes extend beyond its borders. It has evolved in an innovative, pragmatic and experimental manner (Laffan et al. 1999). From the outset, the European Economic Community (EEC) and now the European Union (EU) was engaged in fostering new ways of governing. Its objective was to domesticate interstate relations in Western Europe so as to re-establish a democratic and liberal order by creating an ever deepening and widening common market in the context of widespread welfare. With the deepening and consolidation of market integration in the late 1980s, the EU extended its reach to encompass a single currency, further co-operation in foreign policy and in internal affairs. The EU was and remains a construction that is “highly voluntarist, yet pragmatically piecemeal — and yet vaultingly long-range” (Anderson 1996: 17). Although the EU displays considerable continuity, it has also been characterised by a significant deepening (of markets, societies and of governance regimes) and a qualitative shift in patterns of governance. In the EU, the pragmatic, experimental and incremental often becomes transformational.