The Heroic Age of European Integration is Over: Institutional and Policy Developments, 1957–2007

Abstract

The premise of this volume, and of the elaborate festivities surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome,¹ is that five decades of European integration provides an appropriate occasion and an excellent vantage point to reflect on the long-term process of European integration and to place today’s European Union (EU) in its historical context. This chapter attempts to do precisely that, by analyzing the basic long-term trends in both institutional and policy developments between 1957 and 2007 using the best and most comprehensive empirical indicators available.

The authors are grateful to the Observatory of European Institutions at Sciences-Po, and especially to Florence Deloche-Gaudez, for the data reproduced in Tables 4.3 and 4.4.