Raisons d’être: The Failure of Constructive Integration

The EC was justified on grounds of peace, prosperity, social justice, and public favor. This chapter evaluates these claims and explains why despite the negative liberal logic of the treaties, the EC had limited success intervening in some areas like environmental protection rather than more basic ones like the economy. By success we mean adding some positive regulation that would not have been provided otherwise by member-states. In broad survey we cannot possibly hope to cover all aspects of policy, but to investigate essential claims that are rarely subject to critical scrutiny or empirical investigation. Studies have looked at the transposition of EC policy and directives into national laws, but virtually none on the differences they made on the ground.1 Most positive integration or constructive intervention as in social policy was minimalist and inconsequential except for the poorest and most backward states, more effective as propaganda for legitimization purposes than as reform, undermined as it was by EC market principles and forces or intentionally designed to foster them.