reached. The European Commission of civil ser-
vants under the president and his ‘Cabinet’ of
sixteen nationally appointed commissioners also
has a powerful influence. It can initiate proposals
and then draw up amendments, but these require
the consent of the Council of Ministers who, in
turn, take their instructions from their national
governments. The European Parliament, directly
elected for the first time in 1979, has the power
to dismiss the Commission but not to appoint
one. Its day-to-day powers are limited; it is a con-
sultative rather than a legislative parliament.
There is also a court of justice.
The Single European Act of 1987 limited the
use of the national veto by requiring that qualified
majority voting should be substituted for unanim-
ity in a number of important areas concerned with
the creation of a common market. But the
national veto was still applicable in other areas.
A chronic Community problem centres around
the budget, which is contributed by member
nations. The main difficulty was the costly Com-
mon Agricultural Policy (CAP), which absorbed
two-thirds of total expenditure; a temporary diffi-
culty was the implementation of a 1980 undertak-
ing to reduce Britain’s excessive net contribution,
which arose because with its small farming sector it
received relatively little in the form of CAP subsi-
dies. Since it was one of the poorer countries in the
EC, this was patently unfair. Margaret Thatcher
insisted in 1983 that the British government would
not sanction any increase in the Community’s
financial resources unless a long-term solution was
reached to replace the annual haggling.
In many ways Margaret Thatcher was out of
tune with the ‘continental’ style of the Com-
munity, which Britain had entered too late. She
abhorred the Brussels bureaucracy and its pettifog-
ging regulations; she opposed the protectionist
stance that the EC adopted towards world trade;
above all she attacked the absurdities of the CAP
which, on the one hand, created huge and expen-
sive butter mountains and wine lakes to subsidise
the farmers out of taxation raised in member states,
and, on the other, increased EC food prices above
world prices generally. A free-trader by conviction,
what she did support was the removal of trade bar-
riers between member states. But she remained
profoundly suspicious of closer political union.
The European Community institutions are un-
democratic, and the one democratically elected
body, the European Parliament, lacks real power.
In any case, Thatcher was not ready to allow
European institutions to override the 700-year-old
Parliament at Westminster. She regarded democ-
racy and parliamentary institutions on the conti-
nent as too recently established and not rooted in
tradition, as they were in Britain. What is more she
feared the overwhelming influence Germany
would be able to exert in a politically and eco-
nomically unified Community. All these views she
expressed with a passion and directness that made
her seem the outsider, even when others might
secretly agree with her.
Despite much acrimony and despite often giv-
ing an impression of immobility the Community
tends to acquire sudden forward movement when
continuing crisis threatens its credibility. At the
Fontainbleau summit in June 1984, agreement on
the principal bones of contention was reached:
the British obtained the long-term settlement of
their budget contribution and the Community’s
resources were increased by undertakings to
raise the level of VAT. In a move that was to
prove of great significance in the 1990s, the
European Parliament in 1984 adopted a report
calling for a new treaty to create a European polit-
ical union.
Much wrangling in 1985 was settled in
December at the Luxembourg summit when it
was agreed in principle to adopt a Single European
Act. This comprised two separate parts, one estab-
lishing a treaty for political cooperation, and the
other amending the Treaty of Rome to remove all
existing obstacles to a free internal market by the
end of 1992, thus making the original vision of a
common market a reality. Clearly the two parts,
‘politics’ and ‘trade’, could move forward at
entirely different speeds. It was a far cry from the
European union which a majority in the European
Parliament wanted – though, as we have seen, the
Act also provided for an extension of qualified
majority voting.
The dynamic but frequently tactless Jacques
Delors, Commission president, had little success
in persuading Margaret Thatcher to agree to an
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