Beyond Maastricht: Alternative futures for a political union

The Maastricht approach to split political and technical levels of decision making between the European Council and the Council of Ministers will probably not stand the reality test. The marginal improvements for the European Parliament which the Maastricht Documents suggest are miles away from such an improvement. Just as sub-national political leaders have realized that they need foreign policies of their own, Community leaders should be responsible at their level of policy-making. In 1991, West European foreign policy and security cooperation has become a prime topic among Atlantic and European policy analysts as well as policy makers. National political leaders have drawn diverse conclusions from external challenges such as the Gulf war or instablilities in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The intergovernmental road to Maastricht and the parallel “management” of the Gulf and the Yugoslav wars have reaffirmed that various alternatives of the development of European Political Union remain conceivable.