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of policy in the world had never recovered the ground lost in the failure of the European Defence Community and the European Political Community in 1954. Much time had subsequently been wasted in trying to re-create institutions which would have replaced these brave efforts at the formation of a United States of Europe. The nationalist obsession of General de Gaulle, followed by the less blatant but equally damaging half-heartedness of Britain with regard to any positive move towards a new structure for Europe, had led to the spending of more time in the Community on what can literally be described as bread and butter issues than on the discussion of how Europe could wield a degree of influence in the world commensurate with its economic strength and the importance of its worldwide interests.
    It was not until 1981 that the Genscher-Colombo proposal, supported behind the scenes by the Action Committees for the Union of Europe, showed the way to a new mechanism and a new act of political will. By adopting this proposal in 1983 the members of the Community, soon to be increased by the adherence of Spain and Portugal, equipped themselves with a capability for making decisions and an embryonic apparatus for putting them into effect. The great merit of this proposal lay in accepting things more or less as they stood, namely that the European Council, consisting of the heads of government of the member states of the Community, had set itself up as the top decision-making body both for matters within the normal operations of the Community and, more important for our present purpose, for the making of decisions in matters of foreign policy jointly between the governments of the member states. And now it had finally succeeded in adding to its tasks the search for identity of view in defence policy and co-operation between the armed forces of the Community’s members.
    This was achieved through two kinds of measures, both of which seemed quite simple when they had been done but to get them done had required a leap of the imagination over the institutional hurdles which the theorists of the Community had placed in the way of any such pragmatic development. The European Council made an Act of Union declaring that it constituted a unified authority for whatever purposes it might choose then or later. It also decided to set up new secretariats for the preparation and execution of decisions in the fields of foreign policy and defence. Foreign policy had previously been co-ordinated, and so far as possible harmonized, by means of an impermanent bureaucracy consisting of the officials of the state which was furnishing the presidency of the Community at the time. As this changed every six months, continuity was difficult to ensure and efficiency suffered.
    It was clear as soon as the decision to include defence matters in the activities of the Union had been taken that such an arrangement was totally inadequate. Defence decisions have either to be taken a long time in advance, owing to the time needed for the working out of operational doctrine upon which requirements for military equipment are based and then the long lead-times in its production, or alternatively have to be taken under heavy pressures in a very short time in some emergency or crisis requiring common action. A basic minimum of staff is required both to monitor the long-term processes and to prepare the data and intelligence material (for example, information on force dispositions) necessary for the taking of emergency decisions within the Alliance and for crisis management. The logic of this argument was in the end enough to overcome French hesitations, while Britain finally accepted that in order to maintain the levels of defence which the Conservative Government judged necessary, without offending its monetarist principles, some radical means of obtaining greater cost-effectiveness must be sought. The only available route to this objective lay through co-operation with the