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Informal Decision Making in the European Community under the Luxembourg Compromise: The Law That Never Was

Informal Decision Making in the European Community under the Luxembourg Compromise: The Law That Never Was

Author: Philip Bajon
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509982851
Published In: October 2025
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

List Price: HKD 1,300.00

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Description
Contents

Details

This book analyses the informal decision making process in the EU against the background of a gradually emerging European legal order.

Based on extensive multi-archival research in the UK, France, Germany, the Benelux countries and in Community institutions, the book explores the resistance against majority rule under the so-called Luxembourg Compromise of 1966, a European 'soft law' that allowed Member States to invoke 'vital national interests' and to veto legislation. This 'gentlemen's agreement' was never sanctioned or codified. However, as a 'rule of the game' it had a significant impact on the operations of the EU for several decades and became an integral part of the EU's 'consensus' approach. Its underlying rationale is still alive in the present-day EU.

Presenting a deeply revisionist account of European law and politics, the book demonstrates how the Luxembourg arrangement served as a compromise between the Treaty text and political reality, as a counterweight to technocratic ideas, and as a bridge between irreconcilable divides over European unification.

It includes case studies from 1965 - 2000, such as the 'Eurosclerosis' of the 1970s, British exceptionalism as an EU member, the European revival of the mid-1980s, and intergovernmentalism on the verge of negotiating the Maastricht Treaty.

Highly original in its interdisciplinary, comprehensive and archivally-rooted method, the book interrogates the most important and controversial debates about the past, present and future of the European Union.

Part 1: The Gaullist Legacy 1965–72

1. The 'Empty Chair' Crisis

2. Suspending the Transition to Majority Voting

3. Decision-Making Sociology after the 'Empty Chair'

Part 2: Transition 1972–78

4. British Accession

5. The Lifting of the 'Culture of Unanimity' in the Mid–1970s

6. The Tindemans Report

7. Southern Enlargement

8. The Three Wise Men Report

Part 3: Transformation 1978–84

9. Reconceptualising the Compromise