Shaping European Union: The European Parliament and Institutional Reform, 1979-1989 European Parliament History Series STUDY EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service Wolfram Kaiser PE 630.271 – November 2018 EN Shaping European Union: The European Parliament and Institutional Reform, 1979-1989 Wolfram Kaiser Based on a large range of newly accessible archival sources, this study explores the European Parliament’s policies on the institutional reform of the European Communities between 1979 and 1989. It demonstrates how the Parliament fulfilled key functions in the process of constitutionalization of the present-day European Union. These functions included defining a set of criteria for effective and democratic governance, developing legal concepts such as subsidiarity, and pressurising the Member States into accepting greater institutional deepening and more powers for the Parliament in the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service AUTHOR This study has been written by Professor Dr Wolfram Kaiser of the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom, at the request of the Historical Archives Unit of the DIrectorate for the Library within the Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS) of the Secretariat of the European Parliament. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Christian Salm for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this study and Etienne Deschamps for his support in finding suitable illustrations for the text. ADMINISTRATOR RESPONSIBLE Christian Salm, Historical Archives Unit To contact the publisher, please e-mail
[email protected] LINGUISTIC VERSIONS Original: EN Manuscript completed in September 2018. DISCLAIMER AND COPYRIGHT This document is prepared for, and addressed to, the Members and staff of the European Parliament as background material to assist them in their parliamentary work.