Shaping European integration : the directly elected European Parliament, 1979-1989

It is now possible, with four decades of hindsight, to look with a degree of historical perspective on the remarkable impact of the European Parliament in the years immediately after the first European elections. Having an elected Parliament among the institutions of the European Community was a step into the unknown. It was also a unique experiment: never had a transnational parliament been directly elected by citizens anywhere in the world. This volume brings together three studies that examine the dynamic of having full-time elected representatives, interacting and networking with the other institutions, governments, national parliaments, sectoral interests and political parties in the Member States, and how that helped create the dynamic for the transformation of the European Communities into the European Union as we now know it. This book, commissioned by the European Parliamentary Research Service, adds considerably to the literature and knowledge of the processes and dynamics that led to the European Parliament becoming such an important part of the European Union, and how it stimulated the development of the latter. It contains an introduction by former MEP Richard Corbett, who was the European Parliament's co-rapporteur on the Constitutional and Lisbon Treaties, and three substantial studies by: Professor Wolfram Kaiser, on how the EP shaped institutional reform; Professor Laurent Warlouzet, on how it influenced the creation of the single market; Professors Birte Wassenberg and Sylvain Schirmann, on how it developed its own political culture.