Discourses on and of Europe Debates and controversies
European integration goes back over 62 years including the European Coal and Steel Community. For a long time it remained closed to popular concern, and was mainly a matter for the political class and a few professions directly affected such as civil servants, financial and industrial elites and exporters, and specialist lawyers. Everything changed when the political and economic elites decided to transform the common market, with its famous common agricultural policy, into an Economic and Monetary Union.