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

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 ide