The Single European Act: A Constitution for the Community?

If proof were needed that the European Economic Community is still the product of a careful tempering of integrationist impulses with preoccupations of national sovereignty, the recently ratified Single European Act (Single Act or Act) amply supplies it. Although the Single Act represents the most comprehensive revision to date of the Treaty of Rome (EEC Treaty), which established the European Economic Community (European Community or Community), it also reflects the continuing vitality of the view that functional change within the Community takes priority in time over structural and institutional reform. Rather than place European integration on a new set of political foundations, as many influential voices had urged, the Single European Act brings a combination of programmatic change and limited structural reform. While disappointing to some observers, mostly because the institutional framework of Europe remains largely the same and because the more important programmatic changes are not conspicuous on the face of the document, the Single European Act actually corresponds well to the realities of Community-building in a pragmatic-minded late twentieth century Europe