European intentions to develop a true common foreign and security policy, as described in the Maastricht Treaty, are shaping up into some major battles over the structure and decisionmaking process of the European Community. The Community is continuing to struggle over defining and implementing the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, which include problems ranging from uncertainty over the timetable for economic and monetary union--the single European currency which is supposed to encourage greater political unity--to fears of establishing the Western European Union as a non-NATO policing/military unit under Community direction.
Central to these new developments in the European Community is the role of the office of the General Secretariat--the administrative and research arm of the European Community's Council of Ministers. This research examines the structure, functions and activities of the General Secretariat and assesses the role of the Secretariat in the newly emerging European Community of the 1990s. In order to understand how the office of the Secretariat operates, it is first necessary to discuss the evolution of the European Community and the maze of institutional structures that work together to maintain and help unify the Community.
Europe has historically been racked by war; it is the continent that first experienced strife between nations. The terrifying and destructive consequences of World War II fed upon this historical experience and caused many Western European countries to work toward continental unity and minimize national conflict. Such an objective necessarily required a continent-wide international organization capable of coordinating economic activities, managing political and ethnic conflicts, and establishing comparable social standards between European nations.
Toward this end, the organization for European Economic Cooperation treaty was signed in April 1948. The Council of Europe was se...