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 a...