Keith Middlemas - Orchestrating Europe (Text Only)

We should emphasize that this selection was not Brussels-oriented, but incorporated a variety of standpoints: those of twelve member states, weighted according to size, four applicants for membership, five regions in the five largest member states, and a range of firms and sectoral organizations chosen to illustrate particular cases and their diversity of ethos and orientation. The choice of retired respondents as well as those in post enabled us to cover the period 1973 to 1994, and in particular to obtain insights into less-studied areas such as the Court of Justice, and the Committee of Central Bank Governors in Basel.

There were, inevitably, some arbitrary aspects to the selection, since not all those asked were willing or available to be interviewed. We concentrated more, for example, on the European Court of Justice than the European Parliament, whose powers and informal structures are still in the process of evolution; and on certain Commission Directorates, dealing with industries and the financial sector, rather than others. The interviews themselves naturally vary in quality, but at best constitute a significant weight of evidence. Copies have been lodged at the Sussex University European Institute, at the European University Institute in Florence, and at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, California.

These are in the form of notes, not verbatim transcripts, being the researcher’s record of what took place. This creates problems of attribution. Some of the material would not have been given if the sources were to be made plain so soon after the event; in other cases, where many of the respondents agreed, footnotes would have been unmanageably long. Where a choice is made between different interpretations, attribution would have been invidious and unfair to those who spoke in good faith. Furthermore, no individual could be taken as representative of any firm or institution, let alone a whole sector of government. Hence they are referred to here, where direct quotation occurs from the notes, but only by indexed numbers; in the archives they are referred to by a general title such as ‘DG3 Official’ or ‘Executive of such-and-such a company’.

The problems connected with oral history are well known. They include lapses of memory, vindictiveness, falsification, excessive discretion, trivia, over-simplification, lack of perspective and various sorts of distortion and hindsight. 5The interviewer in turn has his or her limitations, ranging from choosing an unrepresentative sample to undue deference or bias in questions; not forgetting that the method is often so enticing that it may unwisely be preferred to official or other printed sources.

A distinction should of course be made between oral history, used predominantly to record memoirs of the less articulate (whose lifestyles rarely appear in documentary form), to construct alternative or ‘peoples’ histories’, and elite oral history, whose respondents are used to presenting themselves and their views fluently. Only the latter have been used here because they offer an unrivalled insight into motivations, interpretations, factors in policy-making, and the personal or group interchanges between those who belong to one or other of a number of elites.

The advantages clearly outweigh the risks, which prudence and practice can to a large extent mitigate, though never eliminate. Elite oral history, constructed from discussion with participants in the midst of the action, provides assessments of personalities and events which may not be recorded in documents even when these eventually become available for research. More important, it gives guidance on organizational relations which may well substantially modify observations found elsewhere. No organigram can be weighted sufficiently to show the informal channels or the difference between real and ritual communications.

Some institutions have only a limited effective life before becoming bureaucratized. Some are so informal as to leave no documentary record. All networks operate differently, depending on the question at issue and the level at which they relate to others. Vast as the flood of EC documentation is, ranging from formal reports to discussion documents, these alone cannot establish what on any given question is the place each player in each game merits. Interviewing gives insights into the assumptions or ethos of a group and its collective aims which, in the case of commercial organizations, may never otherwise be fully documented.

Presidents and principal Commissioners relevant to the main themes since 1981

Presidencies of the Council of Ministers and Meetings of the European Council since 1970