1 Strategic Innovation by Insider Influence: Monnet to Delors

During this period the President of the European Commission lost his pivotal institutional position as power shifted from the followers of Monnet to the defenders of member state sovereignty. National governments had democratic legitimacy which the initiating, goal-setting Commission lacked and de Gaulle enforced their veto over important innovations. A mixture of shared sovereignty in some matters and retained sovereignty in others meant that the Council of Ministers and later the European Council assumed greater prominence. Insider strategic innovation, using the Community Method personified by Delors as Commission President and the Single European Act, marked the triumph of binding agreements, but his successors were unable to sustain the past integration impetus.