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The first difficulties in EEC treaty application which, as we saw, occupied an important part of the 60s, ends with a moment of unification and new impulse: it’s the Conference of the State and Government Leaders of the Six, which gathers in Aia, in December 1969. A few months before a big change happened in French policy: the referendum in April gave a bad response to Chales De Gaulle, who leaves the Presidence of the Republic. Georges Pompidou succeeded him; he had a more flexible behaviour towards questions on the field of Europe. Aia Conference is very important for many reasons: it definitively fix the financing og the Common Agricultural Policy; it settle the question of the Community’s own resources; it paves the way to the negotiations, and that’s essential, with 4 countries: three among them will join European Community in 1973. Yet it paves the way to the consideration of new problems, for instance, the great monetary question caused by the first 70s crisis, and on the other hand a first glimpse of political co-operation. But the most important fact is from tis moment on, the real nature of communitary Europe, established in Rome treaties and in particular by EEC treaty, seems to be clearer and clearer. What’s this communitary Europe: it’s an absolutely brand new model in the history of institutional systems and of the states associations. It’s a whole made up of two basic elements: the first one is the devolution of powers originally belonging to the field of the national sovereignties to a supernational entity and to supernational institutions; while the second one is the preservation of shared competences between States and communitary institutions, yet with a rule: shared common goals and co-operation in oreder to achieve better communitary aims.This new entity, so unheard-of in the history of international institutions, is bound to grow and to assert itself during the 70s and three evolutive factors paly an important role. The first one is the number of countries belonging to EEC, it’s the enlargement process. The second element is the institutional strenghtening and the third one, at last, is the new policies to be realized. And three rules somehow regulate EEC advance: firstly the treaties. At a certain point they realize a new treaty, of course, but it will take place just in the 80s with the Sole European Act, which will allow to achieve the historical goal,1992, of creating the big market. The secon rule is written in the EEC treaty, in the article 135, now called article 308 in the treaty about European community. This article deals with: whenever a Community action is necessary in order to achieve one of the Community goals, and the Treaty doesn’t provide for the powers needed for this end, the Council, unanimously deciding on a Commission proposal, after consulting European Parliament, gives the convenient provisions. The research policy, environment policy, economic and social cohesion policy were born. But there’s a third final rule: differentiated integration. It’s the important lesson that Jacques Delors, chief charachter in European integration evolution, will acquire for himself: Europe walks in concentric circles, Europe walks with different speeds. If we should wait for everybody to be ready, we’d stop forever; there’s someone who advance and waits for the others to arrive. This policy will be hallowed in the Treaty, many years later in Amsterdam, with the strenghtened co-operations policy.
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