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Among the readily available and easily used official sources for the
topic of this week are the following:
- Bulletin
of the European Communities (title changes to Bulletin of the
European Union beginning 1994). UO Library Documents Center, call
number: DC-LC HC241.2 .A224 [Abbreviated below as Bulletin] Note:
From 1996 this is available on the website. Click on “Earlier issues”
at the bottom of the home page.
- Bulletin of the European Communities: Supplement (title changes
to Bulletin of the European Union: Supplement beginning 1993).
UO Library Documents Center, call number: DC-LC HC241.2 .A2242 [Abbreviated
below as Supplement] Note: These no longer appear in paper form,
since 2001.
Some Tips About the Most Relevant Years for Your Sub-topic of Choice:
About the Bulletin:
Each issue
has a table of contents, which more or less follows a standard format.
Go first to the table of contents. For this week’s topic, the “Internal
Market” heading in the section entitled “The Single Market and
the Community Economic and Social Area” is the most relevant part
of the Bulletin for your research.
Turning to those pages in the Bulletin that address the “Internal
Market,” you will notice numerous headings, some of which appear
regularly, such as physical barriers, technical barriers, and fiscal barriers
[these are the standard headings for arenas of internal market action],
others of which appear only in certain issues of the Bulletin.
You will notice immediately the great attention to very minute, even arcane
detail (for instance, about a very particular type of medication). Using
the “Internal Market” pages include headings, such as “General”
or “Functioning of the Internal Market,” which address issues
of more general significance, that are easily understood by the layperson.
Sometimes the same kinds of statements can be found under headings that
otherwise might appear minute and technical.
Hint:
Examine the entire text of the “Internal
Market” pages in the issue of the Bulletin you are consulting,
but don’t read the entire text. Look for headings and sub-headings,
and texts within these, that might have more general significance –
if your goal is to extract from the Bulletin general points about
internal market developments. You may, however, have an interest in a
particular product line or industrial sector; in this case, look for what
the Bulletin has to say about that product or section, in all issues
over a period of at least a year.
About the Supplement:
The
Supplement consists of individual position papers or analyses,
or general published reports, each of which addresses a particular topic
or theme. There is no pattern to the kinds of topics one might find in
any given issue of the Supplement, with two exceptions: (1) Normally
for each year from the mid-1980’s on, at least one issue of the Supplement
will include a report entitled something like the following: “Address
by J. Delors, President, to the European Parliament” or “Program
of the Commission for ----[insert a year]” or “The Thrust of
Commission Policy”; (2) big events or large developments in the EC/EU,
or in European or world affairs, may receive extended treatment in the
Supplements of the year in which the event or development occurred;
these include, for instance, the impact of German unification, or major
Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs). The best way to use the Supplement
is to examine the complete collection of Supplements for the year
or years in which the EC/EU item of interest to you occurred, or alternatively,
to examine several years of the Supplement in the hope of finding
a paper on a topic related to your interest. Also highly recommended is
a systematic examination of the “Address” of the Commission
President, or similar statements, and the reports on the Commission program,
for each year of interest to your research. These are excellent overviews
of the activity of the EC/EU and its economic, social and political context,
in language that is readily accessible (the speeches of the Commission
president to the European Parliament are especially readable) and that
focuses on the key points, without entering too much into technical detail.
Hint:
In each issue of the Bulletin,
immediately following the table of contents, there is a list of Supplements
published in that year to date. Go to the final issue of the Bulletin
for any given year, and you will get a one page listing of all the titles
of the Supplements published in that year.
About both Bulletin and Supplement:
Sources Leading to Sources
As Tom Stave pointed out in his introduction
to the Official Records of the European Union, the Bulletin (systematically
and therefore most comprehensively) and, to some extent, the Supplement,
provide references internally to the key underlying documents of EC/EU
business – the Official Journal (OJ-L and OJ-C), the COM and
SEC documents, as well as other sources. Even though these appear in tiny
print in the Bulletin as footnotes, these are your best guide to going
back to the basics, especially if you are interested in tracing the history
of the legislation on a particular topic, or background papers or records
of debates on big topics. The COM documents include both White papers
and Green papers, and these are available in Microfiche format in the
Library (located in the same section as the newspaper microfilms). The
OJ documents, in Microfiche format, are also available in the same location.
Some Tips About the Most Relevant Years for Your Sub-topic of Choice
- For the sub-topic“Single European Act”:
Begin your search in the year 1984 or 1985, and continue it not beyond
1990. Jacques Delors was at the very center of action during these years,
thus his addresses and statements in the Supplement over the
course of these years ought to provide fascinating historical reading
of the progress of the drafting, signing, and ratification of the Single
Act. The annual program of the Commission reflects this same process
in more detail, with specific attention to particular aspects of the
Single Act initiative. The Bulletin for these years provides
still more variety in the kinds of sources and issues addressed.
- For the sub-topic“Implementing the Single
Market, Progress of the Single Market”: Begin with 1992 (the
year when the Single Market went into effect) and examine Bulletin
over a period of one or two years. Alternatively, select any single
year or two consecutive years within the time period 1992 – present,
and examine Single Market issues of interest to you within this chosen
time frame.
- For the sub-topic“Institutional Developments”:
The key development here was the introduction of qualified majority
voting on the Council of Ministers for the implementation of Single
Market items. Look in the Bulletin for references to voting in
the “Internal Market” section, for any single year or number
of years, or look in the Bulletin and Supplement for topics having
to do with Institutions and Institutional Reform. Since institutional
issues were prominent from the very beginning of the process of the
Single European Act, the entire period 1984-1990’s is relevant.
- For the sub-topic“Agricultural Policy”:
The priority of this item throughout the entire history of the EC and
EU implies that issues of the Bulletin and Supplement
from the first year of publication are sources of interest. This is
also a vast and extremely complex topic. The demand for reform of CAP
was especially poignant in the early 1980s, when Britain raised great
objections to its budget contribution – the largest share of which
went to the funding of CAP. This is therefore a period in which the
topic is likely to have received extended attention. Recommended is
the examination of the Supplement for each year beginning with
1979 to find position papers on CAP and CAP reform. The topic remains
prominent in EU affairs, so it is likely that such papers might appear
as recently as in the 1990’s issues of the Supplement.
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