The Maastricht Treaty: Second Thoughts after 20 Years Journal of European Integration Special Issues Series

The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 and ratified in the following year, is widely seen as a landmark in the evolution of the European Union. It introduced into the treaty framework revolutionary new elements such as the co-decision procedure between the Council and the European Parliament, cooperation in the area of Justice and Home Affairs, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the "euro" as a single currency for the majority of the then member states. It also introduced the concept of European citizenship into the treaty, reflecting the rising expectations of both citizens and decision-makers in the European project, and upgraded the role of the European Council at the summit of the EU?s institutional structure.

Twenty years later, each of these innovations remain of central importance for the process of European integration, while current developments provide a valuable opportunity to reflect on the historical decisions taken in Maastricht in order to assess their significance and examine the subsequent evolution of the Union.

This volume brings together an international group of leading scholars in the field in order to provide such an assessment, with each article both looking back over the developments within each of these domains as well as looking ahead to the way in which the EU is positioned to address current challenges.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

1. Introduction: Understanding and Assessing the Maastricht Treaty 2. Still Rooted in Maastricht: EU External Relations as a ‘Third-generation Hybrid’ 3. Justice and Home Affairs: The Treaty of Maastricht as a Decisive Intergovernmental Gate Opener 4. Twenty Years of Co-decision Since Maastricht: Inter- and Intrainstitutional Implications5. The Maastricht Treaty and the European Council: The History of an Institutional Evolution 6. The Maastricht Treaty at Twenty: A Greco-European Tragedy? 7. ‘Maastricht Plus’: Managing the Logic of Inherent Imperfections 8. Post-Maastricht Civil Society and Participatory Democracy 9. In the Face of Crisis: Input Legitimacy, Output Legitimacy and the Political Messianism of European Integration 10. The Arc of Institutional Reform in Post-Maastricht Treaty Change

Thomas Christiansen is Jean Monnet Professor of European Institutional Politics at Maastricht University. He is Co-Director of the Maastricht Centre for European Governance (with S.Vanhonacker) and Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration (with S.Duke). He has published widely on different aspects of the institutional politics of the EU.

Simon Duke is a Professor at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Maastricht, Netherlands. He has published several monographs and his work has also appeared in numerous academic journals including the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Politics, European Foreign Affairs Review and the Hague Journal of Diplomacy.