United Germany's place in Europe is intact. Bonn (soon to be Berlin) remains an ardent proponent of the overarching goals of integration, and along with France continues to occupy the activist political fulcrum in Brussels. Since the collapse of the wall in November 1989, the German government has contributed vital support to the ambitious goals of political and economic integration enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty and its more staid progeny, and it has made eastern enlargement a central objective of the European Union. The Federal Republic's integration policy reveals new accents since 1990, to be sure: a greater frugality and a more sober appraisal of the limits of the European project, to name just two. Nevertheless, the appearance is one of seamless continuity with the past.

Yet beyond the glamor and glare of grand bargaining in Brussels, conspicuous shifts in Germany's approach to European regulative policies have emerged since, and in many instances because of, unification. In sum, the preceding chapters reveal a complex pattern of change and continuity, stretching across both the constitutive and regulative dimensions of Community politics. In this final chapter, I delve more deeply into the empirical findings, and construct explanations based on the analytical framework outlined in chapter 1. I then consider the longterm implications of constitutive continuity underpinned by regulative change for the larger relationship between an integrating Europe and a unified Germany as the twentieth century draws to a close.