In the course of the preceding decades, economic integration strengthened the positions and competencies of the Commission and Parliament, making Member States particularly wary, and leading to convoluted compromises designed to guarantee the functioning of the Union while simultaneously safeguarding Member States’ sovereignty. At a time when citizens demanded more participation for themselves and more transparency on the part of the political establishment, the European Union came to represent depoliticized and undemocratic government. Around the turn of the century, along with the near doubling of the number of Member States, the need to create a ‘Europe for citizens’ was the primary motive behind grand initiatives for a charter, a convention and a European Constitution. The embellishment of the EU with the symbols and institutions of a nation-state, however, was not received well by sceptical citizens. After the Treaty of Lisbon, democracy and transparency once again took a back seat to functionality and intergovernmental guarantees. Amid the subsequent euro crisis, public concerns over the costs of European solidarity grew in the northern half of the Union, while in the southern half not only citizens, but also functionaries in national governments and parliaments, felt held to ransom by Brussels.

The Intergovernmental Conference of Nice in December 2001 ended in disappointment for everyone involved. Despite the time pressure posed by the upcoming eastern enlargement, heads of state failed to come up with convincing answers to the so-called ‘Amsterdam left-overs’ – questions concerning the composition of the Commission, the allocation of seats in Parliament, the weighting of national votes in the Council of Ministers and the extension of qualified majority voting (QMV) to additional policy issues. Prestige and national interests prevented genuinely European answers to these urgent questions. The compromises forged at Nice did offer ample guarantees for the sovereignty of Member States, but only at the expense of institutional clarity and procedural practicability. In the public and political debate, Nice lent additional credence to the belief that neither Monnet's incrementalism nor Jacques Delors’ grand visions was capable of reinvigorating the integration process. As president of the Commission, Delors (1985-1995) had succeeded in winning Member States over, on two ambitious projects, the EMU and the CFSP. This success, however, had not put an end to the institutional deadlock between Europe and the states.