This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Europe Journey to an Unknown Destination given by Andrew Seanfield was originally broadcast in 1972.

The last two lectures have identified some pretty large tasks that lie ahead of the European community,

tasks which will demand definite decisions from it in the not very distant future.

And yet, the community as it stands is an extremely inefficient instrument for decision-making.

Indeed, you may have felt that there was a certain contradiction

between the character of this organisation, as I've described it, growing out of a rather amorphous mass of complementary activities of a very

varied kind, with a central authority wholly dependent upon securing consensus among its members,

and on the other side the series of major decisions that I suggest are

required of it. I hope that this is not an irremediable contradiction. In fact, I take the view that

the community will be able to manage its relations with the rest of the world, with the Soviet

bloc, Japan, the underdeveloped countries,

as well as with the United States, only if it arrives at a more efficient method of making its

decisions. This is the subject that I'm going to discuss tonight.

There are two major defects in the community's processes.

First, they're excessively slow.

There's no routine for forcing a decision, even if a clear majority of the members wants it.

Secondly, the Brussels organisation suffers by comparison with national governments because it doesn't have democratic legitimacy possessed by the latter.

The matters which are decided in the name of the community don't command popular obedience based on the

feeling that the decisions, even when they're not liked, emanate from a body which is in the last resort

sustained by the freely given support of a majority of the population. It's too technocratic.

One of the questions which will be brought to a head, I think, by Britain's entry, is how to begin

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