EUROPEAN INTEGRATION — THE PHRASE WAS USED SO EASILY TO connote a process that might, over a period, incorporate most of the continent. But in the four decades when the cold war segmented Europe the notion of extensive integration seemed irrelevant; in practice integration has been consolidated as an essentially West European phenomenon. The policy scope, the economic application, the security implications and the institutional frameworks of integration became concentrated around the core countries of Western Europe. Similarly the underpinning understandings about solidarity and mutual commitment were formulated on the assumption that a hard boundary separated those Europeans capable of being engaged from those who were prevented from so doing. There were few among those who studied this West European process who kept the wider Europe in mind. Ghiţa Ionescu was unusual in always keeping an eye open to developments in both parts of the continent, a legacy that all of us who worked with him cherish. The burden that he leaves us is of trying to figure out whether integration can be given substance as a process for pan-Europe.
