In the present stage of integration, private and public market integration is really what the European Community is all about. A stable security settin- itself, in part, a result of European integration - and cooperative politics in Western Europe have enabled the creation and maintenance of an elaborate legal system and common institutions facilitating the unification of product markets throughout the Community. Of course, the pervasive and incessant politicisation of Community decision-making at the Ministerial level tends to diminish attention for what actually happens in the Community industrial markets, while also obscuring its profound economic impact on Europeah society. It is precisely from the fascination with this vivid 'core' of the European Community that this book has arisen. I have attempted to combine empirical economic analysis, and a minimum of institutional description, with economic theory. Access to theory has been facilitated by the avoidance of algebraic tools, employing - only where necessary - geometric tools. In combining the analytical traditions of international and industrial economics, linked to a fairly detailed institutional economics of legal arrangements and competences at the EC level, it is hoped to provide the relevant tools to comprehend the industrial Euromarkets.

How can we approach the Commission's role as co-manager of policy implementation? Why should we expect the Commission to be pulled into domestic policy execution and to accumulate something like an implementation management capacity? How should we conceptualise the Commission's linkage with post-decision management issues? Finally, how does the Commission's involvement in the application of EU policies, if any, significantly change everything? Such questions are answered in this study, which is concerned with what may be called the implementation management capacity of the European Commission. Simply put, this is the role the Commission plays in the implementation of large-scale European spending programmes. While it is true that the Commission's predominant prerogatives are to draft legislation and facilitate bargaining, it also has a role in post-decision policy management. This role is of increasing importance for the emerging governance of the European Union. Readership: social scientists, journalists and all those interested in the role of the European Commission in shaping EU policies.