The Future of Europe.

Peter Coffey is a British national and holder of the United States West Chair at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. This compendium highlights key issues and introduces policy proposals that affect Europe generally and the European Community (EC) specifically. Although Coffey offers the reader a glimpse of future security, foreign policy and social issues, they are largely examined as a function of economics. Considering the EC was conceived as an economic creature, however, his primacy on economics is not misplaced. Freedoms of movement of goods, labour and capital, the establishment of services subsequently receive due attention.

Coffey's style is frank and unapologetic: the Maastricht Treaty, he claims, is a "hotchpotch, a rushed job, an inadequate document" and a potential impediment to any enlargement or broadening of the EC, a development Coffey advocates. Britain and France draw sharp criticism for their conduct during the Bosnia crisis.

Coffey envisages a "Europe a la carte" insomuch as any European union must be a selective union. Mindful of the progress made by the EC, he nevertheless expresses impatience over the impurity of its democratic practices. Such practices are "at best very thin", and he offers specific proposals to remedy them. He calls for the election of representatives from the EC member parliaments to the European Parliament, the formation of a "European Senate" consisting of members of the upper houses of Member States and the abolishment of the rotating presidency.

Most of this book was completed in mid-1993, and Coffey acknowledges that the many changes in Europe since then may cause his material to be somewhat dated. While the overall timeliness of the book is not diminished too greatly, supplemental contributions by Coffey would be most welcome, especially in light of the Balkan peace initiative and associated peace operations underway in the former Yugoslavia.