Reshaping Europe in the Twenty-First Century

In September 1988, Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, delivered a speech in the Belgian town of Bruges. It opened a great debate on the future of Europe. For the first time in post-war European history a British politician proposed widening the ideal of European political union, to throw European countries on the side of international free trade, willing co-operation between nations and individual liberty. The Bruges Group, formed in February 1989, is concerned to argue for these broader objectives within the debate on the future of Europe. All the papers in this volume are written from that viewpoint.