Between a reputation for policy-making by distant unelected civil servants, and well-stocked rumors of political back-scratching and profiteering, ‘Europe’ in these years was not well served by its own achievements. The familiar shortcomings of local politics—clientelism, corruption, manipulation—that the better-run nation states were thought to have overcome now resurfaced on a continental scale. Public responsibility for occasional ‘Euro-scandals’ was prudently shifted by national politicians onto the shoulders of an invisible class of unelected ‘Eurocrats’, whose bad name carried no
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