Single European Act And Final Act

The Single European Act was passed in 1986 in the presence of representatives of all the member states at that time. This is a copy of the legal document that was passed into law and to which twelve heads of State put their names.

The text of the agreement providing for closer co-operation in the EEC, and the amendments made to existing treaties to achieve this end.

This edition of the Treaties establishing the European Communities and documents concerning Accessions to those Communities is published in two volumes. It has been brought up to date as at 1 July 1987 by the services of the Community Institutions on the basis of the official texts in force on that date and is published in the Spanish, Danish, German, Greek, English, French, Irish, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese languages. This first volume contains the Treaties establishing the European Communities, the Treaties amending those Treaties and the Single European Art. It also contains a certain number of Resolutions and Declarations. The second volume contains the documents concerning the Accessions to the Communities of Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Throughout the texts reproduced in the two volumes, the term "Assembly' has, where necessary, been replaced, in accordance with Article 3 of the Single European Act, by the terms 'European Parliament'. The two collections of texts have been prepared for documentation purposes and do not involve the responsibility of the Institutions.

This book sheds light on a fascinating process of historic, legal evolution, starting from a situation of doubt as to whether the Community had treaty-making power, and ending with certain treaties being denied to sovereign states and transferred to an international organization. This process is still continuing, and brings in its wake far-reaching results. The author makes distinction between cases where exclusive treaty-making is explicitly specified in the founding treaties, and cases where treaty-making power is implicit, and is derived from the general structure of Community law. Implicit power becomes exclusive only by occupying the field', which means enactment, and exclusive power negates "ab initio" the Member States' power, whereas implicit exclusive power merely negates the competence of the Member States to establish rules conflicting with those of the Community. Scholars, practitioners, lawyers, students and everybody who deals with European Union affairs will find this book of great interest.