[Richard]

My MA Thesis (Great Britain's Uncodified Constitution: Threatening or Threatened?), although focused on unprotected civil liberties and governmental power balanced against an on-going internal and transnational terrorist threat, dealt with some of the issues from an EU perspective, in general, and a UK perspective, in particular.

Off the top of my head and in a nut shell, it was a far-reaching initiative of the quarter-century evolution of the ECSC, EEC, and Euratom within a relatively long (for them) period of European general social stability and political cooperation, which then progressed on to the 1987 Single European Act and the creation of the EU, the WEU, and the 'Euro' - the 'open' interior borders concepts of the Schengen Agreement being the easiest aspects of the transition from a continent of individually focused sovereign nations to a sort of Euro-federalist confederation of member states.

The 'selling point' of the initiative was mostly a monetary one related to unnecessary expenditures and multi-national bureaucratic agency 'overlap' creating a less competetive global market environment for European corporations during a time of economic belt-tightening, but the political challenges related to both the perception and reality inre to the loss of 'national sovereignty' (and 'identity'), as well as a common currency w/o a 'central bank', proved the more difficult obstacles, and continue to have an influence on EU policy initiatives to this day.

When this concept was being debated and there was a lot of publicly voiced individual national footdragging over the "What if's?" of it, I remember French President Francois Mitterand's position being "If we look back at History more than 25 years, we'll never move forward."

America's resolve to its commitment to NATO, combined with the strong leadership of Chancellor Kohl (FRG), President Mitterand (FR), and PM Thatcher (UK), were also key factors influencing these initiatives.

As an aside, I remember succinctly my amazement at the dramatic difference between the ease of traveling within the EU while at the AmEmbassy-Bonn in 1990 from what it had been like a little over a decade earlier.

I'd suggest looking at the SEA of 1987 to add perspective and focus to the understanding of the Schengen Agreement.

And so it goes...

Richard