This study was completed in six months, between May and Octo-ber 1997. This would not have been possible without consider-able help from a large number of people, not all of which can be mentioned. We would like to thank, first of all, the people in the European Commission who were unfailingly open, responsive and constructively critical, especially but not only Michael Lake, Jer-emy Lester, Ernst Piehl, and John Penny. We would also like to thank the European Humań Rights Foundation for generously providing information and time, especially Peter Ashman, David Geer, and Andrea Stallknecht. We are also grateful to all those people who took time to participate in the Brussels Round Table and other meetings and we wish we had had more time to spend interviewing these very knowledgeable people and to make use of all the information that was made available to us. (Acknowledgements, fragment)