"Inter-governmental systems, already weakened at birth by the compromises which their negotiators had to agree to, are soon paralysed by the rule of unanimity which governs their decisions" - Jean Monnet
The battle lines had been drawn for some time, but battle was not really engaged on the Amsterdam Treaty process until the autumn of 1994. At that stage three major contributions to the debate, from Britain, Germany and France, set the parameters of a discussion that would go on for two and a half years until the British election of the spring of 1997 finally broke the deadlock.
In a final frantic rush the deal was done by June on a treaty that if it did not meet the ambitions of ideologically driven integrationists, or, many say, the needs of enlargement, nevertheless opened up a real discussion on the fundamentals of what the Union is going to look like in the years ahead.
At stake essentially was how to reconcile continuing evolution towards a closer political and economic Union with the political ambition to enlarge - "deepening or widening?" was how commentators described the artificial dichotomy.
Both, said the leaders of France and Germany. Enlargement without greater pooling of sovereignty would lead to decision-making gridlock and those great proponents of enlargement like the British would simply have to be brought to see this.
In an ambitious statement in September 1994 on behalf of the majority CDU and CSU groups in the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schauble, heir apparent to Helmut Kohl, put the issue bluntly: "Never again must there be a destabilising vacuum of power in central Europe. If (Western) European integration were not to progress Germany might be called upon, or be tempted by its own security constraints, to try to effect the stabilisation of Eastern Europe on its own and in the traditional way."
The internal requirement of decision-making effectiveness and the external enlargement dimension were one and the same question, not challenges at odds with each other, the Germans and French argued.
But there was clear recognition by both of the problems posed by either political unwillingness of current member states to integrate faster or the future potential inability of new members to do so because of economic backwardness. And so Schauble and the French Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur, each separately proposed means of institutionalising mechansims to allow some to go ahead faster than others while preserving the basic framework, policies and direction of the Union.
Both seemed to envisage the emergence of inner and outer cores of membership, with Balladur explicitly emphasising Franco-German leadership.
John Major's response, with the Eurosceptics baying at his heals, was a speech in Leiden University. In it he set out a vision of an a la carte Europe, in which member states pick and choose which bits they want to participate in. The vision of the forefathers of the EU of a common approach to the great issues of the day, he said, was "outdated". And he specifically rejected any move to greater pooling of sovereignty through less use of the veto and the extension of qualified majority voting (QMV).
In the end the treaty would combine both approaches - a minimalist extension of QMV, largely because of a loss of German nerve, but the rejection of the a la carte Union in favour of one that introduces "flexibility" without undermining the essential institutional unity and equality of member states in the EU.
In essence the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations were a struggle between the inexorable logic of the integration and enlargement process to pool more sovereignty - through more majority voting and use of the Community approach to issues - and the desire to preserve in one form or another the right of member states to opt out of or block collective projects - the veto and intergovernmentalism.
On paper QMV has existed since the Treaty of Rome in 1966, when the unanimity rule had been amended to allow majority voting on agriculture, external trade and transport. In the run-up to the treaty negotiations the French had refused to give up their veto and in 1965 had boycotted the Council under their celebrated "empty chair" policy.
In the end the "Luxembourg Compromise" was agreed under which member states could invoke a veto if their "vital national interest" was threatened. The result was that majority voting was rarely used and attempts to curb use of the veto failed at summits in Paris in 1974 and Stuttgart in 1983.
Change came in 1985 with the determination to complete the single market and the imminent accession of Spain and Portugal. Quite simply the single market would not have been possible without QMV and there were not a few who feared that enlargement without more majority voting would leave the Union's agenda vulnerable to being taken hostage by the not-altogether clubbable Spanish through the use of ungentlemanly linkages.
The veto, and ways around its pernicious dead hand, became the issue of Amsterdam. Yet, although hedged and partially circumvented in some areas, the Treaty embodies the veto writ large. Anything would be acceptable except its fundamental dilution, anything but conceding QMV in the most sensitive areas of policy. The drafters of Amsterdam have shown great ingenuity in the number of ways they have addressed the problem - indeed the complexity of the treaty is directly related to this failure to address the central problem of the veto directly.
In the "flexibility" provisions a way round the recalcitrant member states was found in allowing projects to be undertaken with less than full participation of member states. Yet the triggering of the flexibility provisions, already hedged with so many preconditions that few believe they will be used outside very limited areas, retain a veto for member states who believe their vital interests are threatened. A similar "emergency brake" operates in the system of "constructive abstention" devised for foreign and security policy, under which member states can stand back from actions undertaken by the majority. And in the same pillar the move to distinguish between strategic decisions - unanimity voting - and implementing decisions - QMV - is also circumscribed by a veto. The treaty commitment that member states will not obstruct decision-making by unreasonably using their veto is very largely aspirational although it does require them to state reasons for its use, a challenge that will not unduly tax the wordsmiths of the diplomatic profession.
By any standard Amsterdam represents only the most half-hearted attempt to move genuinely to greater pooling of sovereignty, a reality testified to by the fact than before the ink was dry on the paper, EU leaders were already talking about the need to have another Inter-Governmental Conference.
`Two things matter in the history of the EC," a key adviser to Jacques Delors, Francois Lamoureux, once argued: "the introduction of qualified majority voting in the Single European Act, and phase three of EMU in the Maastricht treaty." By that standard Amsterdam barely rates mention.