"The 1970s crisis deeply modified the way in which Western European nation-states exercised their economic powers. This project argues that a fierce debate occurred between different economic models (mercantilist, market-oriented, social-democrat) and different institutional settings (national, European or global). It was resolved in favour of a progressive Europeanisation of ideas and policies through the European Economic Community (EEC) institutions, associated with growing market-oriented economic features. So as to examine this process, two economic policies with different aims and tools, competition policy and industrial policy, will be considered through three relevant case-studies: the steel crisis, the liberalisation of telecommunications, and the debate around the regulation of multinationals. The three most important western European nation-states, France, Germany and Great Britain, will be considered.The study will begin in 1973 – with the oil crisis and the integration of Great Britain into the EEC – and end in 1984, at the end a dramatic period of crisis both for the European economy and for the European integration process. It is argued that the acceleration of the processes of European integration, of globalisation and of economic liberalisation of the post-1984 years – on which there is a thorough body of literature – cannot be understood without studying the previous decade.The project will offer a decisive contribution to a literature on European integration whose main focus is the post-1984 years, or which examines the 1973-1984 years only from the political or the monetary viewpoints, whereas both of these dimensions failed to explain the decisive shift in the Western Europe, from the Keynesian welfare states to a first step towards the EEC regulatory state."