On October 3, 1989, after a 3-year itinerary fraught with political hurdles, the Council of the European Communities adopted the “Television Without Frontiers” directive whose purpose was to harmonize national laws for transnational broadcasting. This paper reviews chronologically the policymaking process of the directive from the Green Paper to the incorporation of the directive into national legislation. The directive represents an illuminating case study in EC decisionmaking because it highlights how the cooperation procedure, a significant feature of the 1987 Single European Act, altered the relationships among EC institutions and how political compromise enabled the Member States to reconcile their differences and ultimately adopt the legislation.
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