Experts and European transport integration, 1945-1958

This article explores the role of experts in shaping European transport policies and the transport clauses in the Treaty of Rome in the formative post-war years of European integration. It argues that transport experts had a specific understanding of how to work together on the international level that clashed with the idea of creating a High Authority of independent experts without intimate knowledge of transport. Moreover, their ideas had been embedded in a policy network which co-ordinated the work of a number of international organizations. This network worked hard to prevent that a newly to be established Common Transport Policy would get off the ground. The paper explores the usefulness of the epistemic community concept to understand the activities of the network and what it accomplished. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.