[From the Introduction]. This paper forms part of a new research project into the origins of own resources. The serious lack of knowledge about this political process presents a major challenge to this study. The research therefore departs from an attempt to establish a narrative of the political process towards creating own resources. This narrative is based on completely new evidence from the historical archives of the Community institutions and member state administrations. Once we have a good overview of this, we can derive policy lessons and theoretical implications. This paper puts forward the first narrative linking the politics of financing the Community to the fate of the first attempt at enlarging the Community in 1961-63. The case study is based on new investigations into multiple historical archives at the national and European levels. For the further study of project about ‘sovereign states and supranational money - own resources, and the creation of a financial platform for the EU’ additional narrative will focus on: the Commission’s 1965 proposals for financing the Community, the empty chair crisis and resolution; the status of the financing proposals during the period of the second enlargement attempt; the relaunching of the financing debate in connection the plans for monetary union around the December 1969 Hague meeting; the final negotiations for the own resources agreement in April 1970
