While the Commission was far from acting as a policy entrepreneur, the meetings of the European Council were often paralyzed by distributional conflicts, notably the British budgetary rebate. The member states were not only challenged by the internal problems of an enlarged Community but also by the international economic system unconducive to further integration. Three factors were particularly important: the collapse of the international monetary order in 1971; two oil crises of 1973 and 1979; and the concurrence of low growth and high inflation (stagflation) producing economic divergence in Western Europe.