European Union
European Union
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Introduction to European Union
European Union (EU), organization of European countries dedicated to increasing economic integration and strengthening cooperation among its members. The European Union headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium. As of 2007 there were 27 countries in the EU.
The European Union was formally established on November 1, 1993. It is the most recent in a series of cooperative organizations in Europe that originated with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) of 1951, which became the European Community (EC) in 1967. The original members of the EC were Belgium, France, West Germany (now part of the united Germany), Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, and Netherlands. Subsequently these nations were joined by Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Spain. In 1991 the governments of the 12 member states signed the Treaty on European Union (commonly called the Maastricht Treaty), which was then ratified by the national legislatures of all the member countries.
The Maastricht Treaty transformed the EC into the EU. In 1995 Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU. In May 2004, 10 more countries were added, bringing the total number of EU member countries to 25. The 10 new members were Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Two more countries in eastern Europe-Romania and Bulgaria-joined the EU on January 1, 2007.
The EU has a number of objectives. Its principal goal is to promote and expand cooperation among member states in economics and trade, social issues, foreign policy, security and defense, and judicial matters. Under the Maastricht Treaty, European citizenship was granted to citizens of each member state. Border controls were relaxed. Customs and immigration agreements were modified to allow European citizens greater freedom to live, work, and study in any of the member states.
Another major goal of the EU has been to implement Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which introduced a single currency, the euro, for EU members. In January 2002 the euro replaced the national currencies of 12 EU member nations. Fourteen EU members do not currently participate in the single currency. They are Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, nine of the ten nations that joined the EU in 2004, and Bulgaria and Romania. Slovenia adopted the euro in January 2007, having become the first of the members added in 2004 to meet the necessary economic requirements." (1)
History
Content about European Union from the publication "The ABC of European Union law" (2010, European Union) by Klaus-Dieter Borchardt.
Until shortly after the end of the Second World War our concept of the state and our political life had developed almost entirely on the basis of national constitutions and laws. It was on this basis that the rules of conduct binding not only on citizens and parties in our democratic states but also on the state and its organs were created. It took the complete collapse of Europe and its political and economic decline to create the conditions for a new beginning and give a fresh impetus to the idea of a new European order.
Context of European Union in the European Union
In overall terms, moves towards unification in Europe since the Second World War have created a confusing mixture of numerous and complex organisations that are difficult to keep track of. For example, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), WEU (Western European Union), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), the Council of Europe and the European Union coexist without any real links between them. The number of member countries in these various organisations ranges from 10 (WEU) to 47 (Council of Europe).
More about European Union in the European Union
This variety of organisations only acquires a logical structure if we look at their specific aims. They can be divided into three main groups.
Content about European Union from the publication "The ABC of European Union law" (2010, European Union) by Klaus-Dieter Borchardt.
The third group of European organisations comprises the European Union. The feature that is completely new in the EU and distinguishes it from the usual type of international association of states is that the Member States have ceded some of their sovereign rights to the EU and have conferred on the Union powers to act independently. In exercising these powers, the EU is able to issue sovereign acts which have the same force as laws in individual states.
Context of European Union in the European Union
The foundation stone of the European Union was laid by the then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman in his declaration of 9 May 1950, in which he put forward the plan he had worked out with Jean Monnet to bring Europe's coal and steel industries together to form a European Coal and Steel Community. This would, he declared, constitute a historic initiative for an 'organised and vital Europe', which was 'indispensable for civilisation' and without which the 'peace of the world could not be maintained'. The 'Schuman Plan' finally became a reality with the conclusion of the founding Treaty of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) by the six founding States (Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) on 18 April 1951 in Paris (Treaty of Paris) and its entry into force on 23 July 1952. This Community was established for a period of 50 years, and was 'integrated' into the European Community when its founding Treaty expired on 23 July 2002. A further development came some years later with the Treaties of Rome of 25 March 1957, which created the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom); these began their work when the Treaties entered into force on 1 January 1958.
More about European Union in the European Union
The creation of the European Union by means of the Treaty of Maastricht marked a further step along the path to the political unification of Europe. Although the Treaty was signed in Maastricht on 7 February 1992, a number of obstacles in the ratification process (approval by the people of Denmark only after a second referendum; legal action in Germany to have Parliament's approval of the Treaty declared unconstitutional) meant that it did not enter into force until 1 November 1993. The Treaty referred to itself as 'a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe'. It contained the instrument establishing the European Union, although it did not bring this process to completion. It was a first step on the path leading ultimately to a European constitutional system.
Other Aspects
Further development came in the form of the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, which entered into force on 1 May 1999 and 1 February 2003. The aim of these reforms was to preserve the EU's capacity for effective action in a Union enlarged from 15 to 27 or more members. The two Treaties therefore focused on institutional reforms and, compared with previous reforms, the political will to deepen European integration in Nice was relatively weak.
Details
The subsequent criticism from several quarters resulted in the start of a debate on the future of the EU and its institutional set-up. As a result, on 5 December 2001 in Laeken (Belgium), the Heads of State or Government adopted a Declaration on the Future of the European Union, in which the EU undertook to become more democratic, transparent and effective and to open the road to a constitution. The first step to achieving this goal was taken by setting up a European convention, chaired by the former President of France, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, with the remit of drafting a European constitution. On 18 July 2003 the Chairman, on behalf of the convention, officially submitted the draft of the Treaty drawn up by the convention to the President of the European Cou ncil. This draft was adopted, with certain amendments, by the Heads of State or Government on 17 and 18 July in Brussels after the accession of the 10 new Member States on 1 May 2004 and the European Parliament elections in mid-June 2004.
Last Remarks
The constitution was intended to turn the European Union and the European Community as we knew them into a new, single European Union based on a single Constitutional Treaty. Only the European Atomic Energy Community would continue to exist as a separate Community - although it would continue to be closely associated with the European Union.
However, this attempt at a constitution failed in the ratification process. After the initial votes were positive in 13 of the 25 Member States, the Treaty was rejected in referendums in France (54.68 % against, from a turnout of 69.34 %) and the Netherlands (61.7 % against, from a turnout of 63 %).
Following a period of reflection of almost two years, a new package of reforms was launched in the first half of 2007. This reform package represented a move away from the idea of a European constitution under which all existing Treaties would be revoked and replaced by a single text called the 'Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe'. Instead, a Reform Treaty was drawn up, which, like the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice before it, made fundamental changes to the existing EU Treaties in order to strengthen the EU's capacity to act within and outside the Union, increase its democratic legitimacy and enhance the efficiency of EU action overall. In line with tradition, this Reform Treaty was called the Treaty of Lisbon.
The Treaty was drafted unusually quickly, chiefly due to the fact that the Heads of State or Government themselves set out in detail in the conclusions of the meeting of the European Council of 21 and 22 June 2007 in Brussels how and to what extent the changes negotiated at the Intergovernmental Conference of 2004 were to be incorporated into the existing Treaties. Their approach was unusual in that they did not limit themselves to general directions to be implemented by an Intergovernmental Conference, but themselves drew up the structure and content of the changes to be made, and indeed often set out the exact wording of a provision. The main points of contention were the delimitation of competences between the Union and the Member States, the future of the common foreign and security policy, the new role of the national parliaments in the integration process, the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into Union law and possible progress in the area of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
As a result, the Intergovernmental Conference convened in 2007 had little room for manoeuvre and was only empowered to implement the required changes technically. The work of the Intergovernmental Conference was completed by the 18 and 19 October 2007, and obtained the political approval of the European Council, which was meeting informally in Lisbon at the same time. Finally, the Treaty was formally signed by the Heads of State or Government of the 27 Member States of the EU on 13 December 2007 in Lisbon.
However, the ratification process for this Treaty proved extremely difficult. Although the Lisbon Treaty, unlike the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, was successfully ratified in France and the Netherlands, it initially fell at the hurdle of a first referendum in Ireland on 12 June 2008 (53.4 % against, in a turnout of 53.1 %). Only after a number of legal assurances on the (limited) scope of the new Treaty were Irish citizens called to vote in a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in October 2009. This time the Treaty received the broad support of the Irish population (67.1 % for, in a turnout of 59 %). The success of the referendum in Ireland also opened the way for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in Poland and the Czech Republic. In Poland, President Kaczy_ski had made signature of the instrument of ratification dependent on a favourable outcome in the Irish referendum. The Czech President, V
Definition of European Union
In accordance with the work A Dictionary of Law, this is a description of European Union : (European Union, EU)
The 25 nations (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) that have joined together to form an economic community with common monetary, political, and social aspirations. The EU came into being on 1 November 1993 according to the terms of the *Maastricht Treaty. It comprises the three European Communities (See European Community), extended by the adoption of a common foreign and security policy (CFSP), which requires cooperation between member states in foreign policy and security, and cooperation in justice and home affairs.
Description of European Union (EU)
The Concise Publication of the European Union describes european union (eu) in the following terms: [1] Although 'European Union' was a term frequently used to signal the aspiration of a legitimate European political entity, it first found expression in a treaty in the preamble to the Single European Act of 1986. The present EU was created in 1992 by the Maastricht Treaty and denotes the supranational institutions of the European Community together with the 'pillars' of intergovernmental co-operation between member states. In 1997, a proposal to make the EU a legal entity in the Treaty of Amsterdam was rejected.
European Union and the European Union
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EU
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Notas y References
Based on the book "A Concise Publication of the European Union from Aachen to Zollverein", by Rodney Leach (Profile Books; London)
Professional Content and Learning Tools
☑️ Lawi offers educational solutions and professional insight, integrating content, tools, and practical technology to promote lifelong learning, personal and professional improvement, and human progress through knowledge. Our collections feature resources and solutions from a wide range of subject areas, from management and finance to law and cybersecurity. This text is only a brief introduction. If you would like us to expand on this content, please let us know in the comments. If you’re finding our platform and publications valuable, share it with a colleague or friend, leave a comment and consider subscribing if you haven’t already (thanks!). There are group discounts, gift options, and referral bonuses available.
See Also
Resources
Notes and References
Information about European Union in the Encarta Online Publication