Overcoming Barriers to Membership in the European Union
Background
In the aftermath of World War II major European players wanted to rebuild Europe's economy and ensure that such a devastating conflict would never happen again. Out of that desire came the European Coal and Steel Community(ECSC), an agreement in 1951 between six nations to have a common market for the commodities most associated with war . Over time the ECSC evolved into what it is today: the European Union(EU). Today the EU includes 28 countries and over 500 million citizens in a single market .
Countries have many reasons for wanting to join the EU. Membership means access to a large, competitive market with free movement of goods, services, people and capital. It creates a common culture and forges bonds, hopefully preventing future wars. But while the EU claims to be “open to all democratic European countries that wish to join ,” barriers to membership exist as well. Legal barriers, like the Copenhagen criteria named from a 1993 European Council meeting in Denmark, require candidates for membership to achieve a stable democracy that respects the rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities. It also requires the candidate to have a functioning market economy . A policy called “acquis communiataire” came from the Copenhagen criteria which mandates members to align their national laws with all European Union policies. As the EU grows and passes more laws, the bureaucratic nature of acquis communataire slows EU expansion more and more.
Political barriers make joining the EU more difficult as well. For a new member to join the EU, all current EU member states must unanimously approve its entry . A number of reasons could mean a candidate does n...
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... to twenty-eight countries and its mandate has changed from controlling the economics of coal and steel into a common market for all goods with few border restrictions and in over half of the states a common currency. The EU promotes democracy by standardizing laws and institutions of its members, it has a court system and its mandate has evolved to include policies on energy, the environment, healthcare, education, infrastructure and agriculture. And none of this happened overnight. Accepting new members is so difficult because of careful considerations. Member states have the right to determine with whom and when they want to integrate. Progress in negotiation only occurs when a potential member makes real changes agreed upon by all sides. Rapid enlargement can lead to great strains on European institutions and agreements would certainly become harder to reach.
It is approximated that the Australopithecus, a hominid, lived approximately four to one million years ago. From that point in time, the world history of humans has been an exhaustive, arduous task to document. With that in mind, world historians attempt to capture the events most important to the development of contemporary humanity. In fact, Tamim Ansary states that “World history, after all, is not a chronological list of every damn thing that ever happened; it’s a chain of only the most consequential events, selected to reveal the arc of the story-it’s the arc that counts.” Some have taken a European approach to the restrictions, but in response to such thought, Tamim Ansary’s Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes presents a sequential restating of history through an Islamic viewpoint. From the beginning of Islam with Muhammad to recent happenings, like 9/11, Ansary presents Islamic history in a larger context to commendably combine said history with world history. Furthermore, Ansary claims that Islamic history has often been seen as a side to Western history, as Western history has “prevailed and churned” Islamic history, although it has it is crucially significant in the larger context of world history. In the larger sense, Ansary proves his argument that Islamic history has developed independently and is important, but he does not project the importance of the Islamic history over European history.
Working unitedly is a basic thing to do if you have one to 10 people, but with almost a whole country working as a union is a significant and a spontaneous deal. Which Union am I talking about? The European Union, of course! This Union holds virtually all of the European Countries with 28 countries. Unfortunately, some countries never did join because of losing sovereignty.
Prutha Patel Mr. Lougheed Social Studies 09 February, 2016 Has Europe United? Do you believe that the European Union has united Europe? A supranational cooperation is when countries give up some control of their affairs as they work together to achieve shared goals. The European countries have used supranational cooperation to create the European Union because they want to prevent future wars, and rebuild the weak economy that had formed after the two wars. The European Union has united Europe because it has made Europe have a common currency called the Euro, has a common “government” for the European Union, and has all of the countries influenced when one country that is part of the European Union is in “trouble”.
The Schuman proposal began various European countries setting up the European Coal and Steal Community (ECSC), this was signed in 1951 by six countries. The countries that initially set up the ECSC were France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. The idea behind the ECSC was the first serious institutional committee in Europe and was the start of integration, the aim was to provide a common market of coal and steel trade. This meant that each of the states would be able to have access to the various qualities of coal and steel that the members had with no tariff of importing and exporting to the various countries. This let the countries concentrate on their more efficient areas leading to specialisation. The ECSC began the beginning of supranational power because the "High Authority could adopt binding decisions" (1) as elements of decision making were carried out by ECSC committees. A supranational power is where the member state has to abide by the decisions made of the community, as they have power above the national level.
In the period preceding and immediately following Poland’s accession into the European Union (01.05.2004) Polish media were overflowing “gender talk.” On the radio one would hear randomly placed banter about “natural differences between the sexes” (in fact, a new station (FM 94), was established in 2002 with “real men” in mind). Almost any event discussed on the evening news could be commented with a “this is what women are like” or “men cannot help but be men.” Magazines and newspapers provided an abundance of images featuring manly men and womanly women, as well as departures from such norm (most notably drag queens from gay pride parades in Western Europe). What follows is a reading of a selection of gender-focused cover stories published by three mainstream political weeklies – Polityka, Wprost, and the Polish edition of Newsweek between spring 2003 and the summer of 2004. My aim is to suggest a link between the intensity of “gender talk” in the media and Poland’s E.U. accession.
Let’s envision that you were kicked out of somewhere you referred to as home, solely because people assume you don’t belong? Rather than be given a path to belong. This is a current issue, people ruling over and kicking out those who “don’t belong”, but why? Instead how about we join forces and give everyone a chance to become equal, as we should be. For the following reasons, undocumented immigrants should get a “path to citizenship”. They deserve to become citizens because America is a country of immigrants, immigrants improve the economy, and it costs too much to deport them.
A Democratic Deficit in the EU The question over the legitimacy of the EU has been a nearly continuous debate and many commentators appear to agree that the EU suffers from a severe ‘democratic deficit’. There are many reasons why this perception is so widespread. As a multinational body it lacks the grounding in common history and culture upon which most individual polities can draw.
Schmitter, P. C. 2001. What is there to legitimize in the European Union… and how might this be accomplished? IHS Political Science Series: 2001, No. 75. Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna.
The European Union (EU), since the initial foundation in 1952 as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and throughout periods of development, has been considered one of the most advanced forms of regional integration. It, based on numerous treaties and resolutions, has strived to promote values such as peace, cooperation or democracy, and in 2012 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” (Nobel Media AB, 2012). Despite its struggle for promoting democracy, the EU itself has long experienced scholarly criticisms that it suffers the democratic deficit, from which its democratic legitimacy is undermined by observable problems in political accountability and participation. As the importance of legitimacy in a democratically representative institution is hardly debatable, the criticism of whether and why the EU lacks democracy has been given a considerable gravity in academia.
Following the post-World War II carnage and violence, a new Europe arose from the ashes. This new Europe was decimated from the intermittent fighting between the Allied and Axis powers during the second great war and the nations of Europe sought to devise a plan that to avoid further war-time conflicts within the region. The European Coal and Steel Committee was the first advent of assembling nations together in political and economic interest. The ECSC was formed in 1950 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris whose signatories included West Germany , Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and The Netherlands.
Nationalism is the idea that a people who have much in common, such as language, culture and geographic proximity ought to organize in such a way that it creates a stable and enduring state. Nationalism is tied to patriotism, and it is the driving force behind the identity of a culture. Nationalism had many effects in Europe from 1815, The Congress of Vienna and beyond. In the following essay I will describe many of the consequences of nationalism on European identity, as well as some of the conflicts that it created.
In order to be a member of the European Union, an applying nation must first meet the requirements of membership as described in the Copenhagen Criteria. There are geographic, democratic and economic criteria. Geographically, the applying nation must be classified as a European nation, as exemplified by Morocco’s rejection. The applying nation must also have a secure and functional democratic government that only acts in accordance with the law. This means that any citizen should be able participate in the political system and that there are free elections with a secret ballot. The government must also respect human rights and have protection policies for minorities, meaning that a persons’ inalienable rights are protected by law and minority groups can retain their culture and language without discrimination. Economically, a country must have a functional market economy on which it can feasibly support itself and other member nations if need be. The country’s economy needs to be able to compete on a global scale and deal with economic pressures. There are also separate guidelines for countries wanting to convert to the Euro. Finally, countries that want to join must agree to uphold laws and regulations t...
The European Union stands on the threshold of unparalleled change over the coming years. The next waves of enlargement will be unprecedented in nature and continental in scale. This process has gained so much political momentum that it is now irreversible.
Mulle, E.D., Wedekind, G., Depoorter, I., Sattich, T., & Maltby, T. 2013. ‘EU Enlargement: Lessons from, and prospects for’. IES Working Paper 3. Pp 8-39.
Curtis, B., & Linser, W. (2004). NATO and EU Enlargement: Challenges for the New Europe . University of Washington. Retrieved December 10, 2013, from: http://jsis.washington.edu/cwes/file/nato_and_eu_curriculum.pdf