The EU: The Future Of The European Union

Europe is undergoing a process of integration, with various visions of what this unity will look like in the future whether supranational or intergovernmental. According to the treaty of Lisbon article one ‘Europe is a union of independent countries’ (Treaty of Lisbon). It must however, be understood that today within the European Union (EU) there exists two main thoughts that directly contradict each other. The first bloc sees the future of Europe as a Federal entity (Supranationalist) and the second bloc are those who want unity but between independent governing units (Integovernmentalist). This conflict has defined the European project and its institutions throughout its entire history. The EU project has been slowly realised with most scholars pointing to the Shuman Declaration of 1950 as its starting point, up to the Lisbon treaty of 2009. This process can be described as a unique balance between these two thoughts on Europe’s future. The European institutional set up of today is a patch work of institutions and treaties meticulously put together to reflect the reality of Europe, a reality derived from a Europe of different norms, cultures and histories and therefore the institutions of the EU and the constituent states of the union often overlap in their competences. The Lisbon treaty seeks to clarify this confusion of roles and to streamline the decision making process of an ever enlarging union.

Prior to Lisbon, the EU and its institutions were defined by the following treaties; The Treaty of Paris (1951), Treaty of Rome (1957), Merger Treaty (1967), Single European Act (1986), Maastricht Treaty (1992), Amsterdam Treaty (1997), and the Nice Treaty (2001). The European Union institutional set-up are as follows; The Counc...

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...ternational, as well as a coherent character has been developed. This treaty has significantly streamlined the decision making process of the European Union as a whole, though with the financial crisis of 2008, shortcomings have been revealed, Lisbon has gone a long way in tackling the most serious problem of overlapping competences of the institutions of the EU. Each institution has been given a clear legal character and a major simplification of it voting procedures has been undertaken. It must however, be stated that because of the constant conflict between the supranationalist as well as intergovernmentalist factions in the EU there still exists a confusion of roles primarily between the commission and the council of Europe but, with Lisbon there exists a reconciliation process that favours the council in the event of a serious conflict between the two bodies.