The European Union: More Economic Union than Political Union

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Recommended: eu regional integration advantages and disadvantages

The need to generate strong economic blocs as well as gain economic advantage with regards to imports and exports whilst promoting internal trade has promoted the development of regionalization as a means to gain the same. This has developed other themes like multi-corporations as well as globalization which are a concept through which regional markets are joining efforts in a universal network with an effort to improve governmental ideas through communication, transport and trade (Sim, et al. 2003). The concept is closely related to those of economic globalization which integrates national economies into the international economy (Robinson, 2001). Such integrations thus have been achieved by trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, and migration (Thelen, 2003). One of these networks has been the European Union (EU) which has come up as a major bloc amongst the European nations with its effects having a global perspective.

Since 1958 with an initial 6 member states the European Union has been in existence with its membership having risen to 27 States to date. The Union was initiated as an economic as well as political union waging its history to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and later the European Economic Community (EEC) following the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 (Craig, & Búrca, 2008). The EU has formulated its system into a hybrid one made up of supranational autonomous institutions, where the member states are the deciding organs of the intergovernmental negotiated decisions (Albi, & Ziller, 2006). There have however been opinions that the EU has been more of a balance seeking concept rather than a common goal one. The proponents of such view see the Union as an attempt by the member states to have an ed...

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...cation theories. Journal of

Economic Geography, 2(4), p.373-406. Available at: http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/jeg/2.4.373.

Robinson, W.I., 2001. Social theory and globalization : The rise of a transnational state. Theory

and Society, 30(2), p.157-200. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657872.

Sim, L, Ong, S, Agarwal, A, Parsa, A, & Keivani, R 2003, 'Singapore’s competitiveness as a

global city: development strategy, institutions and business environment', Cities, 20, 2, p. 115, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 May 2011.

T-201/04, Microsoft v. Commission

The United Brands Continental BV v. Commission [1978] ECR 207

Thelen, K., 2003. The Paradox of Globalization: Labor Relations in Germany and Beyond.

Comparative Political Studies, 36(8), p.859-880. Available at: http://cps.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0010414003256111.

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