The European Union
Abstract
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This paper is about the EU, its major policies, the key objectives,
legislations, instruments for implementing those policies, who the
members are, and the institutions involved in the implementation of
the trade goals.
Key word: European Union; Mission of the EU.
Introduction
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The establishment of the EU intended to work toward common goals of
European countries. This free trade zone or economic community was and
is very successful which seeks special purposes such as political
dialogue, free trade and freedom of movement, economic, financial, and
cultural cooperation. Special attention was focused on the trade laws,
regulations, and other issues (Kotler, 1999, p. 371).
The key objectives are to keep market open, ensure fair trade, enforce
the legislation objectively and transparently, ensure trade partners
respect WTO legislation, and promote improvements to the system
(European Union). The EU provides sovereignty to its Members to act as
independent ones on behalf of the EU or in other words to welfare and
interest of the Union as a whole (European Union).
The integration of the EU after 2nd World War enabled the EU is to
raise standards of living, build an internal market, launch the common
currency - euro, strengthen the Union’s voice in the world. To realize
these goals the EU has been implementing several trade defense
instruments:
1. Anti – dumping policy
2. Anti – subsidy policy
3. Regulation on trade barriers
4. Protective measures.
The EU even uses a common currency, the euro monetary system which
tend to make the trade zone more effective and compatible in the
international market (European Union). The EU has such a structure
that there are 5 institutions and each of them is responsible for a
respective objective (European Union).
Today the EU is one of the influential and largest trade blocs or
single markets that includes 15 member countries. Those 15 member
countries totally have more than 370 million consumers and account for
The European Union has been helped economically ever since World War II. Right after World War II’s end, Europe was struggling to hold on. The countries of the modern-day European Union thought it would be a good idea to come together and help each others struggling economy. To this day, this decision has had a very positive outcome on the EU’s economy. As shown in Diagram 1, the European Union combined together has the world’s highest GDP at 18.3 Trillion USD as compared to the United States’ 17.4 Trillion USD GDP and China’s 10.4 Trillion USD GDP. The idea
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.
In conclusion, the European Union has “merged” the countries of Europe. It has developed a common currency called the Euro’s, and a Parliament located in Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Also, ALL of the countries of the Union are affected when one country is affected. This is important because the continent of Europe had become very weak after the wars and they needed to strengthen, and the European Union keeps the countries of Europe strong and economically fit.
To answer this question I will firstly explain how EU law became incorporated within the member states I will then explain the various types of EU legislation's in circulation. This is important to define as the various types of methods will involve different enforcement procedures. Finally I will explain how EU law is enforced and the ways EU law will effect the member state and individual businesses. I will summarise my findings at the end of the essay, this will give details of all the key ideas I have ut across.
Economic integration is the joining of economic policies between different states/regions. This eliminates tariff and non-tariff barriers to the flow of goods, services and factors of production between the regions. Economic integration has varying levels referred to as trading blocs; these are a form economic integration. A trading bloc is a group of nations that have been made a bilateral or multilateral agreement. There are four types of trading blocs. The least advanced level is the Free Trade Area. The features of this level is that reduced tariff barriers between signatories, which at times are abandoned altogether and there is free movement of labour and capital and the non-member countries have an independent set of tariffs against member countries. The second level of economic integration is the Customs Union. This is a Free Trade Agreement plus a common external tariff. Member countries agree to reduce tariff barriers among themselves and they have in common, this is referred to as tax harmonisation. The Common Market is the third level of trade blocs. This has features of the Customs Union plus free movement of capital and labour and some policy harmonisation such as similar trade policies to prevent certain member countries having an unfair advantage. The European Union is an example of a Common Market and is an economic and political partnership that involves 28 European countries. It allows goods and people to be moved around and has its own currency, the euro, which is used by nineteen of the member countries (The UK excluded). It also has its own parliament and sets rules in a wide range of areas such as transport,...
...: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (4), pp. 603-24.
The EU is a union of sovereign European states who share sovereignty based on treaty. The union also possesses competences in policy sectors with exclusive jurisdiction in the area of Economic and Monetary Union while others are shared with Member States (MS), the other powers belong to MS as derived from the conferral of powers art 5(2) TEU, 2(1) TFEU art.3 & 4 TFEU additionally other powers have been offered by the decisions of the European Court for direct effect on citizens
These “Inner Six” nations thus laid the framework for further integration of other nations within the region and its supranational principles were what led to the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957, further assimilating the European countries’ economies. The creations of these communities for economic purposes were meant to promote cooperation amongst European nations to prevent the further outbreak of violence which had subsided with the end of WWII. Through these general agreements of economic importance came further integration through the creation of more agreements throughout the 1960s, such as the abolishment of customs duties amongst their borders, creating free trade and border trade tax pacts among the Inner Six and across their borders to other signatory nations.
After the Second World War, Europe established its week points and the danger coming from nationalisation that had distressed the continent. The idea of the European Union was to gather all leaders from the European states and get them to work together and create a strong union that would diminish the possibility of future wars, although there was a certain ideological groundswell in favour of a United Europe shortly after world war two the European Union did not come in to existence until a later date.
First, the structure of the framework strongly supports an extensive analysis of the directive and of the context in which it was formulated and implemented. Second, each element is important when trying to clarify how a policy is created in the European Union and the impact of the policy on businesses. The 'issue' element provides an opportunity to explain the content of the directive. The 'actors', 'interests','arenas' and 'assets' elements describe and illustrate the power play involved in European Union policy formulation and implementation and the place occupied by businesses. The 'information' element demonstrates the ever increasing importance that knowledge has within the European Union and how it can be used by businesses. Finally, the design of a non-market strategy supported by the (IA)3 framework enables a firm to become active and not only adapt to a certain policy but also gain an opportunity to influence the environment within which it is
Britain and the European Union “We have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not combined. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. ”1 Winston Churchill’s famous quote aptly describes Britain’s intentions towards European integration.
The enlargement of the European Union (EU) in 2004 and 2007 has been termed as the largest single expansion of the EU with a total of 12 new member states – bringing the number of members to 27 – and more than 77 million citizens joining the Commission (Murphy 2006, Neueder 2003, Ross 2011). A majority of the new member states in this enlargement are from the eastern part of the continent and were countries that had just emerged from communist economies (EC 2009, Ross 2011), although overall, the enlargement also saw new member states from very different economic, social and political compared to that of the old member states (EC 2009, Ross 2011). This enlargement was also a historical significance in European history, for it saw the reunification of Europe since the Cold War in a world of increasing globalization (EC 2009, Mulle et al. 2013, Ross 2011). For that, overall, this enlargement is considered by many to have been a great success for the EU and its citizens but it is not without its problems and challenges (EC 2009, Mulle et al. 2013, Ross 2011). This essay will thus examine the impact of the 2004/2007 enlargements from two perspectives: firstly, the impact of the enlargements on the EU as a whole, and thereafter, how the enlargements have affected the new member states that were acceded during the 2004/2007 periods. Included in the essay will be the extent of their integration into the EU and how being a part of the Commission has contributed to their development as nation states. Following that, this essay will then evaluate the overall success of the enlargement process and whether the EU or the new member states have both benefited from the accessions or whether the enlargement has only proven advantageous to one th...
...ation of specialized commissions to regulate and control the industry. The United States and the European Union have similar vested interests in stability and terrorism prevention and trade. Some of the Consequences of the EU and the United States interaction for international politics are, in most cases that going into conflicts may ultimately delay the effectiveness of the nation-states ability to influence as a world leader.
At present, there are approximately 3,000 different interest groups that are formally recognized by the European Union (Kirchner 2011). These interest groups represent a variety of interests and vary in the amount of influence that they actually have on the policy making process. These groups represent the interest of multiple sectors of both social and economic life within the European Union. Interests range from AGRICULTURE to BIG BUSINESS to HUMANITARIAN AID. In a truly pluralist nature, these groups are competing, either directly or indirectly, with each one another to have an influence in the legislation that is produced by the European Union. It is without a doubt that these interest groups within the European Union play an important part of the decision-making process. The blossoming interest group community within the European Union has both beneficial and detrimental impacts on the democratic quality of the European legislative process. By providing a background of interest groups and their influence in the decision-making process and comparing the role of interest groups within the European Union to those within the United States I will demonstrate the positive and negative qualities of interest group participation in the democratic process. In this paper, I will argue that interest groups are indeed a double-edged sword in affecting the democratic quality of European Union legislation.
A major stage of defining the most essential factors that led to the birth the nowadays European Union is to analyze every step that was carefully planned, therefore shaping this construction as a modern powerful alliance. “From the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1950s, European integration has been one of the most central phenomena in the contemporary history of (western) Europe” (cited from Wolfram Kaiser and Antonio Varsori, 2010). Hence, this construction firstly began in 1952 known as the ECSC with six members, mainly as an economic alliance between France and Germany, that would cooperate in the production of coal and steel and it would further develop into a political shape that had to toughen Franco-German solidarity, by removing the memories of the freshly ended war and to find a new way to integrate Europe as a social, economic and political community that would vastly change, improve and influence the present world.