The Lisbon treaty
Essay - 3 pages - European union
The 27 European leaders reached a deal on the new “Reform Treaty” during a two-day summit at Lisbon on October 18th and 19th 2007, ending more than two years of political crisis after the French and Dutch referenda. This agreement comes after a long and complex process of elaboration...
Polonsky M. J., Brito P. Q., Pinto J. and Higgs-Kleyn N. (2001). Consumer Ethics in the European Union: A comparison of northern and southern views
Essay - 3 pages - European union
Our article for seminar three is called Consumer Ethics in the European Union: a Comparison of Northern and Southern Views. It discusses the issue of a single European market and the cultural problems that occur in this growing “integrated” market. The authors have divided the European...
European integration theories
Essay - 4 pages - European union
There is an increasingly accepted agreement that the EU and the process of European integration are just too complex to be captured by a single theoretical approach. Hix holds to this point: “We do not have a general theory of American or German politics so why should there be a general...
Gender equality and employment in the European Union
Essay - 29 pages - European union
Gender equality is among the fundamental principles and the common values of the European Union. In the 2nd Article of the Treaty of the European Community, it is even mentioned as a “task” to perform for the Community, and again in Article 3(2) TEC. But two questions already appear:...
Nationalism and Regionalism in the era of the making of a common European identity
Essay - 5 pages - European union
The year 2000 will be and have already been pivotal for the European Union. Ten new countries became full members of the Union and Turkey is on his way to the membership. But the 2005 failure to make all the countries sign the project of European constitution asks legitimate questions about the...
Governance in the European Union: Policies
Essay - 9 pages - European union
The Common Fisheries Policy is one of the oldest policies entirely delegated to the European Community since it is part of the Common agricultural policy. Indeed, in the Treaty of Rome, agricultural products are defined as “the products of the soil, of stock-farming and of fisheries”...
The European citizenship
Essay - 3 pages - European union
According to the European Commission, “citizenship of the Union is both a source of legitimation of the process of European integration, by reinforcing the participation of citizens, and a fundamental factor in the creation among citizens of a sense of belonging to the European Union and of...
European Court of Justice - motor for European integration?
Essay - 3 pages - European union
In 1996, British Prime Minister John Major has bitterly noted that European Court of Justice (ECJ) should “have its wings clipped”, as already back in 1996 some member states, eager to protect their sovereignty, feared the growing influence of the court. Yet, 10 years later, the...
The Democratic Deficit in the EU
Essay - 7 pages - European union
For years, the European construction appeared to be legitimate through a 'permissive consensus' since no significant opposition to the integration process was to be noticed. Nevertheless, a major debate underlined a 'democratic deficit' in the 1980s, denouncing that the European...
The democratic deficit and the role of the EU Parliament
Essay - 3 pages - European union
Since the beginning of the 90's and the end of the “permissive consensus”, the democratic deficit of the European Union has increasingly become high on the agenda of scholars and decision-makers. Defined as “the growing dissonance between the essential requirements of modern...
How successful are the attempts to create a citizenship of the European Union?
Essay - 4 pages - European union
Although the formal concept of European citizenship appeared for the first time in the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, the idea thereof goes back to the early years of the European construction. The Treaty founding the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 instituted a “basis for a broader...
The future of multilingualism in European institutions
Essay - 7 pages - European union
The progressive enlargement of the European Union brings about many questions, among which linguistic diversity deserves to be explored. In light of the changes brought about by globalization and the resulting emergence of a so-called “global” language, the relevance of cultural...
Europeanization of politics and society: Domestic change and the question of a European Social Model
Essay - 5 pages - European union
Europeanization is an elusive concept because of the variety of meanings it refers to. Scholars such as Featherstone (2003, 6-12) often distinguish several usages according to various outcomes of European change, for instance the emergence of new forms of governance or the process of national...
To what extent has Europe benefited from a "peace dividend" through the European Union and its budget?
Essay - 4 pages - European union
The notion of “peace dividend” was forged in the 1980s to convey an idea that had already been analysed before: the link between security/peace, and economic growth. Without going into further details, one may wonder if this economic theory can be applied to the European Union, which...
EU decision-making
Essay - 3 pages - European union
France is administratively divided in “communes”, the smallest territorial division of the country, usually corresponding to a city or a village. The number of communes in France, including overseas territories, is 36 782. This high number leads to huge disparities in terms of...
What does the European Union's so-called 'democratic deficit' stem from, and how could it be tackled?
Essay - 6 pages - European union
One of the most important discussions in the modern-day European Union concerns the democratic deficit. The Maastricht treaty, which was signed on February 1992 by different European states, claims that the goal the EU is to create ‘an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which...
The European Union's Policy in African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries: Towards an Effective Democratisation?
Essay - 7 pages - European union
“Since 1992, the European Community has included in all its agreements with third countries a clause defining respect for human rights and democracy as ‘essential elements' in the EU's relationship. This clause is unique in bilateral agreements. This approach has been further...
Can any theory fully explain the process of European integration? If not, why not?
Essay - 13 pages - European union
European integration is a process which began with the birth of the European Coal and Steel Community the 18th of April 1952. This process was at first essentially economical, but the necessary structures needed for an economic integration led also to a political integration. This process has...
Regulations: Direct applicability and Direct effect
Essay - 8 pages - European union
Article 249 of the European Community Treaty provides that Regulations shall be directly applicable in all Member States. Does this mean that they are also necessarily directly effective? As notices Josephine Steiner , this question is of paramount concern to EC lawyers. If a provision of EEC law...
The budgetary implication of the European Union's May 2004 enlargement
Essay - 5 pages - European union
On 1 May 2004 Europe celebrates the entrance of ten new members in the European Union but behind the fireworks and the celebrations, Brussels has to adapt itself to this new generation of the European project. One of the most important points is the budgetary issue. History has shown that the...
The EU and the disintegration of Yugoslavia
Essay - 5 pages - European union
In order to better understand the disintegration of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s, it is interesting to recall that Yugoslavia was first created in 1918, and was dismembered firstly during World War Second. Then, it has been dismembered once more with the collapse of the USSR at the...
Multi-level governance in the European Union
Essay - 5 pages - European union
The former French President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, once stated that the European Union was an “unidentified political object”. This phrase highlights the complexity of the EU polity, which various theories have tried to capture and which has sparked controversy...
Regional Economic Integration and the European Union
Essay - 3 pages - European union
Regional Economic Integration is the act of cooperating countries entering into agreements with each other to remove all barriers to importing goods into their respective countries. One of the biggest walls to exporting to foreign markets has been tariffs and taxes levied against foreign nations...
The European identity issue: what most determines the European "we feeling"?
Essay - 11 pages - European union
“You don't fall in love with a common market” (EU Commission President Jacques Delors in The European, 3 November 1994). Here emerges one of today's most challenging issues for the European Union: the prevalence of market integration has created a political vacuum and so-called...
Critically examine the factors that ultimately led to the enlargement of the EU in 2004. What are the stages and debates?
Essay - 5 pages - European union
According to the article 43 of the European Community treaty, 'any European State may apply to become a member of the Union[...]the conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded which such admission entails shall be the subject of an agreement...
The European Union and organized crime
Essay - 8 pages - European union
With French and Dutch voters' recent rejection of the proposed constitutional treaty for the European Union, a number of proposals in the field of Justice and Home Affairs have been watered down or considerably postponed. However, both EU leaders and the general public continue to place high...
The European Union and national sovereignty
Essay - 3 pages - European union
The birth of the modern sovereign state is usually associated with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, after which modern nation-states began to constitute in Europe. Today, some scholars argue that state sovereignty has been challenged by trends such as globalization and European integration not...
The UK and the Euro
Essay - 3 pages - European union
Exposé en Anglais sur le Royaume-Uni et un passage éventuel à l'euro, qui examine les différents arguments favorables et opposés à l'adoption de la monnaie européenne. Soon after election, in 1997, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said that four of the five tests had not been met (only the...
