Fifty years after the Treaties of Rome (1957), the European Union has deeply evolved. From a regional economic cooperation, it has become a major international actor looking for re-launching its Constitutional process. If the European cooperation was a revolutionary concept after more than a century of what can be called European civil wars and costly rivalries on the Old Continent, it is now an effective and internationally recognized framework of cooperation both supra-national and intergovernmental. The Treaties of Rome set up, especially, the European Economic Community as another step toward not only a durable peace but also a greater inter-state cooperation. The EEC aimed to go beyond a sector approach (CSCE and EURATOM) and to integrate the entire economic domain.
[...] Each of them is lying on different principles (democracy, efficiency, inter-governmentalism ) which contribute to define the European Union. They all shape and guarantee the growing EU's power and influence in the world. Nonetheless, the European Union has still been a work in progress, depending on context and trust. New challenges have to be taken up and outlooks have to be explored but the European Union has learnt not to rush. The step-by-step method recommended by Monet and Schuman, the “Founding Fathers” seemed to succeed. [...]
[...] Over the years, the EC/EU has evolved by the bias of treaties to become more efficient and more democratic but also less supranational concerning the new policies' area. The treaties' evolution shows how much the EU's framework has been built progressively by answering the emerging problems but also by trumping the institutions up step by step. The EC/EU had to progress by common agreements considering on one hand the political commitment and confidence in this innovative project from the involved countries but also, on the other hand by respecting each one's sovereignty, choices, contingent fears and prudence This is why the EC/EU is such a unique organization shaped between commitments and compromises; it had no real previous model. [...]
[...] They all have different interest to defend and problem to solve through the EU and within the EU: common agricultural policy, development funds, criminal activities across countries All these interests and problems are important, which make the EU deal with a large rank of realms, contexts and peculiarities. Enlargements also mean new neighborhood and new boundaries[2]. It changes the issues as well as the kind of cooperation. Russia is not the same neighbor as Switzerland, this implies to find an appropriate way of cohabitation. [...]
[...] This limited success was corrected less than 5 years later by the Nice Treaty which aimed to and did, in fact, remedy the leftovers of Amsterdam. Despite these major mutations, the EU needed a stronger commitment in order to keep progressing. It seemed that member states were and still are at a hinge time. The future of the Union requires an audacious and lucid orientation. The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) has been granted this name as a symbol for the decisive step it proposed. [...]
[...] The European Parliament was given the power to veto some part of the legislation by the co-decision procedure. This was an attempt to correct the democratic deficit. However, the most pivotal and representing measure of the treaty was probably the introduction of the Economic and Monetary Union project. The EMU illustrates to a certain extent, some theories of international relations. Technical necessities claimed by elites and supranational institutions' propositions lead to a deepened integration. The spill-over effect works as a tool to integrate gradually more and more sectors by establishing a kind of spontaneous need to cooperate, relayed by the institutions. [...]
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