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...
Europeanization of politics and society: Domestic change and the question of a European Social Model
Essay - 6 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...
Alternatives to fiscal competition in European Monetary Union (EMU): what stabilization mechanisms for the Eurozone?
Essay - 11 pages - European union
The picture presented about the European integration is that of a hybrid creation. In the words of Wolfgang Wessels (1997), ?it is a messy and ambiguous division of labour between national and EU levels.' The Economic and Monetary Union which is the most accomplished framework of European...
"The national influence on the European integration"
Essay - 7 pages - European union
EU is regulated by a supranational institutional system, which still takes into account the national sensitiveness. Nevertheless, there is not a traditional strong supranational authority. Indeed, there is neither army nor police, and the decision making process is mainly based on consensus; and...
European harmonization in the Contract Law Area
Essay - 6 pages - European union
The last decade witnessed the European Union taking tentative steps towards the likely abolition of each member state contract law, and its substitution with a single European Contract Law Code. Indeed, the European Union usually solves inconsistencies in contract law by legislating them in a...
How successful are the attempts to create a citizenship of the European Union?
Essay - 5 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...
Higher education in Europe as an institution
Essay - 4 pages - European union
Aristote was asking what the purpose of education was. He gave the following answer: education has to produce learned men, education has to be done in virtue and finally, education has to satisfy the material needs of society. Centuries after this Aristote's definition, there is no doubt that...
Britain is widely regarded as the 'awkward partner' in Europe: How accurate is this assessment?
Essay - 4 pages - European union
The Second World War gave impetus to the idea of European unity. A view developed that only by the creation of some form of European federation would Europe enjoys a permanent peace. After WW2, European states focussed on national reconstruction, whereas Britain had a globalist perspective. This...
Has British public policy been Europeanised in the period since 1973? - publié le 30/05/2007
Essay - 10 pages - European union
As Johan Olsen affirms ““Europeanization” is a fashionable but contested concept.” This term indeed occupies a lot of space in all studies about the European Union and more specifically about the domestic changes incurred by the member states through the dynamics of European...
A Nordic identity in the European security structure?
Essay - 10 pages - European union
The 3rd and 4th December 1998, the President of French Republic Jacques Chirac and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair met in Saint Malo. Both maintained the necessity to give Europe the ability of autonomous action concerning security and defence. This statement comes within the framework of...
The role of the European Union in the democratisation of Central and Eastern Europe
Essay - 8 pages - European union
In the concept of « consolidation of democracy », two aspects can lead to misunderstanding. Firstly, one can interrogate on the direction towards which such a consolidation is supposed to tend, as the word « consolidation » implies that democracy already exists, as something is bound to exist if...
The European Commission : History, motivation and currrent debates
Essay - 5 pages - European union
If Jacques Delors, one of the most famous President of the European Commission (between 1985 and 1995), called the European Union as a UPO or Unidentified Political Object, it can be explained by the special characteristics of its architecture. The European Commission (EC) is undoubtedly one of...
The EU has no need for a common immigration policy
Essay - 4 pages - European union
In 1957, the Treaty of Rome mentioned the elimination of border controls within its territory as a goal of the EEC (European Economic Union). This implied that the member states would sooner or later have to address the question of deciding on common rules concerning access to their soil through...
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...
The European identity issue: what most determines the European "we feeling"? - publié le 29/11/2006
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 the most challenging issues for the European Union. The prevalence of market integration has created a political vacuum and the so-called "democratic...
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...
What factors have led to the notion that Britain is an 'awkward partner' in Europe?
Essay - 3 pages - European union
The brightest manifestation of the various innovations in Europe was the emergence and the development of the different European communities, later to be merged in the European Union. The history of this process is a complex one. Each State is motivated and implicated in the integration process...
The European Union will never be fully democratic: discuss
Essay - 8 pages - European union
On 13th October 2005 was launched the Commission's “Plan D” for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate, which intends to “lay the foundations for the profound debate about Europe's future” in order to “mak[e] the European Union more democratic” . This strategy is a reply to...
Critically examine the factors that ultimately led to the enlargement of the EU in 2004. What are the stages and debates? - publié le 25/07/2006
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...
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...
Does interest representation enhance or undermine democracy in the European Union?
Essay - 4 pages - European union
The democratic legitimacy of the European Union has long been questioned and debated upon. In this essay we will consider the role of interest representation and discuss whether or not it aids or demoralizes the ideals of democracy. In order to fully investigate this question we will first need...
How important are member states in the European Union?
Essay - 5 pages - European union
The 'system of the European Union (EU)', rests primarily on individual nation states. The first European intergovernmental cooperation was started in 1951 by six states. EU now has 25 members and one may assume that the importance of the member state is not what it used to be due to new...
The issue of enlargement towards Turkey
Essay - 14 pages - European union
Today, all European governments and public opinions are different about the orientation they want to be taken place in the European Union (EU). Indeed, it is a global problem about the Union they expect to see in the future: a communitarian, an intergovernmental, an economic, a political, maybe...
Ukraine-EU Relationship : Is Ukraine ready for Europe?
Essay - 9 pages - European union
Ukraine faced a hard time in its orientation in the west and also in Europe. Since its independence from the Soviet Regime in 1991, the process of democratization and establishing a market economy stalled, under the semi-authoritarian and the corrupt President Kuchma. It lasted more than a decade...
To what extent can the Spanish model of citizenship be used for the European Union? Examine the rights and duties of the citizen under the Spanish Constitution as well as the conciliation of various regional aspirations and feelings. In what way is this
Essay - 6 pages - European union
According to many commentators and journalists, the European Union would be challenged by some crisis, each of them having different natures: for instance, European regions, whereas they could be a good complement for European governance, are increasingly perceived as a threat for the European...
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 - published: 24/03/2006
Essay - 3 pages - European union
In Maastricht, in 1992, the then 12 members of the European Community decided to move towards an Economic and Monetary Union, with the aim of launching a single currency. But when the European single currency was launched in January 1999 by 11 of the 15 EU member states, Blair decided to exercise...
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...
