226 The European Union
37.1.3: The European Union
Although the European Union was formed to increase cooperation among member states, the desire to retain national control over certain policy areas made some institutions more intergovernmental than supranational in nature.
Learning Objective
Compare the European Union to its predecessors
Key Terms
- Schengen Area
- An area composed of 26 European states that have officially abolished passport and any other type of border control at their mutual borders. The area mostly functions as a single country for international travel purposes with a common visa policy.
- supranational
- A type of multinational political union where negotiated power is delegated to an authority by governments of member states.
Examples
- The European Union (EU) is a politico-economic union of 28 member states ocated primarily in Europe.
- The EU operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making.
- The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed by the Inner Six countries in 1951 and 1958, respectively.
- The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force on November 1, 1993. The treaty established the three pillars of the European Union: the European Communities pillar, which included the European Community (EC), the ECSC, and the EURATOM; the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) pillar; and the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) pillar.
- The creation of the pillar system was the result of some member states wanting to extend the EEC while others felt those areas were too critical to their sovereignty to be managed by a supranational mechanism.
- The Maastricht, or convergence, criteria established minimum requirements for EU member states to enter the third stage of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro as their currency. The four criteria impose controls over inflation, public debt and the public deficit, exchange rate stability, and the convergence of interest rates.
- On December 1, 2009, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force and reformed many aspects of the EU, including its legal structure.
- During the 2010s, the cohesion of the EU has been tested by several issues, including a debt crisis in some of the Eurozone countries, increasing migration from the Middle East, and the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU.
The European Union (EU) is a politico-economic union of 28 member states located primarily in Europe. It has an area of 4,324,782 km2 (1,669,808 sq mi) and an estimated population of over 510 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardized system of laws that apply in all member states. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital within the internal market, enact legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries,