Abstract
Alongside national governments in Britain, France, Germany, and other West European countries, the European Union (EU) constitutes a crucial organization for the coordination and implementation of economic, social, and foreign policies on the regional level of governance. The significance of the EU lies not only in its economic status as the nucleus of the world’s largest trading bloc and integrated regional market but also in the declared intentions of political leaders in both the EU and its member countries to achieve economic, monetary, and political union by the end of the 1990s. Implementing these objectives will entail the further transfer of significant degrees of national decision-making authority to supranational institutions1—a process that began when the European integration movement was launched during the early 1950s. Once it is fully attained, economic, monetary, and political union will firmly establish the European Union as a powerful governmental system in its own right.
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Supranational institutions can be defined as decision-making structures in international organizations that possess legal authority to make rules that are binding on the nation-states that belong to the organization in question. Supranational laws and policies thereby transcend national policymaking autonomy to a greater degree than intergovernmental treaties or agreements whose enforcement is contingent on the willingness of individual countries to comply with their terms. The European Union combines supranational and intergovernmental features in its institutional arrangements and decision-making powers, as explained in this and following chapters.
The concept of European regional integration has deep philosophical and historical roots, but it did not begin to take concrete form until shortly after the end of World War II. Important milestone events included a widely publicized speech by wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Zurich in 1946 in which he advocated the creation of a United States of Europe, the formation of a privately supported “European Movement” later that same year, American encouragement of European economic cooperation with the proclamation of the Marshall Aid program in 1947, the formation of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation in 1948 to promote the reduction of financial and tariff barriers to free trade throughout the region, and the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949. These initiatives, which many idealistic adherents hoped would culminate in a federal political system, coincided with the formation of partially overlapping military security systems in the form of the Western European Union (1948) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. A comprehensive account of postwar integration efforts is Derek W. Urwin, The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration since1945 (New York: Longman, 1991).
Quoted from the preamble to the Treaty of Rome, published by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Treaties Establishing the European Communities (Brussels and Luxembourg: ECSC-EEC-EAFC, 1987), 217.
In contrast to the ECSC and the EEC, Euratom proved relatively moribund as a regional organization.
Prior to this scheduled change in voting procedures, all Council decisions required unanimous consent among the member countries. De Gaulle was also strongly opposed to efforts by the other member countries to grant the EEC financial autonomy.
The agreement is named after the city where it was reached.
The ECU serves as a unit for calculating revenues and expenditures and in accounting for intergovernmental transactions among member states. Its value “derives from a weighted average of the value of the different Community currencies, with each currency given an influence to reflect its relative economic importance.” House of Lords, Select Committee on the European Communities, The Delors Report: With Evidence (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989), 5. Although the ECU did not yet exist physically in the form of banknotes and coins, it was slated to become the basis for a common EU currency by the early twenty-first century. The ERM, meanwhile, promotes currency exchange rate stability within Western Europe by establishing a central parity for each national currency against “the currencies of the other Member States involved. The currencies can fluctuate on either side of this figure within an agreed band. Beyond these limits, the stability of the currencies must be defended by foreign exchange intervention or by tools of economic policy such as interest rates. The central parities can be adjusted from time to time by mutual consent of ERM members.” Ibid.
Such commitments include British membership in NATO and the United Nations and its leadership role in the Commonwealth of Nations. See Stephen George, Britain and European Integration Since1945 (Cambridge, Mass., and Oxford, U.K.: B. Blackwell, 1991).
Commission of the European Communities, “Completing the Internal Market,” White Paper from the Commission to the European Council (Brussels, June 1955), 55.
Ibid.
The Delors Committee Report, 7.
Council of the European Communities and Commission of the European Communities, Treaty on European Union (Brussels and Luxembourg: ECSC-EEC-EAEC, 1992), 41.
Ibid., 41 and 183–84.
These include “the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, proper social protection, dialogue between management and labour, the development of human resources with a view to lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion.” Ibid., 197.
The controversy involved a legal and moral conflict between the Republic of Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion and Community law permitting the free movement of persons (e.g., to EC countries where abortions are permitted).
Consistent with the declaration by members of the European Council at the Birmingham summit, the treaty was not formally renegotiated; instead, the Danish conditions were appended to the treaty in a special protocol.
Commission of the European Communities, Report on the Operation of the Treaty on European Union (Brussels, 1995); and Council, Draft Report of the Council on the Functioning of the Treaty on European Union (Brussels, 1995).
18. Jerel Rosati, “Developing a Systematic Decision-Making Framework: Bureaucratic Politics in Perspective,” World Politics 10 (1981): 234–52.
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© 1998 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Hancock, M.D., Conradt, D.P., Peters, B.G., Safran, W., Zariski, R. (1998). The European Union: Development and the Primacy of Bureaucratic Politics. In: Politics in Western Europe. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14555-3_26
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