Europe: The Lisbon Treaty

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political partnership between 28 different countries. It consists of about half a billion citizens, and its combined economy represents about 20 percent of the world’s total economy (Briney, 2015). Today The European Union works as a single market, with free movement of people, goods and services from one country to another. There is a standard system of laws to be followed, and since 1999 many countries share a single currency called the Euro (Europa.eu, 2015). This essay will explore the background history of the European Union and the benefits and drawbacks of the European Union.

Since 1950 European Union (EU) was created it has promoted peace, prosperity and values among the member nations and its neighbouring countries. EU’s influential tools, has helped transform many European states into functioning democracies and prosperous countries. EU’s membership has grown from 6 to 28 countries (Enlargement, 2014), satisfying a historic vow to integrate the continent bringing in most states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by peaceful ideals.EU has anticipated the enlargement as an extraordinary opportunity to endorse political strength and economic success in Europe. EU’s extension policy is open to any European state that fulfils the EU’s political and financial criteria for membership; still the political process of inclusion of new state requires a unanimous agreement from all the existing 28 member states. Europe is considered to be more flourishing and safer place due to the promotion of democracy, anti-corruption policy and the single market policy.

The governmental system which embodies the European Union is currently both ambiguous and undemocratic. However, in order to explore alternative strategies of improvement, it is firstly crucial to identify the root of the deficit. One is then able to discuss contributing factors which affect the national parliaments lack of importance when creating legislation and strategies of review such as the subsidiary and proportionality tests.

With regards to the claim that the European Parliament is too weak (the second of Weiler's standard version claims), Moravcsik (2002; 2003) emphasises the fact that during the last twenty years, the European Parliament is the institution which have experienced the most reforms, regarding its increase of powers, compare to the Council and the Commission. The latter argument is in fact accurate because ever since the Single European Act (1986), the European Parliament gains more and more power by reforms in every signed Treaty (Moravcsik, 2003, p. 7). Despite that, however, the Parliament is still considered to be weak compared to the other institutions, as it will be analysed later in the essay.

European Law is very complex law , within EU law there is various different treaties which are in place. Two most significant treaties which have importance to the legislative process are The Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union.

7) What are the four most important institutions of the European Union? Explain their role in the law making process.

Maurice Duverger defined “democratic deficit”as a combination of the parliament’s lack of legislative power, of the lack of publicity in the actual process of legislation and of the lack of a definite separation between executive and legislative powers. To shed more light on this definition it is necessary to consider the operation and effectiveness of the legislative institutions in the European Union, issue of transparency and the separation of powers within the executive and legislative powers.

Treaty of Lisbon has provided that Union should uphold the representative democracy and thus, the legislative power is divided between the European Commission (‘the Commission’) which represents the interest of the European Union as a whole, the Council of Ministers (‘the Council’) which represents the Member States’ interests or their citizens and the European Parliament which represents its citizens’ interests. However, only 34% turned out to vote at the last EU election which implied a growing dissent in Europe. The EU is described as “undemocratic from the start”. The gist of the question is whether the EU law-making process is sufficiently democratic. EU’s democratic performance should be judged on the basis of subsidiarity, representativeness, accountability and engagement.

Since 1973 when the British first joined the European Union their membership has been a controversial issue. When conservatives in the United Kingdom won the general election in 2015, their election manifesto promised to hold a referendum on whether or not the United Kingdom should stay or leave the European Union. The referendum also referred to as “Brexit” is scheduled to take place by the end of 2017. The United Kingdom initially joined the union to be part of the common market for the purpose of trade and to develop international relationships. The main argument for those who are pro Brexit is that being part of the European Union is too costly for the United Kingdom, that the EU has grown to large, has interfered to far into

This essay will review the difference types of competences and examine the effectiveness of the European Court of Justice in ensuring that EU institutions do not exceed the bounds of their competence in adopting legislation.

These states increased the Union’s population by 30 percent but only increased gross domestic product by four percent. The European Union has an unwieldly governing structure, the most important parts are the Commission and the European Council which make the rules and carry out executive functions. Two lesser but still important parts are the Parliament and the Court of Justice. The Commission has immense power with the domination of the Union budget and setting regulations for the member states. It is also the only permanent part of the executive

The first claim is that European integration has led to an increase of executive power on the one hand and on the other hand that national parliament lose more of their power (Hix & Follesdal 2006:534, Raunio 1999). It is true, that members of governments of members-states of the EU participate in the legislation process such as ministers from national governments in the council of minister. As a result, it is possible that national governments can overcome the national parliaments when vote or co-decision in legislative process in the EU (Hix & Follesdal 2006).

Two years later, Greece joined the EEC followed by Spain and Portugal in 1986. With the entry of Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995, the European Parliament was expanded to its present size of 626 members. The Treaty of Nice provides that the allocation can be reweighed from 2004 to accommodate new Member States without increasing the number of MEPs beyond 732. The size of the European Parliament has increased so has its powers.

The European Union (EU) was established in order to prevent the horrors of modern warfare, experienced by most of Europe during the World Wars of the 20th century, from ever ensuing again, by aiming to create an environment of trust with the countries of Europe cooperating in areas such as commerce, research and trade (Adams, 2001). The EU has evolved into an economic, trade, political and monetary alliance between twenty-eight European Member States. While not all Member States are in monetary union (i.e. share the currency of the euro), those that are form the ‘Euro-zone’ (Dinan, 2006). The EU can pass a number of types of legislation, with a regulation, act, or law, being the most powerful. Its ‘tricameral’ (European Union, 2007)

The European Union played a very important role in transforming post-communist countries into democratic states with functioning market economies and the rule of law. The massive transfer of institutional and legal know-how from member