European Integration Essay

Europe now, for the first time in modern history, is a partnership sharing common values and a commitment to harmony and cooperation. The dream of European integration, shared by the United States, is now being realized, leaving behind us the wasteful era of wars, hostility, and inequalities. We are on the road to a Europe enjoying a unity and

Part of the exceptional nature of the EU stems from the notion that nothing like it has ever been attempted successfully before. The European Union is an international institution with a single market and shared currency. It strives to maintain singular goals and make its way towards being an “ever closer union”. Today, the European Union has expanded to include twenty-eight member countries with an influence that reaches every continent. This institution has had an impressive history, but it has reached a point of concern. The golden years which held high hopes of a united supranational Union are long over. The EU faces destructive problems today, which could ultimately end their impressive era of cooperation. The Union has come

When the European Union was established the cause was rooted in European peace. After the Second World War, many European countries found themselves in ruin and saw an emerging superpower in the east in the U.S.S.R. Countries in Europe decided it was in their best interest to form a federation of European countries in order to promote a more safe and secure Europe. For the most part, it has worked, “It is no coincidence that the longest period of peace in written history in Europe started with the formation of the European Communities”(Juncker 2016). Europe quickly started signing economic treaties to help promote better trade between countries and this gradually expanded

“Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which… create a de facto solidarity.”

After the tragedies of World War II, European leaders have made striving efforts to prevent such a catastrophic event from occurring on their continent again. The best solution seemed to be highly mechanized cooperation among the highest European powers to assure that future conflict, and perhaps war, could not arise between them. If all the states ran themselves in a manner cooperating with their neighbors, conflict could be avoided. To prevent other nations from not cooperating, treaties and institutions would have to be designed for each area of international interest such as trade, communications, security, and so forth. As the century progressed, more organizations, institutions and associations were developed and soon leaders

Post-war European nations were faced with the task of restructuring their states after the devastating war. A collective agreement was made for a political body to help stabilize much of Europe. The Community provided external political structure that would provide the means necessary to create a stable economy and develop technologies, but in order to do so there would need to be a collective identity of Europe. As nation-states were trying to redefine their history and assert their independence it became a delicate balance between maintaining their own identity and joining in the Community that would impose new regulation but also provide the resources necessary to rebuild economically. This struggle to maintain a national identity

The European Union fails in very important and fundamental ways at being an effective and enabling political system. Even though it managed to enable trade and movement of people across its internal borders, as well as, set up a monetary policy, it has not been able to establish itself as the

For the first time in European history, governments that have historically waged longstanding wars with one another forwent a portion of their sovereignty, (albeit regulatory powers over a portion of their economies) to a newfound international institution, “a European authority enjoying executive powers to take decisions in the interests of all six countries”. The Treaty of Rome was emblematic of a unique turning point in European history, that sparked the movement towards massive political and economic cooperation. The treaty sought to further strengthen economic and trade cooperation, remove barriers to trade, and to adopt a common commercial policy towards other foreign trade partners. Over the subsequent decades,

From the internal perspective, Western European states found themselves in relations of mutual dependence after World War II. But this dependence was not in compliance with the centrifugal character of their sovereignty. The pressure of common needs and interests finally stimulated the recognition of Western European states, that the principle of the national sovereignty already exhausted its utility. States were forced to limit their sovereignty rights and move them to the supranational organisations

In 1795, Immanuel Kant a German philosopher wrote an essay titled ‘perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch’ where he lays down rubrics that define the general nature of states as political entities and how state structures and external policies should be reformed to ensure lasting peace. Over a century later, the proposal he made in this essay have been linked to traits and theories in modern day society like the democratic peace theory that states that democratic nations don’t fight one another, and the cosmopolitan theory which is used to explain the unprecedented rise in regional organizations. So far, the EU is considered as the most successful regional organization that has managed to achieve peace and cooperation even amongst countries

Considered to be one of the most advanced forms of regional economic integration, the European Union (EU) is an assemblage of 27 countries that share a common goal of mutual prosperity, cooperation and peace. There is no other such union in the world, although it in many ways serves as a model of integration that has so far has not been successfully replicated. Being part of the EU has many advantages and disadvantages for countries. The advantages include access to SEM; funds that aid in infrastructure building; and world representation by a larger entity that has more power than a small country alone. Among the disadvantages however, is having to give up a degree of sovereignty that sometimes impedes a country from

When World War II ended the final remnants of the old European order lay in ruins. With such devastation wrought upon the continent twice in less than fifty years, it was remarkable that Europe managed to recover. What is even more remarkable is the Phoenix that rose from these ashes, and the new feelings of unity that accompanied the ending of the war. Those nations of western Europe began to do what decades ago had been unthinkable: develop the blueprints for a common system of the United Europe.

In order to elaborate on the statement above, one has to become familiar with the process of European Integration; therefore I would first like to show a quick overview of the history of the EU. After the WWII it has become clear that the best possible way to reinstate Europe’s leading position in the global political and economic arena was through some form of mutual cooperation amongst the leading European nations. In 1950 the French foreign affairs minister developed the plan of a possible European Integration. The Shuman-plan was to

The European Union has grown from its humble beginnings of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) into a complex system of governance within Europe and it has become a key figure internationally. The issue is whether the European Union (EU) has in this time grown into a supranational form of governance with the establishment of treaties, or have the nation states stayed in control. I am going to argue that the EU’s supranational qualities are the allocation of shared common interests among the nation states that compose it. It has been shown by history that the power ultimately lies in the member state as evidenced by the need for unanimity in passing the treaties that mandate the EU and earlier conceptions of it have resulted in the

The next chapter represents an attempt to develop new understandings of the problems related to the European process of integration. More specifically, the aim of this section is to outline the possible mechanisms that, in being conducive of socialization, can push member states to ‘work together’ and to think in terms of ‘common problems’ and ‘common concerns’.