How Successful Has the European Union’s Regional Policy Been in Helping Europe’s Poorer Regions?

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.

 Some argue that the current degree of integration is an economic union with an  evolving common political structure (but this is not entirely true given that all countries  do not share a common fiscal policy).   EU Objectives    Provide for free internal flow of production factors:   o Labour   o Capital   o Products    Provide protection for European industry and workers (free trade within and  protection outside countries)  o Tariffs and quotas applied to most basic commodities and services    Steel, Coal, Textiles, Agricultural Products    Banking,

Europe has been quite successful in integrating its economies because of the various geopolitical and economic activities. The first and foremost reason is that these countries are small and the economy of the one country can be integrated with the economy of the other country. Their integration has been made possible because the aspiration and believe of the different countries are very much similar. Moreover, their cultural and economic history is moreover same. European Union as it has been called now has been the most developed model of the regional integration though challenged by economic crisis now a days.

What really is Regional Integration? From when I first heard the term I immediately thought of countries integrating or joining together to achieve some goal. Well, according to EU Learning, Regional Integration is the process by which two or more nation-states agree to co-operate and work closely together to achieve peace, stability and wealth. In other words, regional integration is the joining of individual states within a region into a larger whole. The degree of integration depends upon the willingness and commitment of independent sovereign states to share their sovereignty. It would have as its objective political or economic goals or

It will be argued in detailed throughout this essay the primary roles of the big four EU institutions and how they interact with each other. The known to us nowadays European Union rests its infrastructure on the concrete foundations of various institutions. Institutions that as European citizens we ought to be aware of and how exactly they operate and what their role and functions are.

In this report, I will discuss why and how the Single European Market was set up, its failures and successes how it works and its recent changes. Today, The Single European Market (SEM) otherwise known as the (Internal Market) grants people and businesses with the privilege to trade and move openly across borders within the EU. This has had a huge impact on the world we live in today it altered the way European live, travel, work, study, and do business. The concept of setting up a European single market is to bring unity to the EU; this includes money, goods, people, and services to collaborate freely to expand competition and trade.

The current international system is characterized by growth in globalization hence regional integration is becoming a common phenomenon in most parts of the world. As a result of states becoming more interconnected, most of them have opted for regional integration so as to enhance trade between states thus boosting economies of the states as well as the regions as a whole. Besides free trade, regional integration has seen to it the elimination of trade barriers, free movement of goods and people across borders, regional co-operation in issues to do with peace and security within the regions among various other benefits of regional integration. One of the regions that has grown as a result of regional integration is the European Union (EU), which is an economic and political partnership composed of 28 European countries. This paper will focus on the EU and give a theoretical analysis of the Brexit while giving lessons of integration and liberalization based on the Brexit.

The book we are discussing in this essay is called ‘The European Union: Economics, Policy and History’ by Susan Senior Nello. This book takes into account the different disciplines of economics, policy-making and therefore including a great deal of politics, and the history of the institution of the European Union as we know it today. The broad multi-disciplinary perspective makes this a comprehensive book that combines different aspects together making this particularly useful in the current debate about the future of the European Union. The main focus of the book are the policies of the European Union which is the authors’ speciality having worked on various projects for the European Institute in Florence and having advised the European

This expansion of market creates more employment opportunities for people to move from one country to another to find jobs or to earn higher pay. For example, industries requiring mostly unskilled labor tends to shift production to low wage countries within a regional cooperation

The purpose of this research is to discover the main challenges facing the EU in the near future, by showing the economic and legal problems that the EU will face. These problems include how migration, bailouts and terrorism affect the EU economy. Furthermore it will look at anti-EU sentiments around Europe, which has appeared to spread across rapidly, due to Euro Crises. Moreover, the Legal problems that the EU will face, such as: the process of obtaining EU citizenship enabling migration and cultural clashes, whilst also looking at the statute that enables free movement of goods and people, resulting in mass immigration and the European Convention on Human Rights. This paper will evaluate EU principles that affect the UK constitution, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the Costa v ENEL (1964) CMLR 425 case being evidence proving that the EU will face challenges concerning its law being more superior than national law, Van Gend en loos (1963) ECR 1. Where a similar principle was set and the “two-speed Europe”, which, is the idea that different member states should integrate at different levels, as it is believed that the more member states in the EU the harder it is to find a consensus amongst difficult agendas, making the EU law very inconsistent. It will be related it back to the question of ‘what are the main challenges facing the EU in the near future?’

In short, these inconsistencies give credence to the possibility that potential heresthetic considerations in established member states outweigh the slower economic and political development of Eastern European states. In theory, binding normative ideas and not individual member states influence EU integration; however, in practice upholding essential EU norms, such as human rights, is plagued by double-standards in established and new members. The double-standards arise from shared practices that undermine human rights despite EU’s formal commitment to protect them. These limitations hamper Europeanization and proper norm diffusion, so in practice specific broad organizational objectives of established member states appear to drive the process of EU integration at this time.

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)

This was due to the fact that the founding Member States did not show any significant territorial differences; the only really important exception was Southern Italy, but, being alone at that time in the circle of the countries participating in the integration process, this problem was judged as a specific one to be handled on the national level. Territorial imbalances have become more important within the first three decades of the EC. The process became really visible at the end of the 1960s; several circumstances resulted in the increasing need for a proper community-level treatment of social and economic problems of underdeveloped territories and regions facing specific problems. Such factors as the first project of the Economic and Monetary Union, the end of the ‘golden era’ of post-war growth and the enlargements of the EC made necessary a proper treatment of development differences between regions and Member States.

     ?gGlobalization?h is a very uneven process, with unequal distribution of benefits and losses. The problem is that of who gains and loses from the potential benefits. This imbalance leads to polarization or separation between the few rich countries or

In more recent research within this field, empirical evidence has encouraged a general acceptance of the phenomena of uneven regional development and that it is not something that can necessarily be evaded or eliminated, as it is a prevalent feature of capitalist development. Concerned with this perceived inevitability of regional uneven development, a multiplicity of theories to explain and