The Role Of The Eu Ombudsman

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.

This was a leading climatic event in towards the end of the 1980’s marking the end of communist regimes around the world, making it evident to even average citizens that change was coming. The Berlin Wall stood as a symbol for the two opposing sides of the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1949, Germany split into two different nations. Germany was a central hub for Cold War politics, with the West side allying with democratic states and the East side allying with the Soviet Union. The end of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Soviet Union’s status as a reigning power in Eastern Europe, with the Soviet Union falling not long

When identifying the presence of a democratic deficit in the European Union, it is important to consider a range of factors, including international treaties and the effect they had on its structured governmental framework. One of the first official agreements established by the European Union (formerly

The democratic deficit is a theory developed by scholars in order to illustrate that the European Union and its institutional bodies suffer from a lack of democracy (Wincott, 1998, p. 414). However, there are many definitions of the democratic deficit (Chryssochoou, 2000; Justice, 1996; Warleigh, 2003; Weiler, Haltern & Mayer, 1995) depending on the views and approaches of each scholar. Joseph Weiler's ‘standard version' of the democratic deficit is one of the most common definitions and it is a set of widely-used arguments by academics, scholars and the media (Weiler et al., 1995, cited by Follesdal & Hix, 2005, p. 4). It consists of five claims that explain why the EU can be called undemocratic and they are the following: a) there is an

Democracy never properly developed in Eastern Europe. The leaders and the elites of the newly independent Eastern states believed that Western-styled constitutional governments would produce Western-styled democracies that would be stable and prosperous, as well as effectively guarantee their power against challengers. Democracy strangely benefited the old elites and extremists were elected into government. The democratic roots planted in Western Europe were unable to take hold, leaving Eastern Europe vulnerable to communism.

The collapse of Communism, and the resulting attempts to institute Western-style democracy and markets, brought immense uncertainty to the former Soviet bloc (and non-aligned Yugoslavia). Though the end of communism was welcomed by the vast majority of people, the question of what comes next, and how what has come next is any better, has vexed the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Each country has adapted to the transition with varying degrees of success. Slavenka Drakulic explores this transition, and the difficulties that have come with it, in A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism.

During this election, the Communist party suffered a “resounding defeat” Poland’s new government was the “first in eastern Europe to be headed by a non-communist since the 1940s” (Mazower, pg. 381). The revolution slowly spread throughout Eastern Europe, with Communist regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and East Germany disintegrating. The collapse of Communism in these regions concluded with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. While all this was happening Gorbachev continued to try and maintain the Soviet Union as one united nation, but ultimately he failed.

The path of the former Eastern Bloc countries from state-controlled to free market economic organization has been a topic of research for many scholars across disciplines. Recently, decelerating gains of these countries’ economies (Roaf, Atoyan, Joshi, & Krogulski, 2014) have further increased interest in the region. Especially salient is the question of the channels of persistence of the ‘communist institutions’ that affect those economies to these days. However, isolating specific channels, such as legal institutions or value differences, is difficult in these countries due to endogeneity considerations and data limitations. In this paper, I intend to propose a research design that will provide a framework for identifying

The European Union (EU) is fundamentally democratic and is evident through its institutions, however, the current democratic electoral structure is of great concern. The EU is a new type of political system, often referred to as a sui generis, implying its uniqueness as there exists and a non comparable political body. The EU can neither regarded as a ‘state’ nor as an ‘international institution’ as it combines supranational as well as intergovernmental characteristics (Hix, 1999, p7). In this regard it has developed its own understandings of what democracy is. It is evident that the development of and spread of democracy is a central concept and foundation to all politics within the EU, and remains focuses on makings its governing

In 1989, the wall separating East and West Berlin came down, symbolizing the demise of communism, which had controlled much of Europe for more than 40 years. The speed of communism's collapse in the Soviet Union surprised everyone, from analysts to Soviet rulers. The communist governments of Eastern Europe gave way to free-market economies and multi-party political systems, and Communist parties in Western Europe lost members and influence. Many former communist countries are now members of NATO and the European Union, but some have realized that a capitalist democracy can be difficult to sustain. The Revolutions of 1989 were part of a revolutionary wave that resulted in the Fall of Communism in the Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe

On November 9, 1989, the most iconic symbol of communism and the USSR fell. The Berlin Wall symbolically represented the division of Europe as a result of the Cold War ; it divided the West and East of Europe. Originally, after the end of World War II, the Allied powers disarmed and broke Berlin into four zones of occupations: American, Soviet, British, and French. Slowly, the Soviet Union started to gain control of Eastern Europe post-war. The Yalta Agreement in February, 1945, gave the Soviet Union complete power to extend its control beyond its borders into the Eastern European Countries under the Red Army, and eventually, Eastern Germany was swallowed into the Communist Regime. Until, the 1980s, the German Democratic

The collapse of Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent downfall of communism was a catalyst for stability and accessibility to parts of the world that had been inaccessible for decades. The Soviet empire vanished, along with its prices and raw material subsidy. Within few years, it became possible not just to trade but also invest in countries such as Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia as well as Chian and Vietnam. Moreover, also the non communists part of the world became accessible as a trading and investment partner after opening its economy in the early 1990s (Thurik, Stam and Audretsch 2013).

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

Michel Crozier argues that despite the many issues surrounding the governability of European democracies (Crozier, 1973, 39), the crisis of democracy in Europe arises on a more basic level from our understanding of “the relationship of institutional values to behavior”- a relationship that has defined European government and societies for centuries (Crozier, 1973, 40). Devoid of rapid economic and technological change, people were able to define goals according to their preferences. Generally, this meant that the “technical knowledge of societies” could provide them with the means to create certain political goals. (Crozier, 1973, 40) Despite this fact, Crozier emphasizes that a since the