«Regional Economic Integration is the act of cooperating countries entering into agreements with each other to remove all barriers to importing goods into their respective countries. One of the biggest walls to exporting to foreign markets has been...» Document abstract
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european union
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SummaryRegional Economic Integration is the act of cooperating countries entering into agreements with each other to remove all barriers to importing goods into their respective countries. One of the biggest walls to exporting to foreign markets has been tariffs and taxes levied against foreign nations who try to sell their products or services in other countries. Over the past 50 years, there has been a drastic increase in the number of countries that are trying to enter into these types of agreements. In other words, there has been a large movement towards Regional Economic Integration. There are two main arguments that support this integration. The first are economic considerations. Integration will allow countries to specialize in products or services that they are best suited to produce and sell them on a worldwide market without fear of huge barriers to entry into certain markets. This would actually lead to increased production around the world because countries will specialize in what they are good at and not worry about having to produce other things which would take them much longer or were not practical for them to produce at all. These countries know that they will be able to depend on other countries to produce the goods or services they need in exchange for their own specialized products and services. This increased production and specialization should also decrease the prices of things on a worldwide scale because countries will only produce what they are truly good at producing and will not waste time (as well as money) on producing inefficiently.
Key Words- The Single European Act, Obstacles to Integration and United front
Key Words- The Single European Act, Obstacles to Integration and United front
«The European Union, which formed under this name in 1992, currently consists of 25 nations and covers much of Western Europe. The European Union is an enormous organization that was initially created to maintain peace and security between European...» Document abstract
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european union
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SummaryThe European Union, which formed under this name in 1992, currently consists of 25 nations and covers much of Western Europe. The European Union is an enormous organization that was initially created to maintain peace and security between European states through various political and economic arrangements. Each E.U. member state is a democratic, independent nation, and it is represented in a complicated European system that integrates these independent states into what has become the world’s largest economic organization. Originally, the intention of this union was to prevent hostilities between European nations, mainly France and Germany, before they arise.
«“You don’t fall in love with a common market” (EU Commission President Jacques Delors in The European, 3 November 1994).
Here emerges one of today’s most challenging issues for the European Union: the prevalence of market integration has created a...» Document abstract
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Summary“You don’t fall in love with a common market” (EU Commission President Jacques Delors in The European, 3 November 1994).
Here emerges one of today’s most challenging issues for the European Union: the prevalence of market integration has created a political vacuum and so-called “democratic deficit”, essentially for lack of a genuine identification from the European citizens with European stakes.
Indeed, it would be simplistic to consider that the EU project has failed in generating support from the peoples of the member states and, consequently, in establishing the democratic bases it lacks today. The reality is that the very project of the “Founding Fathers”, as presented in the Schuman Declaration (9 May 1950) relied on a combination of functionalism and technocratism that largely explains the a-political trajectory of the European construction. Theses developed by E. Haas in The Uniting of Europe (1958) relied on the dynamic of sector-related integration that should be initiated by “concrete achievements that first create a de facto solidarity”. So economic integration was supposed to create “common fates” between the member-states and to trigger an ineluctable spiral of integration (“spill over”) from economic to political integration. But, the practical requirement of such a theory equated a rational long-term planning incompatible with the emotional short-term demands of member-states’ publics. So the European project was deliberately placed in the hands of experts able to supervise a rationalized construction without letting any vested interest or passions interfering.
So the choice of technocratism entailed both a depoliticisation of the European construction and a founding contradiction: functionalism wanted economic integration to be a first step in European integration but technocratism prevented political integration from emerging.
But as the Union was moving from “issues of instrumental problem-solving to fundamental questions about its nature as part-formed polity” (Cable, 1994; Garcia, 1993; BBV foundation, 1993. in Laffan, 1996:p 82), the absence of political spill over become all the more problematic since it began to damage the legitimacy of the overall European project. That is why in 1992, the Treaty of Maastricht tried not only to fill in the gap between economic and political integration, towards the key-project of single currency, but also to promote the idea that “the maintenance of economic integration [rested] in some measure on political integration”, intrinsically linked with the emergence of a “sense of community” (Laffan: 96). So the “identity deficit” was officially presented as a fundamental barrier to the EU functioning insofar as the very European project relies on the presupposition of a “European transcending community of fates, values, lives, socio-economic stakes and of responsibility” (European Identity Charter, 1995). So one thing was to presuppose the potentiality of a strong European identity; another was to stimulate it. In that perspective, analyses of 1992 Eurobarometer clearly revealed the weakness of the sentiment of identification to the EU: attachment to Europe (48% against 51% of people who “never felt European) still appeared distanced by attachments to respectively the country (88%), the region (87%) and the village (85%) (Reif, 1993 in Laffan: 99).
Then, the new focus on “we feeling” opted in favour of the transposition of the spill over logic in which citizenship would be used as a Trojan horse. By transforming the “European worker” defined by the 1986 Single act into a “European citizen”, the Treaty of Maastricht and the 1995 Schengen Agreements intended to raise of the “We feel European” by implementing concrete European political rights. But the European citizenship remained determined by the centrality of national citizenships insofar as being a European citizen equals being a citizen of one of the EU member-states. Furthermore, citizenship is an imperfect tool in the sense that identity both precedes (what meaning for a citizenship without feeling part of an imagined community?) and prolongs citizenship (how to feel responsible without identifying with?). For all that, citizenship seems quite unlikely to generate a real “sense of community” and a transcending European identity by itself. On the contrary, only a strong European identity could give a real signification to the European citizenship and could enable the EU to challenge the nation-state’s political legitimacy monopoly.
As a consequence, two questions appear central in the identity deficit.
Firstly, how to articulate European identity and national, or even regional, local identities? Obviously, if a transcending European identity were to emerge, it would not be without (and even less against) national identities. So the sole credible basis on which to promote a European identity is member-states’ themselves, and more precisely on identity policies that would emphasize what is commonly shared rather than what differentiates between them. So, to adapt the European recurrent motto “unity in diversity”, the European identity has to be understood as an “identity of identities”. Then the articulation issue is all the more complex since the EU has to deal with the very nature of the identity it wants to shape. In other word, whereas national identities emerged essentially through the influence of the myth of national sovereignty and a very close sense of patriotism, the European identity can only be imagined as open and outstripping particular and often dangerous nationalist myths.
So the second question concerns the appropriate levers that will help the European identity emerging. What are the components of the European identity? The determination of such levers is all the more difficult since contrarily to the sentiment towards integration that can be conditioned by “materialistic” elements (sentiment of having benefited, sentiment of re-conquering power through the EU…), there is no such thing as an “interest of feeling European”. So the European identity relies on symbolic, psychological, ideological (cosmopolitanism or nationalism…) or emotional elements rather than on rational balances.
So I will try to answer this very question of the most significant components of a European identity (or negatively what is the most detrimental to the consolidation of a European identity?) in the light of three major axes that corresponds to the three dimension of identity (political, emotional, differentiation): “constitutional patriotism” (I), symbolic (II), and the “constitutive Other” (III).
To examine the impact of those three components on the European identity, I chose to work on the question Q46 of the eb620 questionnaire: “Would you say you are very proud, fairly proud, not very proud, not at all proud to be European?” as dependent variable (29334 respondents).
Such a question presents the great interest of being disconnected with comparisons between European identity and national identities and to consider the pride of being European as an overarching sentiment.
Here emerges one of today’s most challenging issues for the European Union: the prevalence of market integration has created a political vacuum and so-called “democratic deficit”, essentially for lack of a genuine identification from the European citizens with European stakes.
Indeed, it would be simplistic to consider that the EU project has failed in generating support from the peoples of the member states and, consequently, in establishing the democratic bases it lacks today. The reality is that the very project of the “Founding Fathers”, as presented in the Schuman Declaration (9 May 1950) relied on a combination of functionalism and technocratism that largely explains the a-political trajectory of the European construction. Theses developed by E. Haas in The Uniting of Europe (1958) relied on the dynamic of sector-related integration that should be initiated by “concrete achievements that first create a de facto solidarity”. So economic integration was supposed to create “common fates” between the member-states and to trigger an ineluctable spiral of integration (“spill over”) from economic to political integration. But, the practical requirement of such a theory equated a rational long-term planning incompatible with the emotional short-term demands of member-states’ publics. So the European project was deliberately placed in the hands of experts able to supervise a rationalized construction without letting any vested interest or passions interfering.
So the choice of technocratism entailed both a depoliticisation of the European construction and a founding contradiction: functionalism wanted economic integration to be a first step in European integration but technocratism prevented political integration from emerging.
But as the Union was moving from “issues of instrumental problem-solving to fundamental questions about its nature as part-formed polity” (Cable, 1994; Garcia, 1993; BBV foundation, 1993. in Laffan, 1996:p 82), the absence of political spill over become all the more problematic since it began to damage the legitimacy of the overall European project. That is why in 1992, the Treaty of Maastricht tried not only to fill in the gap between economic and political integration, towards the key-project of single currency, but also to promote the idea that “the maintenance of economic integration [rested] in some measure on political integration”, intrinsically linked with the emergence of a “sense of community” (Laffan: 96). So the “identity deficit” was officially presented as a fundamental barrier to the EU functioning insofar as the very European project relies on the presupposition of a “European transcending community of fates, values, lives, socio-economic stakes and of responsibility” (European Identity Charter, 1995). So one thing was to presuppose the potentiality of a strong European identity; another was to stimulate it. In that perspective, analyses of 1992 Eurobarometer clearly revealed the weakness of the sentiment of identification to the EU: attachment to Europe (48% against 51% of people who “never felt European) still appeared distanced by attachments to respectively the country (88%), the region (87%) and the village (85%) (Reif, 1993 in Laffan: 99).
Then, the new focus on “we feeling” opted in favour of the transposition of the spill over logic in which citizenship would be used as a Trojan horse. By transforming the “European worker” defined by the 1986 Single act into a “European citizen”, the Treaty of Maastricht and the 1995 Schengen Agreements intended to raise of the “We feel European” by implementing concrete European political rights. But the European citizenship remained determined by the centrality of national citizenships insofar as being a European citizen equals being a citizen of one of the EU member-states. Furthermore, citizenship is an imperfect tool in the sense that identity both precedes (what meaning for a citizenship without feeling part of an imagined community?) and prolongs citizenship (how to feel responsible without identifying with?). For all that, citizenship seems quite unlikely to generate a real “sense of community” and a transcending European identity by itself. On the contrary, only a strong European identity could give a real signification to the European citizenship and could enable the EU to challenge the nation-state’s political legitimacy monopoly.
As a consequence, two questions appear central in the identity deficit.
Firstly, how to articulate European identity and national, or even regional, local identities? Obviously, if a transcending European identity were to emerge, it would not be without (and even less against) national identities. So the sole credible basis on which to promote a European identity is member-states’ themselves, and more precisely on identity policies that would emphasize what is commonly shared rather than what differentiates between them. So, to adapt the European recurrent motto “unity in diversity”, the European identity has to be understood as an “identity of identities”. Then the articulation issue is all the more complex since the EU has to deal with the very nature of the identity it wants to shape. In other word, whereas national identities emerged essentially through the influence of the myth of national sovereignty and a very close sense of patriotism, the European identity can only be imagined as open and outstripping particular and often dangerous nationalist myths.
So the second question concerns the appropriate levers that will help the European identity emerging. What are the components of the European identity? The determination of such levers is all the more difficult since contrarily to the sentiment towards integration that can be conditioned by “materialistic” elements (sentiment of having benefited, sentiment of re-conquering power through the EU…), there is no such thing as an “interest of feeling European”. So the European identity relies on symbolic, psychological, ideological (cosmopolitanism or nationalism…) or emotional elements rather than on rational balances.
So I will try to answer this very question of the most significant components of a European identity (or negatively what is the most detrimental to the consolidation of a European identity?) in the light of three major axes that corresponds to the three dimension of identity (political, emotional, differentiation): “constitutional patriotism” (I), symbolic (II), and the “constitutive Other” (III).
To examine the impact of those three components on the European identity, I chose to work on the question Q46 of the eb620 questionnaire: “Would you say you are very proud, fairly proud, not very proud, not at all proud to be European?” as dependent variable (29334 respondents).
Such a question presents the great interest of being disconnected with comparisons between European identity and national identities and to consider the pride of being European as an overarching sentiment.
Table of Contents- ´Constitutional patriotism´.
- Literature.
- Model.
- Data.
- Results.
- Symbols and iconography.
- The ´constitutive other´.
Critically examine the factors that ultimately led to the enlargement of the EU in 2004. What are the stages and debates?
«According to the article 43 of the European Community treaty, 'any European State may apply to become a member of the Union[]the conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded which such admission...» Document abstract
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SummaryAccording to the article 43 of the European Community treaty, 'any European State may apply to become a member of the Union[...]the conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded which such admission entails shall be the subject of an agreement between the member states and the applicant states'. Geographically, Europe can be defined as 'the western peninsula of the Eurasian landmass, stretching from Iceland in the west to the Urals in the east, and from Pitzbergen or Novya Zemlaya in the north to Gibraltar in the south' . Therefore, the will of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Slovenia to be part of the European Union was legitimate. If the old continent demonstrates some unity, the gap between the west and the east shows that diversity remains the main feature of Europe. On the 5th of March 1946, Churchill, in a speech pronounced in Fulton, talked for the first time about the iron curtain that fell on Europe. This metaphor was meant to describe the bipolarisation of the world, with the opposition of the communist bloc and the capitalist bloc. At the end of the Cold War and
the fall of communism, the metaphor should have become obsolete. Yet the inequalities and the antagonisms between Western and Central and Eastern Europe are still in 1991 very strong and the separation between the capitalist European states and the former communist states remains clear. Nevertheless, 13 years later, countries which had been under Moscow's sphere of influence become part of the European Union.
What are the factors that led to the 2004 EU enlargement? As all waves of integration, the process is not simple and never certain. Which were the main stages and the debate in this enlargement? How
and why has the EU enlargement 'progressed from a utopian vision to a practical, and vastly ambitious, project' ?
Table of Contents- At the end of the Cold War, the Eastern European countries were finally autonomous
- Concerning the economy, Central and Eastern European countries were deeply affected by the past
- Despite the closeness between the EU and the former communist countries, the idea of the enlargement was uncertain
- In 1993, as a consequence of internal and external pressures the enlargement was definitely part of the EU's agenda
«Dossier en anglais qui évalue l'assertion d'un auteur présentant l'Union européenne comme la fin des souverainetés nationales de ses états membres.
Le dossier présente et évalue les opinions d'auteurs opposés à cette affirmation, en mettant en...» Document abstract
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SummaryDossier en anglais qui évalue l'assertion d'un auteur présentant l'Union européenne comme la fin des souverainetés nationales de ses états membres.
Le dossier présente et évalue les opinions d'auteurs opposés à cette affirmation, en mettant en évidence les éléments qui étaient la thèse d'une nouvelle forme de souveraineté, plutôt que d'une fin stricto sensu de la souveraineté.
Le dossier présente et évalue les opinions d'auteurs opposés à cette affirmation, en mettant en évidence les éléments qui étaient la thèse d'une nouvelle forme de souveraineté, plutôt que d'une fin stricto sensu de la souveraineté.
Table of Contents Les internautes ont également acheté «Exposé en Anglais sur le Royaume-Uni et un passage éventuel à l'euro, qui examine les différents arguments favorables et opposés à l'adoption de la monnaie européenne.
Soon after election, in 1997, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said that four of...» Document abstract
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european union
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SummaryExposé en Anglais sur le Royaume-Uni et un passage éventuel à l'euro, qui examine les différents arguments favorables et opposés à l'adoption de la monnaie européenne.
Soon after election, in 1997, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said that four of the five tests had not been met (only the fourth was met, about the impact of euro membership on the City of London) but that there were obvious economic benefits to joining. He said that the government should “prepare intensely” so that Britain could be in a position to sign up “early in the next Parliament”. On June of this year, he said exactly the same thing, except he did not give a date.
Are the benefits of Euro membership obvious for Britain? Will a referendum be held in the next Parliament? What would be the outcome?
Soon after election, in 1997, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said that four of the five tests had not been met (only the fourth was met, about the impact of euro membership on the City of London) but that there were obvious economic benefits to joining. He said that the government should “prepare intensely” so that Britain could be in a position to sign up “early in the next Parliament”. On June of this year, he said exactly the same thing, except he did not give a date.
Are the benefits of Euro membership obvious for Britain? Will a referendum be held in the next Parliament? What would be the outcome?
Table of Contents- The economic and political debate
- Arguments for membership
- Arguments against
- Is Britain likely to join in the next few years?
- Public opinion
- Interest groups, the media and the No and Yes campaign
- Prepare and persuade
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