TISHK International University

FASE | IRD Department

The EU Politics

Unit I : An Introduction to EU Politics

Fall Semester 2021-2022

Course coordinator: Assistant Lecturer Dana Sajadi

Learning Objectives

1. to understand the EU from a political perspective.

2. To understand the purpose of regional integration.

3. To be familiar with the mechanism of international cooperation.

4. To Have a general understanding of the term confederalism.

1. EU : Introduction

• The creation of the European Union will go down in history as one of the most remarkable achievements of the twentieth century.

• In the space of just forty years - less than two generations –

• Europeans fought two appalling wars among themselves, finally appreciated the dangers of nationalism and the futility of violence, and sat down to design a system that would make it inconceivable that they would ever take up arms against each other again.

1. EU : Introduction

• A body of treaties and laws has been agreed and a set of institutions has been created that have altered the political, economic and social landscape of western Europe, changed the way Europeans relate to each other.

• redefined the balance of power in the world by creating a new economic superpower, and helped bring to Europe the longest uninterrupted spell of peace in its recorded history. The European Union is one of the world's biggest economic power, is one of the two largest markets in the world.

1. EU : Introduction

• The changes it has brought have spun a web of links among the state of western Europe that would be difficult to unravel.

• Free trade and the free movement of EU citizens have steadily dissolved the barriers that for so long reminded Europeans of their differences,

• and while national and regional identities are still alive and well, they no longer contain the seeds of the kinds of competition and conflict that have so often brought war and destruction to Europe

2. Regional Integration

• When we think of the way the global system functions, and of our place in that system, most of us think in terms of

➢States

➢ourselves as citizens of one or other of those states

➢Continents

➢Regions divided by the state frontier

2. Regional Integration

• States have been the primary actors in the global system for more than 200 years. However, the state is not the only kind of administrative community, nor is it even necessarily the best.

• the modern state system is declining, undermined by several fatal flaws, and that the world may be moving steadily towards broader regional groupings that will help us set aside our national differences, avoid conflict and concentrate instead on the benefits of cooperation.

3. The origin of integrations

• The most serious challenges to the idea of the state came during the first half of the twentieth century with two devastating world wars,

• It brought fundamental changes in attitudes towards the relationship among states, and each of which led to urgent debates about the dangers of nationalism and the threat of war that seemed perpetually to hang over the state system.

• The pressures and desires to build peace through cooperation rather than competition reached a new level of intensity after the Second World War

3. The origin of integrations

• the cold war- a war of ideas and ideologies rather than of direct conflict between the major protagonists

• exemplified all the doubts about the value of the modern state, which was forged out of violence and seemed unable to guarantee the safety of its citizens except through a balance of terror with other states

• the constant threat of nuclear annihilation

3. The origin of integrations

• A successful state must keep most of its people happy most of the time, but many theorists asked whether the modern state could ever do this given its ties with nationalism, and its potential for misunderstanding and conflict.

• Such doubts led to growing support for the idea of peace through international cooperation, which led to an explosion in the number of international organizations, spearheaded by the creation of the United Nations in 1945.

3. The origin of integrations

• The search for peace has also led to experiments in regional integration, the argument being that economic, social and political integration can reduce or remove the causes of conflict.

3. International Cooperation

• International cooperation has taken many different forms, from the narrowly focused to the broadly idealistic, and has resulted in the development of many different methods and systems for promoting cooperation.

• The most common has been the creation of international organizations

• within which multiple national groups, corporations and governments cooperate on matters of mutual interest.

3. International Cooperation

• European Union is an international organization in the sense that its members are nation-states, but it has moved well beyond conventional ideas about international cooperation.

• International cooperation rarely involves the surrender of significant sovereignty or independence by the participants.

Confederalism

• Confederalism is a system of administration in which two or more organizational units retain their separate identities but give specified powers to a higher authority for reasons of convenience, mutual security or efficiency.

• Federalism is different in the sense that it involves the local units surrendering some of their sovereignty and giving up power over joint interests to a new and permanent national level of authority.

• countries such as Britain, France, Japan and Italy, where sovereignty rests almost entirely with the national government, which can abolish or amend local units at will.

Confederalism

• The European Union is confederal in several ways:

• Decisions taken by the leaders of the member states have resulted in a transfer of some authority to the European Commission and a cluster of specialized EU agencies

• but the member states still have the upper hand through their powers of appointment to the EU institutions, and through their powers to make decisions in the Council of Ministers.

• the EU is governed as a whole through a process of negotiation and bargaining among national governments.

Confederalism

• The European Union is confederal in several ways:

• The member states are still distinct units with separate identities, have their own systems of law, can sign bilateral treaties with other states, and can still argue that the EU institutions exist at their discretion.

• There is no European government in the sense that the EU has obvious leaders - such as a president, a foreign minister or a cabinet - with sole power to make policy for the EU member states. the Commission represents the EU as a whole in international trade negotiations

Confederalism

• The European Union is confederal in several ways:

• The EU may have its own flag and anthem, but most citizens still have a much greater sense of allegiance to their own national flags, anthems and other symbols, and progress towards instilling a sense of a European identity has been mixed .

THANK YOU