As at January 1, 2007, the European Union comprised of 29 member States (United kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Slovakia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Turkey.)
Decision-making at the European Union comprises three main institutions; the European Commission (comprises all the member states), the European Parliament (its composition is governed by the founding treaties, and the Act of September 20, 1976 on election of members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage.) and the Council of the European Union (comprises of representatives of the member states and the presidency is held in rotation for a period of six months by each member state) .
The European Commission is mandated with the responsibility of proposing new legislations and there after, the Council and the European Parliament partakes the procedure of passing the proposed legislation into law. The two institutions work hand in hand to debate on the proposed law although in some cases, the Council of the European Union handles the task by itself. The laws of the European Union are categorised into Directives and Regulations and the rules and procedure on how to go about the decision-making process are prescribed in the Treaties. Thus, every proposal by the European Commission is guided by a subject treaty article titled the legal basis wherein the procedures outlined are consultation, assent and co-decision .
The consultation procedure involves situations whereby the Council feels the need to consult not only the European Parliament but also the concerned committ...
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...g-process.htm; decision making process; 2009; delegation of the European Union to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 2009.
EU2009.CZ. http://www.eu2009.cz/en/about-the-eu/eu-decision-making/decision-making-procedures-579/ December 23, 2008; decision making procedures.
EUROPA.http://ec.europa.eu/codecision/stepbystep/text/index_en.htm; September 30, 2010 ‘Codecision’
European navigator. ‘Council of the European Union Codecision Guide.’ Pp 32, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, September 2000. Retrieved on March 2, 2011 from http://www.ena.lu/council_european_union_codecision_guide_september_2000-020007512.html
Larson Torbjủrn Precooking in the European union: the world of expert groups. Stockholm, 2003.
Peterson John & Bomberg Elizabeth E. Decision-making in the European Union. New York: St. Martin Press, 1999.
The European Union has a common “government” called the Parliament. In the background essay it stated, “The role of the parliament is to debate and pass laws, make sure all EU institutions work democratically, and debate, and adopt the EU budget”. This means that the parliament has control over the laws, and controls the European Union budget. In Document B it mentions, “Whatever institution governs the trade of a nation or group of nations whether monarchy, dictator or parliament- essentially rules that nation”. This means that the parliament has control over the European Union. Most of the time countries
For this reason, the Commission is referred as the “guardian of the Treaties” or “watchdog” of the EU. Moreover, the decisions made by the Parliament and the Council must be made on the basis of the proposals given by the Commission.
There are a number of methods EU legislation is formed for instance regulations, directives and decisions are three different types of EU legislation. I am going to briefly explain these three as the way they will be enforced are different.
At the Laeken European Council of December 2001, government and state leaders of the European Union (EU) Member States decided to draft a `Constitutional Treaty' for the EU. The draft would then be discussed, amended, approved or rejected by an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) held in 2003. The aim of Fabbrini's article is thus to contribute to the understanding of the constitutional evolution of the EU through a comparison with the constitutional experience of the United States.
Tiilikainen, T. 2011. The empowered European Parliament: Accommodation to the new functions provided by the Lisbon Treaty. The Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The European Union as an established governing body is an essential example of this concept which must be reviewed as the establi...
There are 28 members for each state and one is chosen as the president. In this type of a political union powers are negotiated and delegated by the government of the member states. Firstly, the president is proposed to the European Parliament by the Council depending on eligibility. The European Parliament then elects the president based on qualified majority voting. After the president is elected, he proposes his chosen 27 commissioners, based on proposals from the member states. The president and the council then have to agree on who the other 27 commissioners will be and get approval from the European Parliament. One of the distinguishing features which makes the European Commission a supranational body is that it combines all of the 28 member states into one state. The commission recognizes all of the separate member states and governments however it does act a sovereign power itself. The Commission proposes its own legislations and policies and works toward implementation of those legislations in the member states. The European Commission is based on treaties amongst the states that benefit from these treaties and thus there is trust and cooperation among them.
The EU is a union of sovereign European states who share sovereignty based on treaty. The union also possesses competences in policy sectors with exclusive jurisdiction in the area of Economic and Monetary Union while others are shared with Member States (MS), the other powers belong to MS as derived from the conferral of powers art 5(2) TEU, 2(1) TFEU art.3 & 4 TFEU additionally other powers have been offered by the decisions of the European Court for direct effect on citizens
The treaty extends the competences of the EU, and has some major governmental changes. From 2014 through 2017, a redistribution of voting weights between the member states will take place. The chairmanship of the European Coun...
Although the European Union consists of a large variety of institutions, the most important institution is the European Commission. Established in 1958 and based in Luxemburg and Brussels, this hybrid institution (executive and bureaucratic) “epitomizes supranationalism and lies at the center of the EU political system” (Dinan, 2010, p. 171). It has a substantial bulk of responsibilities and carries out these responsibilities with a vast number of constituents, acting as the executive for the EU. These responsibilities include anything from drafting and initiating policy to managing the financial framework of the EU, and can have a large impact on the other institutions of the EU. In order to “promote the general interests of the Union,” the Commission strives to unify the interests of the member states and is continually working for implementation and harmonization of EU law (Dinan, 2010, p. 191).
At present, there are approximately 3,000 different interest groups that are formally recognized by the European Union (Kirchner 2011). These interest groups represent a variety of interests and vary in the amount of influence that they actually have on the policy making process. These groups represent the interest of multiple sectors of both social and economic life within the European Union. Interests range from AGRICULTURE to BIG BUSINESS to HUMANITARIAN AID. In a truly pluralist nature, these groups are competing, either directly or indirectly, with each one another to have an influence in the legislation that is produced by the European Union. It is without a doubt that these interest groups within the European Union play an important part of the decision-making process. The blossoming interest group community within the European Union has both beneficial and detrimental impacts on the democratic quality of the European legislative process. By providing a background of interest groups and their influence in the decision-making process and comparing the role of interest groups within the European Union to those within the United States I will demonstrate the positive and negative qualities of interest group participation in the democratic process. In this paper, I will argue that interest groups are indeed a double-edged sword in affecting the democratic quality of European Union legislation.
The European Union’s environmental policy is vast and complicated. It applies to every country under the Union’s domain and its criteria must be met for any state wishing to seek membership. The European Union was not the original forerunner in environmental politics; in fact, the United States “took on a leadership role in preparations for the 1972 United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment” (Kelemen 2009). However, in the 1970s (1973 to be specific) as the US pulled away from being the environmental leader the EU emerged with it’s seven ‘Environmental Action Plans’ (EAP) (Pearce 1998). The original aim of environmental policy was very traditional, focusing on protecting species and improving the quality of life but today the underlying aim of the policy “is to enhance natural capital, provide a resource-efficient economy and safeguard people’s health” (European Commission 2013). I will first open with a brief history of the environmental policy, followed by its success and failures using concrete examples and conclude with alterations or alternatives to the policy in order to make it more successful across the European Union.
To conclude if we give a broad and general look on how the European institutions are organized and how the European laws are applied to this zone, we can firstly say that the European union is a very strong and powerful institution with a solid core and some very influent members. We can also note that most of these institutions are linked together and so each institution interacts with each other. This very positive and strong aspect of the EU but the issue is that a political and economical pressure could impact on the principals ones when it comes to a vast problem solvency. More regarding the measures
The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member countries located in Europe. The EU was established on 1 January 1958 following the Treaty of Rome 1957 (Nobes and Parker, 2010). The objective of Treaty had established rules to encourage free movement of persons, products and services, and capital. This establishment drives the needs of harmonization of accounting and financial reporting.
The selected MEPs appoint the president of the European parliament and is responsible for overseeing the all the activities of parliament and its standing committees. The president servers two and half years term and his/her signature is required to ena...