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Community Method
The Community method (also known as the Union method) refers to decision making processes in the European Union (EU) which emphasize the roles of the supranational decision making bodies such as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. The Community method can be contrasted with intergovernmental decision making processes used in the former second and third pillars of the Union in which the European Commission and European Parliament played less important roles, and to intergovernmental cooperation outside of the formal EU processes, such as the Schengen Agreement (1985) before the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). See also * Enhanced cooperation * European Communities * Legislature of the European Union * Open method of coordination * Three pillars of the European Union Between 1993 and 2009, the European Union (EU) legally comprised three pillars. This structure was introduced with the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been described as a ''sui generis'' political entity (without precedent or comparison) combining the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation. Containing 5.8per cent of the world population in 2020, the EU generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around trillion in 2021, constituting approximately 18per cent of global nominal GDP. Additionally, all EU states but Bulgaria have a very high Human Development Index according to the United Nations Development Programme. Its cornerstone, the Customs Union, paved the way to establishing an internal single market based on standardised legal framework and legislation that applies in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where the states have agreed to ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supranationalism
A supranational union is a type of international organization that is empowered to directly exercise some of the powers and functions otherwise reserved to states. A supranational organization involves a greater transfer of or limitation of state sovereignty than other kinds of international organizations. The European Union (EU) has been described as a paradigmatic case of a supranational organization, as it has deep political, economic and social integration, which includes a common market, joint border control, a supreme court, and regular popular elections. Another method of decision-making in international organisations is intergovernmentalism in which state governments play a more prominent role. Origin as a legal concept After the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Albert Einstein spoke and wrote frequently in the late 1940s in favour of a "supranational" organization to control all military forces except for local police forces, in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body of about 32,000 European civil servants. The Commission is divided into departments known as Directorates-General (DGs) that can be likened to departments or ministries each headed by a Director-General who is responsible to a Commissioner. There is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. The Commission President (currently Ursula von der Leyen) is proposed by the European Council (the 27 heads of state/governments) and elected by the European Parliament. The Council of the European Union then nominates the other members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and the 27 members as a team are t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India), with an electorate of 375 million eligible voters in 2009. Since 1979, the Parliament has been directly elected every five years by the citizens of the European Union through universal suffrage. Voter turnout in parliamentary elections decreased each time after 1979 until 2019, when voter turnout increased by eight percentage points, and rose above 50% for the first time since 1994. The voting age is 18 in all EU member states except for Malta and Austria, where it is 16, and Greece, where it is 17. Although the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Council Of The European Union
The Council of the European Union, often referred to in the treaties and other official documents simply as the Council, and informally known as the Council of Ministers, is the third of the seven Institutions of the European Union (EU) as listed in the Treaty on European Union. It is one of two legislative bodies and together with the European Parliament serves to amend and approve or veto the proposals of the European Commission, which holds the right of initiative. The Council of the European Union and the European Council are the only EU institutions that are explicitly intergovernmental, that is, forums whose attendees express and represent the position of their Member State's executive, be they ambassadors, ministers or heads of state/government. The Council meets in 10 different configurations of national ministers (one per state). The precise membership of these configurations varies according to the topic under consideration; for example, when discussing ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intergovernmentalism
In international relations, intergovernmentalism treats states (and national governments in particular) as the primary actors in the integration process. Intergovernmentalist approaches claim to be able to explain both periods of radical change in the European Union because of converging governmental preferences and periods of inertia because of diverging national interests. Intergovernmentalism is distinguishable from realism and neorealism because it recognized the significance of institutionalisation in international politics and the impact of domestic politics upon governmental preferences. Regional integration European integration The best-known example of regional integration is the European Union (EU), an economic and political intergovernmental organisation of 27 member states, all in Europe. The EU operates through a system of supranational independent institutions and intergovernmental negotiated decisions by the member states. Institutions of the EU include the Eu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schengen Agreement
The Schengen Agreement ( , ) is a treaty which led to the creation of Europe's Schengen Area, in which internal border checks have largely been abolished. It was signed on 14 June 1985, near the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, by five of the ten member states of the then European Economic Community. It proposed measures intended to gradually abolish border checks at the signatories' common borders, including reduced-speed vehicle checks which allowed vehicles to cross borders without stopping, allowing residents in border areas freedom to cross borders away from fixed checkpoints, and the harmonisation of visa policies.Respectively Articles 2, 6 and 7 of thSchengen Agreement eur-lex.europa.eu; accessed 27 January 2016. In 1990, the Agreement was supplemented by the Schengen Convention which proposed the complete abolition of systematic internal border controls and a common visa policy. The Schengen Area operates very much like a single state for international travel purposes w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treaty Of Amsterdam
The Treaty of Amsterdam, officially the Treaty of Amsterdam amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related acts, was signed on 2 October 1997, and entered into force on 1 May 1999; it made substantial changes to the Treaty of Maastricht, which had been signed in 1992. Under the Treaty of Amsterdam, member states agreed to transfer certain powers from national governments to the European Parliament across diverse areas, including legislating on immigration, adopting civil and criminal laws, and enacting common foreign and security policy (CFSP), as well as implementing institutional changes for expansion as new member nations join the EU. Background The treaty was the result of long negotiations which began in Messina, Italy, on 2 June 1995, nearly forty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, and reached completion in Amsterdam on 18 June 1997. Following the formal signing of the Treaty on 2 October 1997, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enhanced Cooperation
In the European Union (EU), enhanced cooperation (previously known as closer cooperation) is a procedure where a minimum of nine EU member states are allowed to establish advanced integration or cooperation in an area within EU structures but without the other members being involved. As of October 2017, this procedure is being used in the fields of the Schengen acquis, divorce law, patents, property regimes of international couples, and European Public Prosecutor and is approved for the field of a financial transaction tax. This is distinct from the EU opt-out, that is a form of cooperation between EU members within EU structures, where it is allowed for a limited number of states to refrain from participation (e.g. EMU, Schengen Area). It is further distinct from Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification and permanent acquis suspensions, whose lifting is conditional on meeting certain benchmarks by the affected member states. History Enhanced cooperation, at that time kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Communities
The European Communities (EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom), and the European Economic Community (EEC); the last of which was renamed the ''European Community'' (''EC'') in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union. The European Union was established at that time more as a concept rather than an entity, while the Communities remained the actual subjects of international law impersonating the rather abstract Union, becoming at the same time its first pillar. In the popular language, however, the singular ''European Community'' was sometimes inaccurately used interchangeably with the plural phrase, in the sense of referring to all three entities. The European Coal and Steel Community ceased to exist in 2002 when its founding treaty expired. The European Community was merged with the seco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legislature Of The European Union
The European Union adopts legislation through a variety of legislative procedures. The procedure used for a given legislative proposal depends on the policy area in question. Most legislation needs to be proposed by the European Commission and approved by the Council of the European Union and European Parliament to become law. Over the years the power of the European Parliament within the legislative process has been greatly increased from being limited to giving its non-binding opinion or excluded from the legislative process altogether, to participating equally with the Council in the legislative process. The power to amend the Treaties of the European Union, sometimes referred to as the Union's primary law, or even as its ''de facto'' constitution, is reserved to the member states and must be ratified by them in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. An exception to this are so-called passerelle clauses in which the legislative procedure used fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Method Of Coordination
The open method of coordination (OMC) is a relatively new intergovernmental means of governance in the European Union, based on the voluntary cooperation of its member states. The open method rests on soft law mechanisms such as guidelines and indicators, benchmarking and sharing of best practice. This means that there are no official sanctions for laggards. Rather, the method's effectiveness relies on a form of peer pressure and naming and shaming, as no member state wants to be seen as the worst in a given policy area. The OMC works in stages. Firstly, the Council of Ministers agrees on (often very broad) policy goals. Secondly, Member states then transpose guidelines into national and regional policies. Thirdly, specific benchmarks and indicators to measure best practice are agreed upon. Finally, results are monitored and evaluated. However, the OMC differs significantly across the various policy areas to which it has been applied: there may be shorter or longer reporting perio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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