LEGAL HISTORY II

TEACHING GUIDE Nr. 12. “Combining the Community and the Intergovernmental Methods: From the Europe of Communities to the European Union (1986-2009)”

Introduction:

The Single European Act (1986) was decisive because the three enlargements of 1973, 1981 and 1985 increased the number of member-states from 6 to 12. And with such a number to reach the objective of a Common market, much further than the strict customs union of 1957 required to abandon the unanimity voting decided in the Luxemburg compromise (1966) and get back to the principle of Majority voting, though with the restriction of Quality Majority Voting (QMV) meaning that the most preeminent member-states -that is Germany, France and the UK- could veto an agreement they disliked. Even with this restriction European integration was relaunched by the SEA. The consolidation of this new stage in the process of European integration would come 6 years later as a consequence of the end of the Cold War.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 9, 1989, the 1990 German reunification and the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a decisive influence in the process of European Integration. The tendency of the SEA was deepened in the Maastricht Treaty that substituted the three European Communities by a unique European Union, creating a Pillar Structure that enabled the different implementation of the QMV versus the Unanimity principle, the Community Method versus the Intergovernmental Method. Something that was more important as the collapse of the Iron Curtain enabled the integration of the Eastern European countries in an exorbitant enlargement that in 25 years led to the Europe of 12 state-members to the Europe of 28. The Europe of 15 in 1995 -with the integration of Austria, Finland and Sweden-, the Europe of 25 in 2004 -with the integration of Poland, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia-, the Europe of 27 in 2007 -with the integration of Romania and Bulgaria-, and the actual Europe of 28 in 2013, with the integration of Croatia.

This successive enlargements required urgently a deep reform of the governing principles of the EU in the Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2009) Treaties. Today the EU is still a miracle but despite its difficulties and the fact that because of the persistence of a dual way of decision making through the intergovernmental and community principles it has two executives: the European Council, and the European Commission, and two legislatures: the Council of ministers (referred to as the Council) and the European Parliament it works.

Though the 2008 crisis and the difficulties of some countries accentuated by the budgetary discipline required by the Euro are giving wings to many Populist anti- integration parties. Nevertheless, at this stage, only through the reduction of the Democratic deficit the EU could survive, even with the risk of a Brexit.

I. Texts: You have to read: a) Text nr. 1 From the book A History of Western Public Law. Between Nation and State from Chapter 18 paragraph 18.10, pages 695 to 699, paragraph 18.11, pages 699 to 702 and paragraph 18.12, pages 702 to 705; and paragraph 18.9 “Returning to the Community Method: From the Single European Act to the Maastricht Treaty (1986- 1992)” pages 694 to 695. b) Text nr. 2. “European integration from the first enlargement to the Single European Act" (1973-1986)”. Excerpted from : JUDT, Tony (2010) Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945: London Vintage Books: pp. 526 to 534

European integration from the first enlargement to the Single European Act

The Uk joins in

"Between 1973 and 1986 the European Community passed through one of its periodic bursts of activism and expansion, what one historian has called its `sequence of irregular big bangs´. French President Georges Pompidou, released by De Gaulle's death from the mortgage of his patron's disapproval -and more than a little perturbed, as we have seen, by the strategic implications of Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik- made it clear that he would welcome Great Britain's membership of EC. In January 1972, in Brussels, the EC formally approved the accession of Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway, to take effect a year later.

The successful British application was the work of the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, the only British political leader since World War Two unambiguously and enthusiastically in favor of joining his nations's fate to that of its continental neighbors. When the Labor Party returned to office in 1974 and called a referendum on UK membership of the Community, the country approved by 17.300.000 to 8.400.000. But even Heath could not make the British -the English especially- `feel´ European, and a significant share of voters on Right and Left alike continued to doubt the benefits of being `in Europe´. The Norwegians, meanwhile, were quite distinctly of the view that they were better off outside: in a referendum in September 1972, 54 percent of the country rejected EC membership and opted instead for a limited free-trade agreement with the Community, a decision reconfirmed in an almost identical vote twenty two years later.

British membership of the Community would prove controversial in later years, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) opposed the emerging projects for ever closer union and demanded that Britain be refunded her `overpayments´ to the common budget (British check). But in the Seventies London had problems of its own and, despite the price-inflationary impact of membership, was relieved to be part of a trading area that now supplied one third of Britain's inward investment. The first direct elections to a new European Parliament were held in 1979 -until then, members of the European Assembly sitting in Strasbourg had been selected by the respective national legislatures- but aroused little popular interest. In the UK the turnout was predictable low, just 31,6 percent; but then it was not especially high elsewhere -in France only three out of five electors bothered to vote, in the Netherlands even fewer.

The problematic enlargement of Southern countries: Greece, Spain and Portugal

The adhesion of three `northern tier´ countries to the EC was relatively unproblematic for newcomers and old members alike. Ireland was poor but tiny, while Denmark and the UK were wealthy and thus net contributors to the common budget. Like the next round of prosperous additions, in 1995, when Austria, Sweden and Finland joined what was by then the European Union, the new participants added to the coffers and clout of the expanding community without significantly increasing its costs, or competing in sensitive areas with existing members. The newcomers from the South were a different matter.

Greece, like Ireland, was small and poor and its agriculture posed no threat to French farmers. Thus despite certain institutional impediments -the Orthodox Church had official and influential standing and civil marriage, to take one example, was not permitted until 1992- there were no powerful arguments against its admission, which was championed by French President Giscard D'Estaing among others. But when it came to Portugal and (above all) Spain, the French put up strong opposition. Wine, olive oil, fruit and other farm products cost far less to grow and market south of the Pyrenees; were Spain and Portugal to be admitted to the common European market on equal terms, the Iberian farmers would offer French producers stiff competition.

Thus it took nine years for Portugal and Spain to gain entry to the EC (whereas Greece's application went through in less than six) during which time the public image of France, traditionally positive in the Iberian peninsula, fell steeply; by 1983, two-thirds of the way through an acrimonious series of negotiations, only 39 percent of Spaniards had a `favorable´ view of France -an inauspicious beginning to their common future. Part of the problem was that the arrival of Mediterranean nations entailed more than simply compensating Paris with a further increase in the Community's support payments to French farmers; between them Spain, Portugal and Greece brought an additional 58 million people into the Community, most of them poor and thus eligible for a variety of Brussels-funded programs and subsidies.

Indeed with the accession of three poor, agrarian countries, the Common Agricultural Fund took on heavy new burdens -and France ceased to be its main beneficiary. Various carefully negotiated deals had thus to be reached to compensate the French for their `losses´. The newcomers in turn were duly compensated for their own disadvantages and for the long `transition period´ which France succeeded in imposing before allowing their exports into Europe on equal terms. The `Integrated Mediterranean Programs´-regional subsidies in fact if not yet in name- that were provided to Spain and Portugal upon entry in 1986 had not been offered to the Greeks in 1981, and Andreas Papandreu successfully demanded their extension to his country, even threatening to take Greece out of the EC if this was denied.

It was in these years, then, that the European Community acquired its unflattering image as a sort of institutional cattle market, in which countries trade political alliances for material reward. And the rewards were real. The Spanish and Portuguese did well enough out of `Europe ´ (though not as well as France), Spanish negotiators becoming notably adept at advancing and securing their country’s financial advantage. But it was Athens that really cleaned up: despise initially falling behind the rest of the Community in the course of the Eighties (and replacing Portugal at the Community’s poorest member by 1990), Greece profited greatly from its membership.

Indeed, it was because Greece was so poor –by 1990 half of the European Community’s poorest regions were Greek- that it did so well. For Athens, EC membership amounted to a second Marshall Plan: in the years 1985-1989 alone, Greece received $7,9 billion from EC funds, proportionately more than any other country. So long as there were no other poor countries waiting in the line, this level of redistributed generosity –the price of Greek acquiescence in Community decisions- could be absorbed by the Community’s national paymasters, chiefly West Germany. But with the costly unification of Germany and the prospect of a new pool of indigent applicant states from Eastern Europe, the generous precedents of the Mediterranean accession years would prove burdensome and controversial, as we shall see.

From six to twelve or how to manage an enlarged Europe The bigger it grew, the harder the European Community was to manage. The unanimity required in the inter-governmental Council of Ministers ushered in interminable debates. Decisions could take years to be agreed –one directive on the definition and regulation of mineral water took eleven years to emerge from the Council chambers. Something had to be done. There was a longstanding consensus that the European `project´ needed an infusion of purpose and energy –a conference at The Hague back in 1969 was the first of an irregular series of meetings intended to `re-launch Europe´- and the personal friendship of France’s President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and German chancellor Schmidt in the years 1975-1981 favored such agenda.

But it was easier to advance by negative economic integration –removing tariffs and trade restrictions, subsidizing disadvantaged regions and sectors- than to agree on purposeful criteria requiring positive political action. The reason was simple enough. So long as there was sufficient cash to go around, economic cooperation could be presented as a net benefit to all parties; whereas any political move in the direction of European integration or coordination implicitly threatened national autonomy and restricted domestic political initiative. Only when powerful leaders of dominant states agreed for reasons of their own to work together toward some common purpose could change be brought about.

Monetary integration

Thus it was Willy Brandt and Georges Pompidou who had launched the first system of monetary coordination, the `Snake´; Helmut Schmidt and Giscard d’Estaing who developed it into the European Monetary System (EMS); and Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand, their respective successors, who could mastermind the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that gave birth to the European Union. It was Giscard and Schmidt, too, who invented `summit diplomacy´ as a way to circumvent the impediments of a cumbersome supranational bureaucracy in Brussels –a further reminder that, as in the past, Franco-German cooperation was the necessary condition for the unification of Western Europe.

The impulse behind Franco-German moves in the Seventies was economic anxiety. The European economy was growing slowly if at all, inflation was endemic and the uncertainty resulting from the collapse of the Bretton Woods system meant that the exchange rates were volatile and unpredictable. The Snake, the EMS and the écu were a sort of second-best –because regional rather than international- response to the problem, serially substituting the Deutschmark for the dollar as the stable currency of reference for European bankers and markets. A few years later the replacement of national currencies by the euro, for all its disruptive symbolic implications, was the logical next step. The ultimate emergence of a single European currency was thus the outcome of pragmatic responses to economic problems, not a calculated strategic move on the road to a predetermined European goal.

The Single European Act

Nevertheless, by convincing many observers –notably hitherto skeptical Social Democrats- that economic recovery and prosperity could no longer be achieved at a national level alone, the successful monetary collaboration of Western European states served as an unexpected stepping stone to other forms of collective action. With no powerful constituency opposed in principle, the Community’s heads of state and government signed a Solemn Declaration in 1983 committing them to a future European Union. The precise shape of such a Union was then hammered out in the course of negotiations leading to a Single European Act (SEA) which was approved by the European Council in December 1985 and entered into force in July 1987.

The SEA was the first significant revision of the original Rome Treaty. Article One stated clearly enough the `European Communities and European political cooperation shall have as their objective to contribute together to making concrete progress towards European unity´. And merely by replacing `Community´ with `Union´ the leaders of the twelve member nations took a decisive step forward in principle. But the signatories avoided or postponed all truly controversial business, notably the growing burden of the Union’s agricultural budget. They also stepped cautiously around the embarrassing absence of any common European policy on defense and foreign affairs. At the height of the `new Cold War´ of the 1980s, and on the verge of momentous developments unfolding a few dozen miles to their East, the member states of the European Union kept their eyes resolutely fixed upon the internal business of what was still primarily a common market, albeit one encompassing well over 300 million people.

From unanimity to Qualified majority voting

What they did agree on, however, was to move purposefully towards a genuine single internal market in goods and labor (to be implemented by 1992), and to adopt a system of `qualified majority voting´ in the Union’s decision-making process –`qualified´, that is, by the insistence of the bigger members (notably Britain and France) that they retain power to block proposals deemed harmful to their national interest. These were real changes, and they could be agreed to because a single market was favored in principle by everyone from Margaret Thatcher to the Greens, albeit for rather different reasons. They facilitated and anticipated the genuine economic integration of the next decade.

From a Europe of States to a Europe of regions

A retreat from the system of national vetoes in the European Council was unavoidable if any decisions were to be taken by an increasingly cumbersome community of states, that had doubled its size in just thirteen years and was already anticipating applications for membership from Sweden, Austria and elsewhere. The larger it grew, the more attractive –and somehow `inevitable´- the future European Union would become to those not yet inside it. To citizens of its member states, however, the most significant feature of the European Union in these years was not the way in which it was governed (about which most of its people remained entirely ignorant), nor its leaders’ projects for closer integration, but the amount of money flowing through its coffers and the way the money was disbursed.

The original Treaty of Rome contained only one agency with a specific remit to identify regions within its member states that needed assistance and then dispense Community cash to them: the European Investment Bank, initiated at Italy’s insistence. But a generation later regional expenditures, in the form of cash subsidies, direct aid, start-up funds and other investment incentives were the leading source of budgetary expansion in Brussels and by far the most influential lever at the Community’s disposal.

The reason for this was the confluence of regionalist politics within the separate member states and growing economic disparities between the states themselves. In the initial post-World War Two years, European states were still unitary, governed from the center with little regard for local variety or tradition. Only the new Italian constitution of 1948 even acknowledged the case for regional authorities; and even so, the limited local governments that it stipulated remained a dead letter for a quarter of a century. But just when local demands for autonomy became a serious factor in domestic political calculations all over Europe, the EC for its own reasons inaugurated a system of regional funds, beginning in 1975 with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

From the point of view of Brussels-based officials, the ERDF and other so-called `structural funds´ had two purposes. The first was to address the problem of economic backwardness and unevenness within a Community that was still very much guided by a post-war culture of `growth´, as the Single European Act made quite explicit. With each new group of members came new inequalities that required attention and compensation if economic integration was to succeed. Italy’s Mezzogiorno was no longer the only impoverished zone, as it had once been: most of Ireland; parts of Great Britain (Ulster, Wales, Scotland and the north and west of England); most of Greece and Portugal; southern, central and north-western Spain: all were poor and would need significant subsidies and reallocations of central aid if they were to catch up.

In 1982, taking the European Community’s average income as 100, Denmark –the wealthiest member- stood at 126, Greece at just 44. By 1989 per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Denmark was still more than twice that of Portugal (in the US, the gap between wealthy and poor states was only two thirds as wide). And these were national averages –regional disparities were greater still. Even wealthy countries had deserving zones: when Sweden and Finland joined the Union in the mid 1990s, their Arctic regions, under populated and totally dependent on maintenance grants and other subsidies from Stockholm and Helsinki, now qualified for assistance from Brussels too. To correct geographical and market deformations that locked Spain’s Galicia or Sweden’s Vasterbotten into dependency, agencies in Brussels would devote large amounts of cash –bringing undoubted local benefits but also setting up expensive, cumbersome and occasionally corrupt local bureaucracies in the process.

The second motive behind Europe’s enormously costly regional funding projects –between them the various `Structural´ and `Cohesion´ Funds would consume 35 percent of all EU expenditure by the end of the century –was to enable the European Commission in Brussels to bypass uncooperative central governments and collaborate directly with regional interests within the member states. This strategy proved very successful. Ever since the 1960s regionalist sentiment had been growing (in some cases reviving) everywhere. Quondam (autrefois) 1968 activists, substituting regional affinity for political dogma, now sought to revive and use the old Occitan language in south-western France. Like their fellow activists in Brittany they found common cause with Catalan and Basque separatists, Scottish and Flemish nationalists, northern Italian separatists and many others, all expressing a common resentment at `misrule´ from Madrid, or Paris, or London or Rome.

The new regionalist politics fell into many over-lapping sub-categories –historical, linguistic, religious; seeking autonomy, self-government or even full national independence- but generally divided into wealthy provinces, resentful at being obliged to subsidize penurious regions of their own country; and historically disadvantaged or newly de-industrialized zones, angry at being neglected by unresponsive national politicians. In the first category were to be found Catalonia, Lombardy, Belgian Flanders, West Germany’s Baden-Württemberg or Bavaria, and the Rhône-Alpes region of south-east France (which together with the Île-de-France comprised nearly 40percent of French GDP by 1990). In the second category were Andalusia, much of Scotland, French-speaking Wallonia and many others.

Both categories stood to gain from European regional policies. Wealthy regions like Catalonia or Baden-Württemberg set up offices in Brussels and learned how to lobby on their own behalf, for investment or for Community policies favoring local over national institutions. Political representatives from disadvantaged regions were just as quick to manipulate grants and aid from Brussels to increase their local popularity—and thereby pressure compliant authorities in Dublin or London into encouraging and even supplementing Brussels’ largesse. These arrangements suited everyone: European coffers might hemorrhage millions to subsidize tourism in the depopulated West of Ireland or to underwrite tax-incentives to attract investors to areas of chronic unemployment in Lorraine or Glasgow; but even if only from enlightened self- interest, the beneficiaries were becoming loyal ‘Europeans’. Ireland successfully replaced or updated much of its dilapidated transport and sewerage infrastructure in this way, and among poorer, peripheral member states it was not alone.

The SEA expanded Community powers into many policy areas—the environment, employment practices, local research-and-development initiatives—in which the EC had not previously been involved, all of which entailed the dispensing of Brussels funds directly to local agencies. This cumulative ‘regionalization’ of Europe was bureaucratic and costly. To take one tiny example that can stand for hundreds: Italy’s Alto Adige/South Tyrol region, on the country’s northern frontier with Austria, was officially classified by Brussels in 1975 as ‘mountainous’ (an uncontentious claim); thirteen years later it was officially declared to be over 90 percent ‘rural’ (no less self-evident to any casual traveler), or—in Brussels jargon—an ‘Objective 5-b Area’. In this dual capacity the Alto Adige was now eligible for environmental protection funds; grants to support agriculture; grants to improve vocational training; grants to encourage traditional handicrafts; and grants to ameliorate living conditions in order to retain population.

Accordingly, between 1993 and 1999 the tiny Alto Adige received a total of 96 million écus (worth roughly the same amount in 2005 euros). In the so-called ‘Third Period’ of European structural funding, scheduled to run from 2000-2006, a further 57 million euros were to be put at the province’s disposal. Under ‘Objective Two’ these monies were to be disbursed for the sole benefit of the 83,000 residents who lived in ‘exclusively’ mountainous or ‘rural’ zones. Since 1990, a government department in Bolzano, the provincial capital, has been devoted exclusively to instructing local residents how to benefit from ‘Europe’ and European resources. Since 1995 the Province has also maintained an office in Brussels (shared with the neighboring Italian Trentino province and the Austrian region of Tyrol). The official website of the Province of Bolzano (available in Italian, German, English, French and Ladino, a variety of the Swiss Romansch dialect) is enthusiastically Europhile, as well it might be.

The result, in the South Tyrol as elsewhere, was that—costly or not—integrating the continent ‘from the bottom up’, as its advocates insisted, did seem to work. When the ‘Council [later the Assembly] of European regions’ was launched in 1985 it already comprised 107 member regions, with many more to come. A certain sort of united Europe was indeed beginning to come into focus. Regionalism, once the affair of a handful of linguistic recidivists or nostalgic folklorists, was now offered as an alternate, ‘sub-national’ identity: displacing the nation itself and all the more legitimate in that it came with the imprimatur of official approval from Brussels and even—albeit with distinctly less enthusiasm—from national capitals as well.

Rising bureaucracy and corruption

The residents of this increasingly parcelized Community, whose citizens now professed multiple elective allegiances of variable cultural resonance and daily significance, were perhaps less unambiguously ‘Italian’ or ‘British’ or ‘Spanish’ than in decades past; but they did not necessarily therefore feel more ‘European’, despite the steady proliferation of ‘European’ labels and elections and institutions. The lush undergrowth of agencies, media, institutions, representatives and funds brought many benefits but won scant affection. One reason was perhaps the very abundance of official outlets for disbursing and overseeing the administration of European largesse: the already complex machinery of modern state government, its ministries and commissions and directorates, was now doubled and even tripled from above (Brussels) and below (the province or region).

The outcome was not just bureaucracy on an unprecedented scale but also corruption, induced and encouraged by the sheer volume of funding available, much of it requiring the exaggeration and even invention of local needs and thus all but inviting the sorts of venal, local abuses that passed unnoticed by the Community’s managers in Brussels but risked discrediting their enterprise even in the eyes of its beneficiaries. Between a reputation for policy-making by distant unelected civil servants, and well-stocked rumors of political back-scratching and profiteering, ‘Europe’ in these years was not well served by its own achievements. The familiar shortcomings of local politics—clientelism, corruption, manipulation—that the better-run nation states were thought to have overcome now resurfaced on a continental scale. Public responsibility for occasional ‘Euroscandals’ was prudently shifted by national politicians onto the shoulders of an invisible class of unelected ‘Eurocrats’, whose bad name carried no political cost. Meanwhile the ballooning Community budget was defended by its recipients and promoters in the name of cross-national ‘harmonization’ or rightful compensation (and fuelled from the Community’s seemingly bottomless funds).

From economy to politics

‘ Europe’, in short, was coming to represent a significant ‘moral hazard’, as its carping critics, in Britain in particular, gleefully insisted. The decades-long drive to overcome continental disunity by purely technical measures was looking decidedly political, while lacking the redeeming legitimacy of a traditional political project pursued by an elected class of familiar politicians. Insofar as ‘Europe’ had a distinctive goal, its economic strategy was still grounded in the calculations and ambitions of the Fifties. As for its politics: the confident, interventionist tone of pronouncements from the European Commission—and the authority and open chequebooks with which European experts descended on distant regions— bespoke a style of government rooted firmly in the social-democratic heyday of the early Sixties.

Protecting integrated Europe from outside: the Schengen agreement

For all their laudable efforts to transcend the shortcomings of national political calculation, the men and women who were constructing ‘Europe’ in the Seventies and Eighties were still curiously provincial. Their greatest trans-national achievement of the time, the Schengen Agreement signed in June 1985, is revealingly symptomatic in this respect. Under the terms of this arrangement France, West Germany and the Benelux countries agreed to dismantle their common frontiers and inaugurate a shared regime of passport control. Henceforward it would be easy to cross from Germany to France, just as it had long been unproblematic to move between, say, Belgium and Holland.

But Schengen signatories had to commit themselves in return to ensuring the most stringent visa and customs regimes between themselves and non-participating countries: if the French, for example, were to open their frontiers to anyone crossing from Germany, they had to be sure that the Germans themselves had applied the most stringent criteria at their points of entry. In opening the internal frontiers between some EC member states, therefore, the Agreement resolutely reinforced the external borders separating them from outsiders. Civilized Europeans could indeed transcend boundaries—but the ‘barbarians’ would be kept resolutely beyond them".

II. Basic Chronology:

History of the European Union

1989

1 January. First six-month presidency of the European Council by a Spaniard.

9 November. Fall of the Berlin Wall. 1990

12 September. Signing in Moscow of the Two Plus Four Agreement. England, France, the United States and the Soviet Union renounce the rights they had vis-a-vis Germany since 1945.

3 October. Reunification of Germany.

1991, 21 December. Dissolution of the USSR (Alma-Ata Protocol).

b) The history of the European Union (Since 1992).

1992, 7 February. Signing in Maastricht (Netherlands) of the European Union Treaty. It comes into force, once all ratification procedures are finalized, on 1 November 1993.

1995

1 January. Austria, Finland and Sweden join the EU. The Europe of the 15 is born.

1 July. Spain assumes the Presidency of the European Council for the second time (the 1st being the first half of 1989).

1997, 2 October. The foreign ministers of the 15 sign the Amsterdam Treaty. It enters into force on 1 May 1967.

1998, 1st June Creation of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

1999, 19 June. Bologna Declaration. European education ministers approve the creation of the European Higher Education Area, to be fully implemented by December 31, 2010.

2000, 7 December. Ratification of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, adopted on 2 October. A version of the Charter is officially promulgated on 12 December 2007 in Strasbourg. After the signing of the Lisbon Treaty the Charter becomes binding upon all states. except Poland and the United Kingdom.

2001, 26 February. The Treaty of Nice is signed, setting the majorities necessary to make decisions after the successive expansions carried out. It comes into force on 1 February 2003 after the ratification procedures are finalized.

2002

1 January. The euro enters into force. On February 28 it becomes the sole, official currency, the day that Spain occupies the presidency of the European Council (previously: 1989, 1995) for the third time. 23 July. The ECSC is dissolved.

2004

1 May. 11 new members are incorporated into the EU: Poland, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia.

29 October. Rome. The heads of state and government and their respective ministers of foreign affairs sign a treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.

2005

29 May. In a referendum the French reject the Constitution Treaty.

1 June. The people of the Netherlands also refuse to ratify the Constitutional Treaty.

2007

1 January. Bulgaria and Romania join the EU. The Europe of the 27 is born.

13 December. Signing of the Treaty of Lisbon, which replaces the Constitutional Treaty from three years earlier.

2009, 1 December. The Treaty of Lisbon enters into force after the 27 ratification processes are completed.

2010, 1 January. Herman Van Rompuy begins his term as the EU’s first president. Spain assumes its fourth presidency of the European Council (1989, 1995, 2002).

2013, 1 July. Croatia joins the EU as its 28th member state.

2014, may: 8th election of the European Parliament. For the first time the European parties have named a candidate for presiding the European Commission. The European Popular Party wins the election and his candidate Jean Claude Juncker becomes President of the Commission (1st November) while the Socialist Candidate Martin Schulz becomes President of the EP. Donald Tusk a former conservative Polish Prime Minister becomes the second President of the European Council in substitution of Herman Van Rompuy (1st December).

III. Concepts:

Qualified Majority Voting / British check / Treaty of Maastricht (1992) / Structured Pillar Integration / Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) / European Monetary Union (EMU) / Eurozone/ Treaty of Nice (2001) / Treaty of the European Constitution (2004) / European Central Bank (1998) / Treaty of Lisbon (2009) / European Union enlargements: 2004, 2007 and 2013 / Acquis Communautaire / Eurocrats / Summit diplomacy / Democratic deficit / Commission / European Council / Council of ministers/ European Parliament / Eurogroup / Troika (“Institutions”) / European Higher Education Area /Council of European Regions

IV. Questions: a) Text nr. 1

1. Why was signed the Maastricht Treaty? (Think of the political circumstances of Europe by the time). (See too p. 713 text nr. 2)

2. What did change in the European integration process after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty? (Think of what existed before and what came after 1992).

3. Explain what is the “three pillar structure” and why it was introduced between 1992 and 2009. (Consider the difference between the three pillars as far as the decision- making procedures were concerned)

4. Why were signed the Amsterdam Treaty (1997) and the Nice’s Treaty (2001)? (Consider what did not work institutionally in Europe after the enlargements of 1973, 1981, 1986 and 1995). (See pp. 727-728 of text nr. 2 as well).

5. What are the most significant innovations brought by the Treaty of Lisbon?

6. Why European integration is still today legally extremely complex? (Please check also the “Acquis Communautaire” figure in page 722 of text nr. 2). b) Text nr. 2

7. What were the two considerations that decided French President Georges Pompidou to back the UK integration in the European Communities?

8. Which state was accepted to the EEC but their citizens did reject twice integration ? Think of which was the main economic reason

9. How did the UK join the EEC: by decision of its Prime minister or by referendum?

10. Explain why because of 1981 and 1985 integrations European integration was considered an "institutional cattle market"?

11. Explain with facts why according to Judt the ultimate emergence of a single European currency was thus the outcome of pragmatic responses to economic problems, not a calculated strategic move on the road to a predetermined European goal.

12. Why the enlargement of the European Communities was not difficult for Ireland, the UK, Denmark and Greece was relatively easy, and why it was mucho more difficult concerning Spain and Portugal? 13. Why the approval of SEA did strength European integration? Think of what was the most decisive issue and why it was approved.

14. What were the two purposes of the European Regional Development Fund created in 1975 and why it was so important as far as European Integration is concerned.

15. Why the approval of the ERDF was so determinant in the growing of regionalist sentiments? Why does Judt has a negative vision of the consequences of the regionalization of European integration resulting from the implementation of ERDF? You can use the example mentioned of the Alto Adige Region.

V. Essay: write a 400 words essay on why the “Democratic deficit” was useful in the beginning of the European integration process and why now overcoming it is the only way to consolidate the European Union.