Politics of the European Union - Summary of the Readings
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Course
Politics of the European Union (6441PEU17)
Institution
Leiden University College The Hague (LUC)
Book
The Government and Politics of the European Union
Summary of the required readings for the final exam (2022) for Politics of the European Union. Includes notes from: Neill Nugent’s book (8th edition, 2017) “The Government and Politics of the European Union”, chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 19, 22
Reading 1 (Week 1) 3
Chapter 2 The Post-War Transformation of Western Europe 3
Chapter 3 The Creation of the European Community 12
Chapter 4 The Deepening of the Integration Process 16
Chapter 5 The Widening of the Integration Process 19
Reading 2 (Week 2) 28
Chapter 9 The Commission 28
Reading 3 (Week 3) 40
Chapter 10 The Council of the European Union 40
Chapter 11 The European Council 48
Reading 4 (Week 4) 56
Chapter 12 The European Parliament 56
Reading 5 (Week 5) 66
Chapter 18 Policy Processes 66
Chapter 19 Making and Applying EU Legislation 75
Chapter 24 Conceptualizing the European Union 84
The Historical Evolution
It is not easy to have to cede sovereignty by transferring decision-making responsibilities
to a multinational organization in which other voices may prevail.
The sovereignty issue may be used to illustrate the importance of both historical
background and contemporary operational contexts in explaining and evaluating the EU.
Many of the EU’s opponents and critics subscribe to the view that the nation state, not an
international organization, is the ‘natural’ supreme political unit. They argue that insofar as
transferences of power to Brussels, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg – the three main seats
of the EU’s institutions – undermine national sovereignty.
This loss of power may not have involved legal transfers of sovereignty as has been the
case within the EU, but it has had a very similar effect. The fact is that in an
ever-expanding range of policy sectors, states have not been able to act in isolation but
have had to adjust and adapt so as to fit in with an array of external influences. The EU
should not, therefore, be viewed as constituting a unique threat to the sovereignties of its
member states.
The European integration process was, however, essentially confined until the 1990s to
Western Europe, with the consequence that although the EU now includes, amongst its
membership, states from across the continent, it was constructed by Western European
states.
Chapter 2 The Post-War Transformation of Western Europe
The European integration process was initiated and developed in Western Europe.
Until the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989–90, countries
such as Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, and Poland were either part of the Soviet
Union or were located within the Soviet bloc.
Historical Divisions
The inheritance
Throughout its history Europe has been characterized much more by divisions, tensions,
and conflicts than it has by any common purpose or harmony of spirit.
Language has been perhaps the most obvious divisive force.
Religion has been another source of division, with the northern countries of Western
Europe (except Ireland) being mainly Protestant in their Christian inheritance and the
southern countries (including France but excluding Orthodox Greece) being predominantly
Catholic. Contrasting cultural traditions and historical experiences have further served to
develop distinct identifications – and feelings of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – across the map of
Western Europe, along with the legacies of power struggles and wars.
Some of these states – France, Spain, and the UK, for example – have existed in much
their present geographical form for centuries. Others – including Germany, Italy, and
Ireland – were constituted only comparatively recently, mostly in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries as nationalism flourished and as force was used to bring nation and
state into closer alignment
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, Until at least the Second World War, and in some cases well beyond, linguistic, religious,
and cultural divisions between the Western European states were exacerbated by political
and economic divisions. Political divisions took the form of varying systems of
government and competing ideological orientations.
It was not until the mid-1970s that parliamentary democracy finally became general
throughout Western Europe.
From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until the middle of the nineteenth century,
Britain was industrially and commercially dominant. Gradually it was challenged –
particularly by Germany.
Early years of the twentieth century competition between these countries for overseas
markets was fierce.
With the northern countries mostly having substantial industrial bases whilst the southern
remained predominantly agricultural and underdeveloped.
The background to the Second World War
The period between the First and Second World Wars was characterized by particularly
sharp and fluid inter-state relations in Europe.
The lack of any real interest in European cooperation before the Second World War is
revealed in the functioning of the League of Nations. Established in 1919 to provide for
international collective security, in practice it was dominated by the Europeans and had
some potential as a forum for developing understandings and improving relationships
between the European states.
However, it failed. It did so for three main reasons.
- its aims were vague and were interpreted in different ways.
- it was intergovernmental in its structure and therefore dependent on the agreement
of all member states before any action could be taken.
- the states wanted different things from it
By May 1945, when German government representatives agreed to unconditional
surrender, Nazism and Fascism had been defeated, but economies and political systems
throughout Europe had been severely shaken, cities and towns had been destroyed, and
millions had been killed.
The Post-War Transformation
After the Second World War, the relations between the states of Western Europe were
transformed. There were, and indeed continue to be, three principal aspects of this.
Unbroken peace
Western European states have lived peacefully with one another since 1945.
The reality and importance of the transformation from hostile to friendly relations is not.
Until the revolutions and upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late
1980s/early 1990s, communism was the most obvious common threat, and this led most
significant Western European states to become members of the same military alliance:
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
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