Political system of the European Union
The political system of the European Union is comparable to the political systems of many democratic , federal states . As a formally supranational association of sovereign states, the European Union is a political entity of its own that has never existed in this form before. The conceptual differences between the models of a European federal state, on the one hand, and a loose confederation of states, on the other, were already in place in the development phase of the European unification project after the Second World War . In this area of tension between objectives, the currently existing institutional structure has developed, which in Germany is usually referred to by the term association of states .
International legal position and organs of the EU
The legal basis of the European Union are currently two international treaties that the EU member states have concluded with each other: the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which was concluded in Maastricht in 1992, and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which was signed as an EEC Treaty in Rome in 1957 , renamed the EC Treaty in 1992 and received its current name in 2007.
With these treaties, the member states agreed to create the EU, to give it legal personality ( Art. 47 TEU) and to transfer certain sovereign rights and legislative powers to its organs . It is therefore referred to as "European primary law ". All of the “ secondary law ” that the EU itself enacts in accordance with its own legislative procedures is derived from these treaties and the powers mentioned therein. The fact that the EU can independently enact laws that are binding for its member states distinguishes it from other international organizations. As a subject of international law with its own legal personality, it can also conclude treaties with other states and be a member of an international organization . So it is not a confederation in the classic sense.
In order to change the content of the EU founding treaties, the member states must conclude new international treaties, so-called amending treaties. So far, this has happened in 1997 through the Treaty of Amsterdam , in 2001 through the Treaty of Nice and most recently in 2007 through the Treaty of Lisbon , which came into force on December 1, 2009. In contrast to a federal state , the European Union cannot distribute the responsibilities in its political system itself: The competence competence does not lie with the EU institutions themselves, but with the member states. This is also the reason why the EU fulfills state functions, but has not yet been considered a sovereign state: it is not an "original", but a derived , so-called "derivative subject of international law".
On the other hand, the individual member states of the EU no longer have complete competence, as they can no longer bring back the sovereign rights that have been transferred to the EU to the national level, but only through a treaty change in agreement with the other member states. In order to underline the special importance of the EU founding treaties, the term “European constitutional law” is sometimes used. However, according to Art. 50 TEU , every member state has the option of leaving the Union and is therefore still sovereign.
The European Union has seven organs, which are set out in Article 13 of the EU Treaty. In detail they are
- the European Parliament ,
- the European Council ,
- the Council of the European Union (also known as the "Council of Ministers"),
- the European Commission ,
- the Court of Justice of the European Union ,
- the European Central Bank and
- the European Court of Auditors .
The legislation rests with the European Parliament, which is directly elected since 1979 and therefore directly represents the people of Europe, and are gathered at the Council of the European Union, the Minister of the individual Member States and represent the interests of their respective governments. The Commission is an independent body committed to the interests of the entire Union and essentially performing executive functions. The European Council, in which the heads of state and government of the member states have met for regular summits since 1974 and which has been formally institutionalized since 1993, lays down the general guidelines of EU policy and plays an important role in filling various EU offices. Jurisdiction in the EU is carried out by the politically independent European Court of Justice. The European Central Bank is the common monetary authority of the member states of the European Monetary Union. The European Court of Auditors checks the legality and correct use of revenue and expenditure of the EU institutions.
In addition to the EU founding treaties, there is also the treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (EAG or Euratom Treaty), which was also concluded in Rome in 1957. It forms the legal basis for Euratom , which is an independent supranational organization and also has its own international legal personality. However, it is institutionally linked to the EU and in particular shares all the institutions with it. In terms of political practice, Euratom is therefore of almost no independent significance.
Responsibilities
The principle of limited individual authorization ( Art. 5 TEU) applies to the EU's competences : The EU can only legislate in the areas of policy that are expressly mentioned in the founding treaties. In addition, the treaties set goals for the individual areas - albeit formulated in a very general way - towards which the EU's measures must be oriented. All responsibilities that were not expressly assigned to the EU in the founding treaties remain with the nation states.
The type of competences that the EU possesses can differ depending on the policy area ( Art. 2 TFEU). The forms of competences are roughly based on the various forms of legislative competences between the federal and state governments in the German Basic Law :
- In areas with exclusive competence of the EU, only this is entitled to set law. The member states may only act here if they are authorized by the EU to do so. The EU has the same powers in relation to its member states as in Germany the federal government has in relation to the federal states in the area of exclusive legislation .
The European Customs Union , the definition of competition rules for the European internal market , the monetary policy of the states participating in the European Monetary Union , the conservation of marine biological resources within the framework of the common fisheries policy and the common trade policy ( Art 3 TFEU). - In areas of shared competence , the member states can legislate if and to the extent that the EU has not done so. The relationship between the EU and the member states corresponds to that of the federal and state governments in the area of competing legislation .
The shared competence includes the European internal market , certain areas of social policy , economic, social and territorial cohesion , agriculture and fisheries with the exception of the conservation of marine biological resources, environmental policy , consumer protection , transport policy , the trans-European networks , energy policy , the Area of freedom, security and justice , certain areas of health protection , research, technology and space policy and development policy ( Art. 4 TFEU). - In areas with supportive powers , the EU can only complement and coordinate action by the Member States. In contrast to the area of shared competences, the EU cannot harmonize national legal provisions here, so the member states retain full legislative sovereignty.
The EU has supporting competence in the areas of health protection, industrial policy , cultural policy , tourism , education and youth policy, sport , civil protection and administrative cooperation ( Art. 6 TFEU).
In addition to these types of competences, there are some areas in which the EU has particular forms of competences. This applies on the one hand to economic , employment and social policy , where the EU can act in a coordinating manner and in some cases set binding guidelines ( Art. 5 TFEU). On the other hand, the EU can act within the framework of the common foreign and security policy, whereby the member states cooperate with it "in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity" without the treaties clearly delimiting competencies ( Art. 24 TEU).
The “principles of subsidiarity and proportionality” ( Art. 5 TEU) also apply to all EU measures . According to the principle of subsidiarity , political decisions should, if possible, be shifted to the lowest possible level, i.e. to the national, regional or local political decision-making bodies of the EU member states. The European Union should therefore only act when lower decision-making levels are unable to solve problems independently in an appropriate form. The principle of proportionality states that an EU measure cannot go further than is necessary for the objectives set out in the treaties.
European Union Legislature
In addition to the different types of competences, the EU founding treaties also provide for different decision-making and legislative procedures , which may differ depending on the policy area. For some policy areas, intergovernmental procedures apply , i. H. the governments of the member states must take all decisions in the Council of the EU (Council of Ministers) unanimously. This applies to the common foreign and security policy and a large part of social policy . In most policy areas, however, the so-called ordinary legislative procedure applies , in which laws are passed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, whereby the majority principle applies in the Council ( Art. 294 TFEU). Since these policy areas were regulated within the framework of the European Community until the Treaty of Lisbon , we also speak of the community method and “communitized” policy areas.
The shared role of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU as legislators of the EU corresponds to a two-chamber system , which also often exists at the national level. It is particularly comparable to federally organized systems such as the Federal Republic of Germany. The European Parliament, as the representative of the people, corresponds to the German Bundestag . As the representative body for all Union citizens , it has been directly elected in European elections since 1979 . These elections take place simultaneously across Europe, but separately for each Member State with national candidate lists. Each country is entitled to a certain number of seats in parliament, whereby according to the principle of degressive proportionality, smaller countries have more seats per inhabitant than larger ones.
The Council of the EU, on the other hand, is the representative body of the governments of all member states, just like the German Bundesrat consists of government representatives from the individual federal states. However, the weight of these two chambers is distributed differently at EU level than in Germany: While in the Federal Republic of Germany the Bundestag can enact many laws on its own and only partially depends on the approval of the Bundesrat, the European Parliament can in never enact laws without the participation of the council.
Unlike the German Bundestag and Bundesrat, neither the European Parliament nor the Council of the EU have the right to initiate legislation . At EU level, this lies solely with the European Commission ; With a few exceptions, in which a group of Member States or one of the institutions of the European Union can develop legislative initiatives, the Commission is the only institution that can submit drafts for EU-wide legal acts. The Commission can, however, be asked by Parliament or the Council to draw up a draft law on a specific matter and usually complies with such requests in political practice. Once the Commission has launched a legislative process, it no longer has any direct influence on how Parliament and the Council change the draft law.
Council of the European Union
Decision-making in the Council of the EU is always of primary importance for the creation of legal acts . Except for a few legislative matters, especially social policy, for which a unanimous decision is required, the qualified majority procedure usually applies . This was redefined by the Lisbon Treaty : A qualified majority is achieved when (a) 55% of the member states agree, which (b) represent at least 65% of the EU population.
However, this regulation did not finally come into force until 2017. Until then, a procedure based on weighted votes applied temporarily. The individual member states have between 3 (Malta) and 29 votes (including Germany) in the Council, depending on their population. This form of differentiating the weight of votes is similar to the method of voting in the German Bundesrat, where the individual federal states also have a different number of votes. While only the weighted votes are counted in the Federal Council, three different criteria must be met in order to achieve a qualified majority in the Council:
- A majority of the member states must agree;
- the approving member states must have 255 votes out of a total of 345;
- the agreeing Member States must represent at least 62% of the EU population.
European Parliament
The European Parliament shares the legislative function with the Council, whereby it has equal powers in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and can also prevent decisions if necessary. Only in a few specific policy fields (especially some areas of social policy) does the European Parliament not have any co-decision-making rights, it only has to be heard.
Other important decisions, such as the appointment of a new Commission or the enlargement of the EU to include new Member States, necessarily require Parliament's approval. Parliament also sets the EU budget together with the Council , with the Council having the final say on the revenue side and the Parliament on the expenditure side ( Art. 314 TFEU).
The parliament usually decides with a simple majority. A two-thirds majority is only required for a few decisions of particular importance, such as a vote of no confidence in the Commission. A special feature, however, is the regulation according to which in the second reading in the ordinary legislative procedure - i.e. if there was no agreement between Parliament and the Council in the first reading - Parliament does not decide with a majority of the votes cast, but with an absolute majority of its members . In parliamentary practice, this usually makes broad, cross-factional alliances necessary, since (as in all parliaments) it is only rarely that all MPs actually take part in plenary sessions.
The parliament also exercises parliamentary control over the other EU institutions. Among other things, it can make inquiries and set up committees of inquiry .
European Commission
The Commission has the sole right of initiative for the majority of EU legal acts , so only it can make legislative proposals. This is particularly important because the Council can only adopt legal acts that deviate from the Commission proposal unanimously ( Art. 293 (1) TFEU). Since such unanimity can hardly be achieved in the event of disagreements between the member states, they are dependent on cooperation with the Commission. The Commission can change its proposal at any time during the procedure ( Art. 293 (2) TFEU) and thus promote a political compromise. Institutionally, this is made possible by the fact that the Commission is generally invited to meetings of the Council (Article 5 (2) of the Council's rules of procedure ).
Executive of the European Union
With regard to executive violence, too, the network of competencies in the EU turns out to be more complicated than it might seem at first glance. Although the European Commission has been created and operates specifically for executive purposes, the position and powers of this commission differ significantly from those of national governments.
European Commission
An important difference compared to national governments is the appointment of the commission . For this purpose, the heads of state and government of the member states agree in the European Council on a Commission President , taking into account the result of the previous European elections . They then - in consultation with the President-elect - appoint the commissioners, with each country providing exactly one commissioner. The President of the Commission then distributes the individual portfolios among the Commissioners. He has the right to ask individual commissioners to resign; In addition, he (like the German Chancellor in relation to his cabinet) has the authority to issue guidelines . When appointing a new Commission, the European Parliament, on the other hand, only has the right to reject the Commission President or the Commission as a whole or (after their appointment) to force them to resign by means of a no-confidence vote with a two-thirds majority. This relatively weak position of the elected representatives in the appointment of the executive is often criticized from the point of view of democracy theory.
At the functional level, the European Commission primarily has executive tasks, which it performs with the help of its civil servants and several agencies . The Commission also acts as the “guardian of the Treaties”: It monitors compliance with them as well as the implementation of EU legal acts in the Member States and can, if necessary, bring an infringement action before the European Court of Justice .
European Council
The European Council , which is composed of the heads of state and government of all member states as well as - without voting rights - the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission (Art. 15 (2) TEU) and meets twice every six months (Art. 15 Para. 3 TEU), forms a higher-level additional executive towards the Commission. According to the text of the treaty "it gives the Union the impetus it needs for its development" and it "defines the general political objectives and priorities for this" . In addition, negotiations on contentious issues that have remained inconclusive in the Council of the European Union (the so-called Council of Ministers) are continued and, if possible, converted into compromises. Since the European Council generally decides “by consensus”, i.e. unanimously, the regular summit meetings are always an important sign of the unity and ability of the Union to act. If there are blockages in the European Council, the Union stagnates politically. The summits are chaired by the President of the European Council , who is appointed for two and a half years.
In addition, bodies in the member states that are involved in the implementation of EU regulations, directives and resolutions and are subject to control by the European Commission are also indirectly attributable to the EU executive.
Judiciary of the European Union
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The judiciary at the European level is incumbent on the judicial system of the European Union, which as a whole is called the Court of Justice of the European Union . The European Court of Justice (ECJ), officially just called the Court of Justice, decides in the highest instance . To relieve the Court of Justice, the General Court of the European Union (EGC) precedes it for actions by natural and legal persons . Judges and advocates general of the European Court of Justice and the General Court worked as judges and lawyers in outstanding positions in the member states and with their six-year term of office (repeated appointment possible) they form an independent, supranational judiciary.
The courts of the European Union are mainly concerned with the enforcement of EU law . To do this, they decide on actions brought by the Commission, individual member states or even individual EU citizens for violations of EU law and they can impose the sanctions provided for in the FEU Treaty . However, legal actions by member states or individual EU citizens against the Commission and other EU organs because of exceeding their competences or because of other violations of EU law are possible. In addition, the European Court of Justice answers questions from national courts regarding the interpretation of EU law ( preliminary ruling procedure ). In its decisions, the ECJ often interprets the Union treaties in an integration-friendly way.
European Central Bank
The European Central Bank is the common monetary authority of the member states of the European Monetary Union and forms the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) with the national central banks (NCB) of the EU states. The work and tasks of the ECB were first defined in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992; since the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 it has formally had the status of an EU body.
The basic tasks are
- Definition and implementation of monetary policy,
- the execution of foreign exchange transactions,
- the management of the official currency reserves of the member states (portfolio management)
- as well as supplying the economy with money, in particular promoting smooth payment transactions.
The primary goal is to ensure price stability in the euro area. Another aim is to support economic policy in the European Community with the aim of a high level of employment and sustained growth, as far as this is possible without endangering the price level stability.
Ultimately, the executive bodies are the national central banks of the participating states. These are subject to the regulations of the ESCB. It is important that they are independent of instructions from national governments and are only subordinate to the ECB. The ECB has two decision-making bodies, the Council and the General Council, and an executive body, the Executive Board.
European Court of Auditors
The European Court finally examines income and expenditure in the EU budget and is intended to provide opinions to the European Parliament and the European Commission. Budgetary control aims to ensure the effective use of financial resources in the Union and to detect and prevent abuses. The function of the European Court of Auditors corresponds to that of the Federal Court of Auditors in Germany.
Each member state proposes a representative for the ECA who is professionally qualified and independent. These are appointed by the Council of Ministers after consulting Parliament for a period of six years. At the head of the ECA there is a president, who is elected from among the members for three years (re-election is possible).
The ECA staff can at any time carry out audit visits to other EU institutions, in the member states and in those countries that receive EU aid. However, he cannot take legal action - violations are reported to the other organs so that appropriate measures can be taken.
Lines of development
The political integration of the European Union was and is the subject of several political science debates. Various approaches to international relations , a sub-discipline of political science, refer explicitly to European integration. So trying neofunctionalism to describe the momentum of the integration process and developed explanations for this is that in its course always new policy areas were included in it. As a counter-position, liberal intergovernmentalism emphasizes the role that national governments played in the integration process.
The greatest theoretical challenge at present is European integration for neorealism . Its basic assumption of the balance of power , according to which international cooperation always takes place against the background of state security considerations and is limited by the sovereignty of the states involved, seems to be difficult to reconcile with the development of the EU bring. Proponents of neoliberal institutionalism therefore see the EU as a strong indication that intergovernmental institutions can not only serve to overcome security policy concerns of individual states regarding the relative gains in power of other states, but that they can also develop a power structure that is independent of their members.
To describe how the European Union works, political science nowadays mostly uses the term multi-level system , while law uses that of the association of states or constitution .
Balance between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism
Historically, the main focus of political power in the EU lay with the governments of the member states - it was they who mainly shaped the development of the unification process, be it in the Council of Ministers or at the level of the heads of government. Although the right of initiative for draft laws of the European Community lay with the Commission, it otherwise had almost only executive functions. The final decision on joint decisions, however, was made in the Council of Ministers, where the principle of unanimity initially applied. The Council thus determined both European legislation and stipulations on the financial resources of the Community and on the contributions of the Member States, on the distribution of budget funds and on regional support measures. The composition of the commission and the appointment of its president were also initiated by the individual governments. The European Parliament, however, initially only had an advisory role.
In the course of EU enlargements and treaty reforms since 1986, the balance between the European institutions changed. As the EU gradually gained more powers, the majority procedure was introduced for more and more policy areas for votes in the Council of Ministers. At the same time, the concentration of political power in the Council was gradually reduced by a gradual upgrading of the participation rights of the European Parliament , so that the Council and Parliament now have the same legislative powers in most policy areas. This strengthening of Parliament should make the EU closer to its citizens and more democratic.
Nonetheless, the European Parliament still lags far behind those of the national representative bodies in terms of its competences: the Commission is still appointed by the Council and only needs to be confirmed by Parliament - unlike in the national framework, where the executive (the government) is usually directly elected by Parliament becomes. Even the Commission's sole right of initiative does not correspond to national practices, according to which the bodies that have emerged from elections (parliament and / or regional chamber) usually have the right of initiative themselves. These facts continue to feed critical voices who see a democratic deficit in the European Union .
Proponents of a strong role for the Council of Ministers, however, point out that the governments of the member states emerged from democratic elections and that the community is therefore indirectly based on democratic foundations. The fact that the European Parliament still has fewer rights than a national parliament corresponds to the fact that a European national people - in contrast to the national people of the member states - as a historically, culturally and politically united people's association does not exist for the time being. To the extent that Union citizenship, created in 1992, becomes effective as a supranational bond that creates identity, the influence of the European Parliament as the representative body of EU citizens could also increase further.
Policy areas of the EU
After the competences of the European Communities initially only extended to a few specific policy areas (coal and steel in the case of the ECSC , the dismantling of tariff barriers in the EEC and nuclear energy in the case of Euratom ), more and more policy areas were later shifted to European level. Since the 1970s, there has been a foreign policy coordination of the member states, which ultimately led to the common foreign and security policy ; In addition, the EC was given competencies, for example, in environmental and education policy, consumer protection, monetary policy and in the area of home affairs and justice. These expansion of competencies followed ( according to the neo-functionalist integration theory ) mostly perceived practical constraints that resulted from the previous integration steps ( spill-over effect). According to this, sectoral integration leads to the interlinking of more and more sectors, ideally ultimately to the final stage of a general political federation. The single market, for example, resulted in the free flow of capital and the abolition of border controls in Europe, which in turn required cooperation in the field of home affairs and justice to prevent the growth of cross-border organized crime . Similarly, the common market also made a more uniform environmental and consumer protection policy necessary in order to avoid a race for the lowest standards.
However, this step-by-step expansion of EU competencies was always controversial. It has repeatedly been criticized that there is no clear delimitation of competencies between the nation states and the European Union, as the treaties leave too much room for interpretation. In addition, when it came to treaty reforms, there was often disagreement between Member States as to which further responsibilities should be transferred to the EU. Great Britain in particular has repeatedly resisted the transfer of further competencies to the supranational level since the 1980s. Under the slogan of a two-speed Europe, this led to a discussion of various models that should allow some member states to take further steps towards integration, even if others did not (yet) want to follow them.
In the current political system of the EU, the instrument of enhanced cooperation is provided for this purpose. The Schengen Implementation Agreement , which was initially concluded in 1995 by only a limited number of member states, but has now been adopted by almost all EU states, serves as an implementation example . Another example is the euro , which is also only used as a currency in some of the Member States. However, a renewed separation between the current EU member states is feared as a risk of such unequal integration, which could hamper the integration process and, in the worst case, promote the disintegration of the Union's structures.
The policy areas of the EU are (as of 2012):
- Employment and Social Affairs: Employment and Social Policy
- Development and humanitarian aid: development and cooperation , humanitarian aid , human rights
- Enlargement of the EU and foreign policy: foreign and security policy , EU enlargement
- Health: healthcare
- Justice and civil rights: citizenship , immigration , justice and home affairs , consumer protection
- Culture, education and sport: education and training , youth , audiovisual and media , culture , multilingualism , sport
- Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Safety: Fisheries , Agriculture , Food Safety
- EU institutions and bodies: institutional issues
- Regions and local development: regional policy
- Travel and Transport: Transport
- Environment and energy: energy , climate protection , environment
- Entrepreneurship: internal market , trade , business and industry , competition
- Economy and finance: fraud prevention , budget , economy and finance
- Science and technology: research and innovation , information technology
- Customs and Taxes: Taxes , Customs
Responsibilities under the EU Treaty: Common Foreign and Security Policy | Common security and defense policy . Competences under the TFEU: Internal Market | Customs Union | Capital Markets Union | Agricultural and Fisheries Policy | Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (includes border control, asylum and immigration policy , judicial cooperation in civil matters , judicial cooperation in criminal matters , police cooperation ) | Transport Policy | Competition Policy | Approximation of laws | Economic and Monetary Union | Employment Policy | Social policy | Education policy | Sports Policy | Cultural policy | Gender equality policy | Health Policy | Consumer protection policy | Trans-European Networks | Industrial policy | Regional policy | Research Policy | Environmental policy | Energy policy | Tourism policy | Humanitarian aid and civil protection | Administrative cooperation | Trade policy | Development policy .
Ability to act and political functionality
In addition to the democratization of the Union and the expansion of EU competencies, one of the motives behind the need for reform of the EU's political system is to maintain the ability to act despite the enlargement rounds to now 28 member states.
The sovereignty reservations and special interests of the member states not only lead to a complex network of competences and procedures in the political structure of the EU, they also threaten the Union's ability to act as the number of member states increases, since decision-making within the given institutional framework becomes more and more difficult. This affects the European Parliament, which would work more and more ineffectively due to the growing number of MEPs, the European Commission, which would also be overstaffed with one Commissioner per Member State, and the Council of the EU, which would have far more time in compromise negotiations in order to achieve majorities for necessary reforms would have to spend and expect even more complete failures.
The various EU treaty reforms - most recently the Lisbon Treaty , which came into force in 2009 - therefore aimed at downsizing the supranational institutions and removing the hurdles in decision-making. The number of Members of the European Parliament was limited to 751 and the voting procedure in the Council was made easier. The goal of reducing the size of the commission by a third was abandoned in the course of the ratification process in order to overcome resistance from individual states.
An additional complication in this context is the planned admission of further states, such as Turkey , with which accession negotiations have already started. Already in the context of eastward enlargement, warnings were made of a possible paralysis of the EU through overstretching, and in some cases the fear was expressed that there could only be either continued enlargement or further deepening of the EU. This is countered by another party that additional expansions could only lead to sustainable results in connection with appropriate integration progress. The future political structures of the EU are currently open, but changes in the status quo are likely in the long term, even after the Lisbon Treaty.
Democratization
After the European Movement , an organization with a relatively broad social base, had for a short time promoted European integration in the immediate post-war period and achieved the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, the European Communities no longer emerged from the population, but from government initiatives and agreements. The rather economic- technocratic beginning of the unification process promoted a structural "citizen distancing" of the EC. European unification initially took place without intensive public attention: one speaks of a permissive consensus , with which the population accepted the integration pursued by their governments passively and benevolently.
It was only from the beginning of the eighties that the European Commission and the governments tried to achieve a higher level of active approval among the population for the unification process. Based on the Adonnino report on “Citizens' Europe”, which was adopted by the European Council in 1985, a large number of partly symbolic and partly political measures were implemented to make the EC tangible in everyday life and to promote a common European identity . These ranged from the EU symbols to the European driving license, the Erasmus student exchange program , Union citizenship , the creation of a European Ombudsman and the individual right to petition the European Parliament to the EU-wide right to local elections at the respective place of residence. The Schengen area , within which there are no controls on cross-border movement of people, and the euro as the common currency also play a greater role .
To what extent this can help a European sense of identity remains to be seen. Although the majority of the European population is in principle positive about their country's EU membership, they are more skeptical about the EU institutions. This Euroscepticism may be due to the fact that traditionally it is not the EU but the nation-state that represents the political framework for Europeans in which the citizens articulate their interests. Mainly because of the language barriers, there is still no uniform European public with a common media system ; the existing media, for their part, are still too often caught in a provincialism of national character.
The allegation of being distant from the citizens is accompanied by the democratic deficit. In order to remedy this democratic deficit, the first direct elections to the European Parliament were introduced in 1979 . The European Parliament has been upgraded in several treaty reforms since the late 1980s in order to strengthen its position in the legislative process vis-à-vis the Council. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 introduced the co-decision procedure , in which the competences between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU are similarly distributed as in the German approval procedure between the Bundestag and Bundesrat: Both institutions have equal rights, and a law can only be passed if they reach an agreement. This co-decision procedure initially only applied to a few specific policy areas; however, the Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon made it the “ordinary legislative procedure” that applies to almost the entire EU.
In 2012, under the impact of the euro crisis , a “ Manifesto for the re-establishment of the EU from below ”, which calls for the creation of the legal and financial framework for a Voluntary European Year , found numerous prominent first signatories among politicians, journalists and artists. The European Voluntary Year aims to involve all those interested in the development of solutions, especially for environmental and social problems, which the individual nation-state can no longer solve on its own.
See also
literature
- Simon Hix: The Political System of the European Union . Palgrave MacMillan, ISBN 0-333-96182-X
- Frank R. Pfetsch , Timm Beichelt: The European Union. An introduction. History, institutions, processes. 2nd Edition. Uni-Taschenbücher GmbH, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8252-1987-9
- Nicole Schley, Sabine Busse, Sebastian J. Brökelmann: Knaurs Handbuch Europa. Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-426-77731-2
- Ingeborg Tömmel: The political system of the EU. 3rd, completely revised and updated edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58547-6 .
- Werner Weidenfeld (ed.): The European Union. Political system and policy areas. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 2006, ISBN 3-89331-711-2
- Wolfgang Wessels : The political system of the European Union. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 3-8100-4065-7
Web links
- Official homepage of the European Union
- EUROPA - Legislation and Treaties , overview of the current treaties of the European Union
- European integration page
- Center for European Politics
- Political science literature on the subject of the political system of the EU in the annotated bibliography of political science
Individual evidence
- ^ For example, in the name of the Berlin Walter Hallstein Institute for European Constitutional Law , cf. Homepage of the WHI .
- ^ The College of the European Court of Auditors
- ↑ Collard-Wexler, Simon (2004): Integration Under Anarchy: Neorealism and the European Union , in: European Journal of International Relations , 12 (3), p. 406
- ↑ Policy fields of the European Union , europa.eu
- ↑ Directorate-General for Communication: Eurobarometer 66 (PDF; 13.2 MB), pp. 118-131, accessed September 21, 2008.
- ↑ Die Zeit No. 19 of May 3, 2012, p. 45.
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