I don’t really knw much about them. Could someone please give me a breif rundown of what it does, and what it’s about?
Off the top of my head (so I may be wrong in some points): it’s a loose political and economic affiliation of most (but not all) European countries. It began as “the Common Market”, and was a trade-oriented body, but has grown in strength, and now has a parliament and law-making abilities, and its court serves as the ultimate jurisdiction (I think) over the courts of sovereign states. It receives taxation from member countries, and it also has its own currency (the Euro), though not all EU members have signed up to this.
Definitive info: http://europa.eu.int/abc-en.htm
Think the United States of America, but with much, much more ethnic diversity, and much, much more individual state power, and much, much less federal power.
No (with all respect to jjimm), don’t think of the US. It’s not a country. Each member state has its own armed forces, its own diplomatic service, its own foreign policy, its own language (well, some share languages) and generally far more distinct cultures than American states. Most of all, there’s no government as such.
I’m in two minds about the thing. It was set up to ensure Germany wouldn’t have another war with its neighbors. This was primarily done through economic integration (originally by coordinating steel and coal industrial policies, then agriculture). It took on a life of its own and a huge bureaucracy developed. Today, this bureaucracy seeks uniformity as an end in itself. They are even trying to get every ambulance in the EU painted the same color (unless that was an April fool’s joke - always difficult to tell with the EU).
Some Europeans don’t mind seeing their nations subsumed into a bigger entity, and seem relatively unconcerned about the fact it’s got no democratic basis. Some rationalize it by saying it’s a potential “counterpoint” to the US.
Others think it’s an outdated fundamental concept. Germany isn’t going to attack its neighbors any more, and people don’t want an unelected (or even elected) federal government running Europe and reducing their national governments to municipal councils.
My personal hunch is it’s gone too far, too fast. Some of the cooperation makes perfect sense, but there’s a lot of top-down “integration” taking place without the consent of the people. This is where the difference with the US is most stark - in the EU “the people” are have no say. The biggest hint that something’s wrong is the way it’s driven by symbolism (even silly things - eg all the countries’ passports are the same color even though there’s no European citizenship, and the common currency was introduced primarily for political rather than economic reasons).
The UK and France, in particular, have global interests of their own and aren’t going to let foreigners push them into foreign policies they don’t want (eg, some Europeans would love to detatch the UK from intelligence sharing arrangements with the US). Hopefully, it’s getting too bloated to continue integrating and will settle down into a localized free trade and whatever-cooperation-makes-sense zone.
It’s even less like the United States, because the structure and composition of authoritative bodies in the European Union is very complex as the result of a series of treaties that didn’t create a comprehensive, sensible system from the top down.
You have several centres of political power in the E.U. –
European Parliament – Is the only body directly elected by E.U. citizens.
European Commission – It’s an appointed body and is the only body that can originate legislation. The presidency of the commission rotates among its member states in half-year terms.
Council of the European Union (not the same thing as the Council of Europe) - Represents the elected governments (essentially, the ruling parties) of the separate member states.
From what I understand there are two major concepts in the E.U.
- Countries that trade with one another do not fight with one another.
There are cases where this is not true, but that is one of the major reasons that these countries sought some sort of union.
- To promote the free flow of goods, services, capital and people.
Basically this lets the EU member coutries act in some way like the U.S. When you pass through borders there are no more checkpoints for passports or duties. Those that are members of the EuroZone have the same currency that does not require people or companies to exchange money.
One of the big issues that I, as a American, have trouble coping with is that only the European Parliament is elected. The European Union branches of government can be compared losely to the American federal branches of government. When you do this, the Pariliament is the equivilant of the House of Reps.
The rest of the branches of government in the E.U. are appointed by the member states. I think this leaves the field wide open for corruption, which in the past has happened.
Speaking with most Europeans however, they feel that appointment is the best way because they feel the best people to do the job are not always the ones elected by the people and would rather let the people in charge make the decision.
The future of the E.U. involves the possibility of a European Bill of Rights. This is being discussed right now as a possible route to follow within the next five or ten years.
Furthermore the accession Eastern Europe to the EU is coming up soon. These countries are dramatically different than the current EU members in history, culture and economy. It will be interesting to see how the current members cope with these new members in agriculture and taxation.
I hope that was a brief enough overview, i just spent the entire summer studying and visiting all the insitutions of the EU.