AVRUPA ENTEGRASYONU

The Advantages of Regional Integration
✓ Cooperation makes war and conflict less likely.
✓ The single market offers European businesses a larger pool of consumers.
✓ Mergers and takeovers create world-class European corporations, helping the EU better compete in the global marketplace.
✓ There is greater freedom of cross-border movement within the EU.
✓ It pools the economic and social resources of multiple member states.
✓ Member states working together enjoy new global power and influence.
✓ Less advanced member states rise to standards maintained by more progressive states.
✓ Funds and investments create new opportunities in the poorer parts of the EU.
✓ Democracy and capitalism are promoted in less advanced member states.

The Disadvantages of Regional Integration
✓ Loss of sovereignty and national independence.
✓ Loss of national identity as laws, regulations, and standards are harmonized.
✓ Reduced power of national governments.
✓ The creation of a new level of distant and impersonal ‘big government’ in Brussels.
✓ Too little reference to public opinion regarding key decisions on integration.
✓ Increased competition and job losses brought by the removal of market protection.
✓ Progressive states are handicapped as standards are reduced to help integrate state with lower standards.
✓ Increased drug trafficking, crime and illegal immigration arising from the removal of border controls.
✓ Problems related to controversial initiatives such as the Common Agricultural Policy

Early integration theories such as federalism, functionalism, and transactionalism took an account of
the origin and nature of integration, the contemporary integration theories such as neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism have sought to analyze how and why the EU emerged and how it works on a daily basis.

The Italian politician Altiero Spinelli was one of the fathers of the European Union. He was the leading figure behind the European Parliament’s proposal for a Treaty on a federal European Union - the so-called ‘Spinelli Plan’. This was adopted in 1984 by an overwhelming majority in the Parliament and provided an important inspiration for the strengthening of the EU Treaties in the 1980s and ‘90s.

Functionalism emerged as an alternative to federalist designs about the organization of the international system. Functionalism belongs to the liberal-idealist tradition of international relations theory and usually takes account of Immanuel Kant, John Jacques Rousseau, and Woodrow Wilson. The main figure of functionalism is David Mitrany (1888-1975). Mitrany’s seminal work entitled “A Working Peace System of 1944” has influenced many of his successors in European studies.

In the transactionalist model, integration has two key dimensions. The first is a process of social integration, leading to the formation of pluralistic security communities. The formation of security communities relies on the notion that international transactions—communication, migration, mutual services, military collaboration and so forth trigger the process of social-psychological learning which in turn produce common identities and trust among social actors. The second dimension is the process of political integration. Once pluralistic community formation has taken place, political elites may opt to build common supranational institutions, thereby producing ‘amalgamated’ security communities (essentially federal unions).

Neofunctionalism, as a popular theory of the European integration in the 1950s and 1960s, focused particularly upon the integration project in Europe. It sought to explain what was happening in Europe, and to provide a conceptual framework within which developments in Europe could be understood.

Intergovernmentalism reached its prime in the ‘doldrum years’ of the European Integration during the 1970s, when the failure to get any further with political integration seemed to confirm most of its premises.

Moravcsik (1993) has developed the intergovermentalist approach but agreed with many of the key principles, such as the assumption that nations could be seen as rational and departing from realists approach to the state. He also derived insights from classic intergovernmentalism which sees national interests arising in the context of the state’s perception of its relative position in the state system. At the highest level of abstraction, liberal intergovernmentalism is a variant of rationalist approach in international relations theory specifically tailored to explain European integration. On the other hand, liberal intergovermentalism is more rigorous than its antecedents (Hoffman’s intergovermentalism), incorporating within both realist and neo-liberal elements, and dealing explicitly with the interface between domestic and international politics. In other words, liberal intergovernmentalism is a synthetic approach that derives from both realist/liberal elements and domestic/international politics.

(Neo) functionalism and (liberal) intergovernmentalism are the two dominant approaches analyzing the impact of the European integration on the member states. While (liberal) Intergovernmentalists put the states at the center of EU policy-making, (neo) functionalist emphasized the increased role of supranational and domestic groups.

Today, the EU is composed of twenty-eight member states, while waiting for the end-result of Brexit process.

Regarding the EU as a defence alliance against the threats out of Europe

Sui generis is a Latin phrase that means “of its (his, her, their) own kind; in a class by itself; unique.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

The Advantages of Regional Integration
✓ Cooperation makes war and conflict less likely.
✓ The single market offers European businesses a larger pool of consumers.
✓ Mergers and takeovers create world-class European corporations, helping the EU better compete in the global marketplace.
✓ There is greater freedom of cross-border movement within the EU.
✓ It pools the economic and social resources of multiple member states.
✓ Member states working together enjoy new global power and influence.
✓ Less advanced member states rise to standards maintained by more progressive states.
✓ Funds and investments create new opportunities in the poorer parts of the EU.
✓ Democracy and capitalism are promoted in less advanced member states.

The Disadvantages of Regional Integration
✓ Loss of sovereignty and national independence.
✓ Loss of national identity as laws, regulations, and standards are harmonized.
✓ Reduced power of national governments.
✓ The creation of a new level of distant and impersonal ‘big government’ in Brussels.
✓ Too little reference to public opinion regarding key decisions on integration.
✓ Increased competition and job losses brought by the removal of market protection.
✓ Progressive states are handicapped as standards are reduced to help integrate state with lower standards.
✓ Increased drug trafficking, crime and illegal immigration arising from the removal of border controls.
✓ Problems related to controversial initiatives such as the Common Agricultural Policy.

In the transactionalist model.

The classic functionalist approach to world order is based on the assumption that states can create a peaceful world society through gradualist and pragmatic cooperation with one another in technical and economic sectors of activity.

Intergovernmentalists view the European integration from the standpoint of national states searching for mutually advantageous bargains.

Unanimity is used in elections where there is no room for doubt or disagreement.