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                                               EU Basics FAQ: General questions
   [EU Flag]
   
                       GENERAL EUROPEAN UNION QUESTIONS
                                       
What is the European Union or EU?

   +European Union; is the name of the organization for the member countries
   that have decided to co-operate on a great number of areas, ranging from a
   single market to foreign policy, and from mutual recognition of school
   diplomas to exchange of criminal records. This co-operation is in various
   forms, officially referred to as three +pillars;:
   
      The [three] European Communities (EC, supranational)
      
      The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP, intergovernmental)
      
      The Co-operation in the Fields of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA,
      intergovernmental)
      
   The Conservative government of the UK decided not to take part in
   co-operation on social matters, which was designed to be part of the revised
   EEC Treaty (and thus of the first pillar). All other member states then
   decided to include this co-operation in a separate  Social Chapter, or
   rather a separate social protocol, added to the Maastricht Treaty, and which
   is not applicable to the UK. As such, this area could now be considered a
   fourth pillar, although most observers still consider it part of the first
   pillar as it is a supranational form of cooperation. Note: The UK Labour
   party has repeatedly promised to remove the British opt-out to the Social
   Chapter if it gets elected.
   
Quick guide to EU legislation

   EU legislation is known for its complexities and subtleties. The following
   +Quick guide to EU legislation;, however, gives a good overview of the main
   instruments used. It has been provided to us by  Kevin Coates.[1]
   
       +All legislation is concluded by some combination of:
     
      European Commission[2] (makes proposals and oversees the process)
      
      European Parliament[3] and
      
      Council of Ministers[4] (ie the representatives of the Member States and
      by far the most important)
      
  MAIN TYPES OF LEGISLATION:
  
  Regulations            These are effectively equivalent to statutes in the UK
                         - ie they are effective as law without any further
                         intervention/action on the part of the Member States.
                         
  Directives
                         
  These are +binding as to the result to be achieved; - ie they should state
                         the goal/end-state that is aimed at, but leave the
                         Member States with some discretion as to how to
                         achieve it.  The amount of discretion varies greatly.
                         One of the reasons for the use of directives is that
                         it is believed that the different Member States would
                         need to approach the same problems in different ways
                         because of the differences in their legal systems.
                         
  Because directives need to be +transposed; into national law (ie national
                         legislation must be passed to implement the goals of
                         the directive) a time limit is provided in the
                         directive by which time the directive must have been
                         implemented.  Some cynical people who look closely at
                         directives believe that increasingly directives have
                         been used in circumstances where the Member States
                         simply want to avoid a particular piece of legislation
                         coming into force - ie there is no real question of
                         needing to implement it in a particular way, but the
                         Member States want to take advantage of the time for
                         transposition.  Because the Member States must
                         transpose the directives, they obviously have a
                         certain measure of discretion as to how this is done.
                         
  Decisions              Made by the Council. They are also usually compromises
                         (the details of which are not made public), and  this
                         is where such +hidden agreements; come into play as
                         the Council decision consists of the (public) text of
                         the Directive PLUS the hidden terms/agreements.;
                         
Is the EU a superstate or a voluntary association between sovereign states?

   The existence of the three pillars[5] mentioned above shows that the answer
   to the above question is not very simple. To understand how the EU can be
   classified as a political entity, it is first necessary to understand the
   difference between two kinds of political integration/cooperation between
   different countries:
   
  Supranational integration
                         Supranationalists want to see European cooperation
                         evolve into a real European government which has real
                         (if perhaps limited) powers and is directly
                         accountable to voters across the European Union. They
                         are usually in favour of increasing the powers of the
                         +supranational; institutions (European Parliament[6],
                         European Commission[7], European Court of Justice[8])
                         at the expense of the intergovernmental institutions
                         (Council of Ministers[9], European Council[10]).
                         Supranationalists can be subdivided into two main
                         groups:
                         
  Federalists
                         
  Federalists want to see a political system in which everylevel of government
                         (local, regional, national and European) has real
                         political power, and is relatively independent from
                         other levels of government (especially the ones
                         above). They feel that responsibility for a certain
                         area of policy should rest with the lowest level of
                         government appropriate to deal with this area (also
                         called the principle of subsidiarity).
                         
  To counter the centralising tendencies of higher levels of government, most
                         federalists argue that the executives of national and
                         European levels of government should be accountable to
                         a double chamber parliament: one chamber consisting of
                         directly elected representatives of the people, the
                         other of appointed representatives of lower level
                         governments. The idea is that there should be a power
                         equilibrium between the two chambers.
                         
  Euro-nationalists
                         
  Euro-nationalists would like to see a political system in which the European
                         level of government becomes the primary level of
                         government in a European superstate. All other levels
                         of government would have derived powers only, just
                         like most regional and local governments have derived
                         powers in centralized nation states such as Britain,
                         the Netherlands and Denmark.
                         
  Euro-nationalist are usually against the idea of a double chamber parliament
                         at higher levels of government, as they think that the
                         executive should only be accountable towards the
                         directly elected representatives of the European
                         people (or +nation;).
                         
  Euro-nationalists are quite rare these days: a very high percentage of
                         supranationalists are thought to be federalists (if
                         only pragmatically).
                         
  The first pillar of the European Union is mostly built on supranational
                         (federalist) principles. There is a European executive
                         which is accountable towards a double chamber
                         parliament, even if the chamber representing the
                         national governments is much more powerful than the
                         chamber representing the people. There is also a
                         European Court of Justice whose rulings have
                         precedence over national courts and governments.
                         
  Intergovernmental cooperation
                         
When did the EU come into being?

   The European Union as an umbrella organisation has come into existence only
   in November 1993, after the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Its
   constituent organisations were founded/organised as below:
   
  1952                   The European Coal and Steel Community  (ECSC) was
                         established by the Treaty of Paris (1951).
                         
  1954                   The European Defence Community (EDC) Treaty, signed in
                         Paris (1952) and ratified by all five other ECSC
                         member states, was vetoed by a majority of left-wing
                         and right-wing radicals in the French Assemblie
                         (Augus  30th). The Treaty had provided for a European
                         army, a common budget and common institutions, among
                         which a directly elected Common Assembly and for this
                         Assembly to study ways of creating a federal
                         organisation with a clear separation of powers and a
                         bicameral parliament. The French veto against the EDC
                         Treaty also meant the end of the draft Treaty
                         establishing a Political Community, approved by the
                         ECSC Assembly on 10 March 1953.
                         
  1958                   The European Economic Community (EEC) and the European
                         Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) were established by
                         the twoTreaties of Rome (1957).
                         
  1967                   The institutions of the ECSC, EEC and Euratom were
                         merged, with a single European Commission replacing
                         the ECSC High Authority, EEC Commission, Euratom
                         Commission. A single +European Parliament;  (though
                         officially still called the European Parliamentary
                         Assembly) replaced the three virtual Assemblies of the
                         Communities, too, although the members of these
                         Assemblies had always been the same people acting in
                         different capacities on different matters.
                         
  1979                   For the first time, Members of the European Parliament
                         were elected directly by the people of all Member
                         states (June 7-10).
                         
  1987                   The  Single European Act of 1987 provided the
                         implementation provisions for the Single European
                         Market[11], and it codified agreement on majority
                         voting in the Council[12] on a range of questions. It
                         also formally codified the European Co-ordination in
                         the Sphere of Foreign Policy, which was known as
                         European Political Cooperation and dating back to the
                         1970 Davignon report.
                         
  1993                   The European Union was established by the  Maastricht
                         Treaty which came into force in November 1993. It
                         created an explicit three-pillar structure with a new
                         Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) replacing
                         the Single Act provisions in this field, and codifying
                         the Co-operation in the field of Justice and Home
                         Affairs (JHA). It also reexpanded the scope of the
                         EEC, to include provisions for an Economic and
                         Monetary Union with a single European currency from
                         the end of the century onwards, and it re-baptised the
                         EEC to simply European Community (EC).
                         
  1996                   The Maastricht Treaty requires that +a conference of
                         representatives of the governments of the Member
                         States shall be convened in 1996 to examine those
                         provisions of the Treaty for which revision is
                         provided;. Martin Westlake[13] writes that:
                         
       +[...] provisions subject to review include the scope of the new co
     -decision procedure, the Common Foreign and Security Policy, defence,
      the classification and hierarchy of Community Acts and the +pillar;
     structure introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, although few suppose t
     hat the 1996 inter-governmental conference will restrict its consider
     ations to those areas alone.;
     
What countries are members of the EU?

   The EU now consists of 15 member states. Its original membership of six was
   gradually enlarged as follows:
   
  From 1952 (original ECSC membership):
                         
      Belgium (BE);
      
      Germany (DE), the 5 new Ldnder of the former GDR joined in 1991;
      
      France (FR);
      
      Italy (IT);
      
      Luxembourg (LU);
      
      Netherlands (NL);
      
  From 1973 (first enlargement):
                         
      Denmark (DK);
      
      Republic of Ireland (IE);
      
      United Kingdom   (GB);
      
      [Norwegians rejected membership];
      
  From 1981 (second enlargement):
                         
      Greece (GR);
      
  From 1986 (third enlargement):
                         
      Portugal (PT);
      
      Spain (ES);
      
  From 1995 (fourth enlargement):
                         
      Austria (AT);
      
      Finland (FI);
      
      Sweden (SE);
      
      [Norwegians rejected membership again].
      
   It is generally expected that after the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference is
   finalised, new enlargement negotiations will take off with some other
   countries. Turkey, Malta, Cyprus, Hungary and Poland have all applied for
   membership officially; other countries (especially  former direct or
   indirect members of the +Comecon and Warszaw Pact;)  may soon follow.
   
   In preparation for this, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and
   Slovakia are invited to one meeting of the European Council every year,
   although it has been made clear that this does not automatically mean that
   all countries will be invited as new candidate members.Tanel Tammet[14]
   notes that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will sign similar agreements in the
   first half of 1995.
   
Which are the languages of the EU?

   Like most international organisations, the EU has two sorts of languages:
   official languages and working languages. Official languages are used for
   official public documents, especially those with legal value. Working
   languages are the languages used internally. Sometimes there is also talk of
   treaty languages: these are said to be official languages in which only
   basic legal texts are translated, and not all official public documents with
   legal value. Since EU legislation is directly applicable in national law,
   all languages with official legal status in one or more of the member states
   should be official EU languages as well. This means that there are now
   eleven official EU languages:
   
      German (88.8 million inhabitants of linguistic area*: in Germany,
      Austria, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg)
      
      French (63.3 million, in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy)
      
      English (60.0 million, in UK and Republic of Ireland)
      
      Italian (56.4 million, in Italy)
      
      Spanish (39.2 million, in Spain)
      
      Dutch (21.1 million, in the Netherlands and Belgium)
      
      Greek (10.3 million, in Greece)
      
      Portuguese (9.8 million, in Portugal)
      
      Swedish (9.0 million, in Sweden and Finland)
      
      Danish (5.2 million, in Denmark)
      
      Finnish (4.7 million, in Finland).
      
   Every member state has decided for itself what language(s) to make official
   EU languages; thus, these figures do not take into account recognised
   +minority; languages such as Catalan and Frisian, nor of officially
   recognised national languages such as irish (which is only a treaty
   language, not an official language) and Letzebuergesch (which has been
   recognised as a national language only in 1983).
   
   Council members have never been able to agree on a limit to the number of
   working languages within the institutions. All official languages are
   considered equal in every way. It should be noted though that, in practice,
   some languages are more equal than others. The Commission has limited much
   of its internal translations to French, English and German; some informal
   meetings do not have interpreters at all and are conducted in English
   entirely. Nick Bernard[15] says the Court of Justice uses French as an
   internal working language. According to Bart Schelfhout[16], this is due to
   the fact that French is far more considered a juristic language (precision
   and vocabulary) than is English
   
   EU interpretation services have already noted that the current expansion to
   eleven working languages will already be virtually unworkable; an expansion
   to sixteen or more (with some former Eastern Bloc countries joining) will be
   technically impossible. It is therefore to be expected, in my view, that the
   number of working languages will be limited to three (English, French and
   German) or five (with Italian and Spanish), if only for passive use
   (languages to translate into)
   
   Still, Marc Bonnaud[17] notes that
   
       +The EU Coucil of Ministers of 12 June 95 has not only reaffirmed i
     ts firm  attachment to Linguistic Diversity , it has also decided to
     setup a commission  to check that all the Institutions respect this,
     and first of all, those  concerned with the +information society; (DG
      XIII which violates daily the founding treaties and the regulation #
     1 of the Commission). The Commission has been invited to make yearly
     reports on the application of these decisions. [...]  I expect these
     decisions to be included one way or another in the revised Treaty.;
     
   Carsten Quell[18] of the Freie Universitdt Berlin has done extensive
   research on this topic.
   
How come the flag has only twelve stars?

   Questions that concern the European flag keep recurring. Especially since
   the enlargement of the EU from twelve to fifteen member states, people are
   wondering why there are still only twelve stars on the flag. The short
   answer is mainly that the number of stars was never intended to correspond
   to the number of member states; both just happened to be twelve between 1986
   and 1994. [IMAGE]
   
   The flag with twelve gold stars in a circle on a blue background was
   originally designed for the Council of Europe[19], founded in 1949. One of
   the founding members of this organisation was the country of Saarland, which
   had been part of Germany only since 1935, but was occupied by the French
   after World War II. At the time of the foundation of the Council of Europe,
   it was not at all clear whether Saarland (which was in the French zone of
   the allied occupation forces) would retain its international status under
   the custody of the United Nations, become part of France or rejoin Germany
   [it finally chose the latter in a 1955 referendum].
   
   To reconcile any possible differences over the sovereignty of Saarland, the
   founding members of the Council of Europe decided not to have a number of
   stars corresponding to the disputed number of founding states. Rather, the
   number of twelve stars was chosen to be a symbol of completeness and of
   unity, as it corresponded to the number of stars in the zodiac, the number
   of months in the year and (for the purpose of winning over Christians) to
   the number of Jesus's apostles. Thus the flag of the Council of Europe still
   consists of twelve stars, even though it has over thirty members now.
   
   The then European Communities +borrowed; the flag of the European Council
   only in 1986, after its enlargement to twelve members. Thus, as far as the
   European Communities are concerned, there was indeed a (coincidental)
   correspondence between the number of member states and the number of stars
   in the flag. Still the enlargement of the EU to fifteen member states has
   provoked no changes in the number of stars on the flag; therefore, it must
   be concluded that the number of twelve on both the Council of Europe's flag
   and the flag of the European Union retains it symbolic value of completeness
   and unity, rather than of the number of members.
   ___________________________________
   
                               Edited by Roland Siebelink & Bart Schelfhout[20]
                                           corrections and suggestions welcome.
                                                                               
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[1] http://eubasics.allmansland.com/about.html#contr
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[7] http://eubasics.allmansland.com/commission.html
[8] http://eubasics.allmansland.com/other.html#court
[9] http://eubasics.allmansland.com/councils.html#council
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[11] http://eubasics.allmansland.com/related.html#singlemarket
[12] http://eubasics.allmansland.com/commission.html#qualifmaj
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