The Disparity Of European Integration

This new study revisits the work of the late Ernst Haas, assessing his relevance for contemporary European integration and its disparities. With his seminal book, The Uniting of Europe Haas laid the foundations for one of the most prominent paradigms of European integration – neofunctionalism. He engaged in inductive reasoning to theorize the dynamics of the European integration process that led from the Treaty of Paris in 1951 to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The Treaty of Rome set the constitutional framework for a Common Market. Today, a second Treaty of Rome may lay the foundation for a European Constitution that embeds the Common Market in a European polity. Unfortunately, Haas will not be able to witness this path-breaking step in the development of a European political community, which he so aptly theorized almost five decades ago. This is all the more regrettable since students of European integration are more than ever challenged to tackle a major empirical puzzle: After 50 years of European integration, the member states managed to adopt a single currency and to develop common policies and institutions on justice and home affairs. The integration of foreign policy and defence, by contrast, is still lagging behind. This text delivers sharp insights into these issues. This book, previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, will be of great interest to all students and scholars of international relations, the European Union, European politics and Public Policy.

Across Europe, radical right-wing parties are winning increasing electoral support. The Dark Side of European Integration argues that this rising nationalism and the mobilization of the radical right are the consequences of European economic integration. The European economic project has produced a cultural backlash in the form of nationalist radical right ideologies. This assessment relies on a detailed analysis of the electoral rise of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, economic performance and immigration rates are not the only factors that determine the far right's success. There are other political and social factors that explain why in post-socialist Eastern European countries such parties had historically been weaker than their potential, which they have now started to fulfill increasingly. Using in-depth interviews with radical right activists in Ukraine, Alina Polyakova also explores how radical right mobilization works on the ground through social networks, allowing new insights into how social movements and political parties interact.

Convergence, Cohesion and Integration in the European Union tackles the fundamental theoretical and empirical issues underlying the process of European integration. Two basic arguments underlie the book. The first is that economic convergence in postwar Europe has reduced the disparities between regions and that this has been an important accelerator of the drive for integration. The second is that, in contrast to the situation before 1985 when nation states dominated the move to integration, grass roots pressure has been the dominant force since the Single European Act and the preparation for the single market.

The Euro-crisis of 2009-2012 vividly demonstrated that European Union policies matter for the distribution of resources within and between European nation-states. Throughout the crisis, distributive conflicts between the EU's winners and losers worsened, and are still reverberating in European politics today. In Unequal Europe, Jason Beckfield demonstrates that there is a direct connection between European integration and the increase in European income inequality over the past four decades. He places the recent crisis into a broader sociological, political, and economic perspective by analyzing how European integration has reshaped the distribution of income across the households of Europe. Using individual-and household-level income survey data, combined with macro-level data on social policies, and case studies of welfare reforms in EU and non-EU states, Beckfield shows how European integration has re-stratified Europe by simultaneously drawing national economies closer together and increasing inequality among households. Explaining how, where, and why income inequality has changed in the EU, Unequal Europe answers the question: who wins and who loses from European integration?

Academic Paper from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 8.0, Maastricht University (School of Business and Economics), course: Bachelor Kurs Jahr 3, language: English, abstract: After the first half of the 20th century, Europe had already witnessed two world wars, which were the result of frequent conflicts among European neighbours. At that point in time, political leaders such as Konrad Adenauer, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman envision a united and peaceful European Union (hereafter called EU). European integration begins timid in 1950 with the European Coal and Steel Agreement to permanently consolidate European countries economically and politically. In 1957, the Treaty of Rome creates the foundation for the European Economic Community to establish the European Customs Union. In 1993, at the time of its third enlargement, the European States Community is grown to 12 member states and signs the Maastricht Treaty, which leads to the creation of a common currency for most of the European member states. Finally, the single market with "four freedoms of: movement of goods, services, people and money" is completed.