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The European Integration
Europe made up more than 30 countries and even more distinct cultures;
it is now trying to adjust to new economic systems throughout the world.
In this essay I shall attempt to show you firstly the purpose behind
the European Union / advantages to have a united Europe to the people of
Europe, secondly Spain's accession to the European Community and thirdly
the effects of introduction Euro.
Schemes for European integration are almost as old as the idea of
Europe as a distinct political and cultural entity and much older than the
conception of a Europe of nation-states. The birth of idea of Europe went
hand in hand with the emergence of the first schemes for European
integration. Indeed, the conception of Europe as a distinct entity
presupposed or implied a potential basis for European cohesion and
integration. The term integration can be understood, in context of the
European Union, as a situation of unification between individually
sovereign nations into a collective body, sufficient to make that body a
workable whole. A fully integrated European Union could be seen to have two
possible outcomes. Either a)A Federalist or 'stewed' union, where all
member states give up their individual sovereignty and form a superstate
that would be an economic world power, or b)A Confederalist or 'salad bar'
union, where each member state has its own place in a continental alliance,
maintaining national sovereignty and individually contributing, through
trade and cooperation, to form a greater whole. Sovereignty can be defined
quite simply as the supreme authority to not only declare law but create
it, deriving this power from a populace who have given up their personal
sovereignty and power and vested it in the sovereign.
Europeans have long disagreed as to which states and poples should
properly be included in Europe. There have been long debates as to how far
countries such as Russia, Turkey, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, Israel or
Morocco should be included in Europe, politically, militarily, culturally
or economically. The factor that must always be borne in mind in any
consideration of Europe is that definitions of Europe and the
configurations of European states are fluids rather than solids. They are
constantly changing.The idea of nation and of European order based upon
sovereign nation-states is of relatively recent origin and is likely to be
as ephemeral or short-lived as all previous European state configurations.
It is on the eternal fluidity of European states systems, rather than on
any deterministic belief in a teleogical progression towards a preordained
"federal goal", that federalists should rest their hopes for a federal
Europe in the twenty-first century.
The EU has stated explicitly that its objectives are "to lay the
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