Complete summary: slides and book Institutions and policy of the European Union 2025/26 - KU Leuven

INSTITUTIONS AND POLICY OF THE
EUROPEAN UNION
INTRODUCTION

No agreement on just how we should define and understand the EU

Origins and motives behind European integration

 Frustration about war and conflict
 First thoughts about a peaceful and voluntary union after WW1
 Concept matured after WW2

European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)

 April 1951
 Treaty of Paris
 Set up to prove the advantages of regional integration
 France, West- Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg

European Economic Community (EEC)

 Expansion of members
 Treaty of Rome
 More ambitious goal of integration

European Union (EU)

 27 member states
 450 million residents
 Common currency
 Integration vs. Unification
 When one speaks of Europe this means the EU

Founding treaties:

 Single European Act (1987): elimination of the barriers
 Maastricht treaty (1993): single currency, common citizenship and common foreign and
security policy and EEC became EU
 Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice (1998 and 2003): fine tuning powers of the institutions and
prepare EU for new member states from Eastern Europe
 Trying to replace the accumulated treaties with a European constitution  failed
(2002/2004): French & Dutch didn’t ratify
 Treaty of Lisbon: reform of several EU institutions and more coherent Union policies

,Main institutions:

 The European commission: in BXL, executive & administrative branch of the EU
o Developing wew EU laws, policies & overseeing implementation
 The council of the EU (= council of the ministers): in BXL
o Decision- making body
o together with European parliament voting commission’s proposals into laws
 The European council: consists of leaders from every member state (meet- up 4x a year)
o Broad decisions on policy
 The European Parliament: Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Brussels. Directly elected for 5 years
o Discussion of Commission proposals
 The court of justice of the EU: In Luxembourg
o interprets EU law + helps build a common body of law




Different views about the EU and its policies across the EU

 In the different MS the EU is perceived as a more positive/ negative of neutral thing
 They also have different visions on the expansion of it

Different views on EU policy-making and different willingness to participate in EU policy making

 How valuable is your vote?
 Turnout is different in every country

,WHAT IS THE EU?


WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT, WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THE EU?

 Talking about ‘the EU’ requires nuance:
o Consider what and who is (not) meant by the EU
o Consider that the EU means different things to different people
 Europe occasionally used where EU would be more accurate  stylistic reasons
o Two terms increasingly the same meaning
 EU ≠ Europe
 EU ≈ Memberstates
 The EU ≈ various institutions…
 When you think about EU you think of confederation, federation, state, international
organization, intergovernmentalism, (Neo)Functionalism, (Multi-level) Governance,
Supranationalism,…




 Will the EU ever be one nation?
 Europe of citizens
o European people coming together and forming new european entitiy, new european
system
 Europe of offices
o Europe as vague political system
o System of multilevel governance: making the borders between nations between
levels

IS THE EU A STATE OR AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION?: THE EU AS A STATE-BASED
‘CONFEDERAL’ SYSTEM VS. A ‘FEDERAL’ POLITY IN ITS OWN RIGHT


STATE

= a legal and physical entity that…

, 1) operates within a fixed and populated territory
o + EU = sum of its MS’ territory, borders recognized;
o + EU has various symbols of statehood for its population;
o - EU keeps expanding/territory changes;
 EU can lose MS
o - EU doesn’t fully operate its territory, but EU MS do.
 In some areas exclusive competences, but sometimes not, police national,
national education system
2) has authority over that territory
o EU system of law to which MS are subject;
o EU competences vary, no all-encompassing authority.
3) is legally and politically independent
o (rather) independent of other international actors;
o Internally (rather) dependent of its Member States
 Almost can’t do anything without approval and later implementation by MS
4) is recognized by its people and by other states.
o General recognition by other states (e.g., trade agreements);
o EU citizenship;
 Not everybody feels european, not the same as they feel connected with
nationstate
o Variation in extent of recognition by other states;
o Various extent of ‘feeling European’ among EU citizens.


INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION

 International organisations
o = bodies that promote voluntary cooperation and coordination between or among
their members but have neither autonomous powers nor the authority to impose
their rulings on their members (Olsen & Hansen, 2026)
o Voluntary cooperation and coordination between or among their members
 Voluntary decision to join EU and delegate authority
o Neither autonomous powers nor the authority to impose their rulings on their
members
 EU institutions not fully autonomous (depends on delegation)
 EU institutions hold different levels of authority, some of authority is
extensive
 Eg trade, MS cannot negotiate individual trade agreements, cannot
have independently own monetary policy
 MS do not maintain complete authority
 Primacy of EU law, role of EU courts
 European law primacy over national law, EU courts over national law
 Goes way beyond what IOs such as UN can do
 Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs)
o = “organizations with at least three state parties, a permanent headquarters or
secretariat, as well as regular meetings and budgets” (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2020)