Stages of European Integration

서문

1. Introduction : Stages of European Integration
2. Supranationalism and Interdependence in Europe : The Case of the European Coal and Steel Community
3. Ordoliberalism as Early Ideational Influence on European Economic Integration
4. The Single European Act : New Impetus for the Internal Market
5. Maastricht and the Prospects of Fiscal Integration in the European Union
6. The Treaty of Amsterdam : A Transitional Treaty
7. The Nice Treaty and the Integration of the New Member States of Central and Eastern Europe in the European Union
8. The Constitution of Europe and Supranational Democracy : Jurgen Habermas’s Vision of the European Union
9. Conclusion

Previously Published Chapters
References
Author Biography

Introduction
Stages of European Integration
European integration is a gradual process, and the European trea- ties have played a crucial role in advancing it. With each of the treaties that was concluded by the states of the European Com- munity/the European Union (EC/EU) between 1951 and 2007, this process has deepened, bringing it up to a higher stage of regional integration. With each step, this bloc of states has also moved further forward from a mere international organization, i.e. a confederation, in the direction of a federation. With each treaty, more policy areas have been covered and thus partially or fully shifted from the area of responsibility of the individual states to that of the EU. This has resulted in a very complex set of treaties which together almost, but still incompletely, fulfil the function of a European constitution. Despite the many advances that the EU has made in this process over the years, it has not yet reached the level of a European state. It has given itself an in- stitutional structure which is, as EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (2007) once noted, unique in the world, and as such lies somewhere between a confederation and a federation.