The impact of past and present enlargement on the institutions and decision-making structures of the EU

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THE IMPACT OF PAST AND PRESENT ENLARGEMENT ON THE INSTITUTIONS AND DECISION-MAKING STRUCTURES OF THE EU

In this essay paper the consequences of the different stage enlargements upon the institutions and their decision- making would be discussed from a European point of view. There are many studies about the impact of enlargement but most all of them refer indeed to national the perspective. In with work I focus more on the impacts of the Lisbon treaty taking into account the importance and the actuality of the topic as well the importance of one of the biggest enlargements of the European Union in 2004. However, the effects of the past enlargements are also discussed.  Although there are plenty of hypothetical research done of the impacts that may cause the eastern largest enlargement, there is still a difficulty while treating this subject that it is certainly hard to deduce the real impact of the last ‘big ban’ enlargement (Hagemann and De Clerck-Sachsse, 2007), as the dimensional impact need more time and more investigation to come to light.  

The enlargement of the European Union has always been treated in controversy, and has been slowly getting bigger from six members in 1958 to nine in 1973, ten in 1981, twelve in 1986, fifteen in 1995 and finally 25 in 2004. For a given country can contemplate the possibility of joining the EU, must furnish that meets three basic criteria for membership set out in the Copenhagen summit in June 1993:  the existence of stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, a functioning market economy as well as the ability to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. The last factor that a country must have is the ability to assume the obligations arising from accession, including the political, economic and monetary union.
The question of the European Union and the way to form a complex structural basis for its legislation and improvement of the decision-making process was of high interest for the practitioners as well as for scholars of European.  The voting procedures in the Council of Europe are described in the European Union treaties. The Council of Minister occupies the most important position in the institutional structure of the European Union, having all powers of decision over all matters of the EU policy-making. It is a Community institution, but it also embraces twenty seven member-state governments. As well it is the forum in which the member-state representatives with diverse policy objective come together and negotiate. These interactions and subsequent outputs define the nature of EU policies and therefore the direction of European integration. After years of disagreement and ineffective declarations, the 1987 Single European Act (SEA), the 1993 Maastricht Treaty and, to a much lesser extent, the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam expanded the scope of qualified majority voting (QMV) in order to improve legislative efficiency (Garrett, 1992; Moravcsik, 1998: 317; Tsebelis and Kreppel, 1998: 65).

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The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009 ‘marked the end of a long and complicated process of comprehensive treaty revision that had commanded considerable political attention from both national governments and the European institutions (Egenhofer, Kurpas, Piotr Kaczyński and Louise van Schaik , 2011).  

De Schoutheete draws a timeline period for his analysis of the expansion and effectiveness of the European institutions from the date of the Single Act in 1986 to the entrance in force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. In this period of time four treaties pass through the ...

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