European Integration History: Phases, Results and Achievements. Political

Karina Kostiantynivna Barantseva, Ph.D., Associate Professor

levels of government – national and local - coexist with

separate or shared powers, each having independent functions, but neither having supreme authority over the other.

sole power over foreign and security policy, and separately elected

local governments with powers over such issues as education and policing.
There is a single national currency and a common defence force, a written constitution that spells out the relative powers of the different levels of government, a court that can arbitrate disputes between them, and at least two major sets of law, government, bureaucracy, and taxation.

has a complex system of treaties and laws that are

uniformly applicable throughout the EU, to which all the member states and their citizens are subject, and that are interpreted and protected by the European Court of Justice.
In those policy areas where the member states have agreed to transfer authority to the EU - including intra-European trade, the environment, agriculture, and social policy - EU law supersedes national law.

of the European Parliament, which has growing powers over the

process by which European laws are made. As those powers grow, so the powers of national legislatures are declining.
Although still small by comparison to most national budgets, the EU budget gives the EU institutions an element of financial independence.
The European Commission has the authority to oversee negotiations with third parties on behalf of all the member states, in those areas where it has been given authority by the member states.
A number of the EU member states have their own currency, the euro, meaning that they have transferred monetary policy from their own national central banks to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

two or more organizational units keep their separate identities but

give specified powers to a central authority for reasons of convenience, mutual security, or efficiency.
If a federation is a union of peoples living within a single state, then a confederation is a union of states. The balance of power in a confederation is tilted towards the member states, central authorities are kept subordinate, the shifting of authority to those authorities must be approved by the states, ultimate authority remains firmly fixed with the national governments of the member states (which exercise it jointly in the various confederal decision making bodies), and the loyalty of individuals remains focused on their home states.

system:
The citizens of the member states do not relate directly

to any of the EU institutions except Parliament (which they elect), instead relating to them mainly through their national governments. Despite their powers of making and implementing policy, the key institutions of the EU - the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Council, and the European Court of Justice - derive their authority not from the citizens of the member states, but from the leaders and governments of the member states. They are run either directly by national government leaders (the Council of Ministers and the European Council), or are appointed by those leaders (the Commission and the Court of Justice).
The member states still have their own separate identities, have their own systems of law, can sign bilateral treaties with other states, can act unilaterally in most areas of foreign policy, and can argue that the EU institutions exist at their discretion. There is no European government in the sense that the EU has obvious leaders - such as a president, a foreign minister, or a cabinet - with substantial power to make policy for the EU member states. The most important political leaders in the EU are still the heads of government of the individual member states.

funds in part through levies and customs duties, which are

a form of tax, but the vast majority of taxes - income, corporate, property, sales, estate, capital gains, and so on - are raised by national or local units of government, which also make tax policy.
There is no European military or defence system. The armies, navies, and air forces of the member states still answer to the governments of the member states, although contingents have come together as the seeds of a European security force. In this sense they are the functional equivalent of the militias that existed in the American confederal system.
The EU may have its own flag and anthem, but most of the citizens of the member states still have a greater sense of allegiance to their own national flags, anthems, and other symbols, and there has been only limited progress towards building a sense of a European identity.

on the idea of incrementally bridging the gaps between states

by building functionally specific organizations.
So instead of trying to coordinate big issues such as economic or defence policy, for example, functionalists believed they could 'sneak up on peace' by promoting integration in relatively non-controversial areas such as the postal service, or a particular sector of industry, or by harmonizing technical issues such as weights and measures.

in integration, as do government officials and political parties, the

pace and nature of integration are ultimately determined by national governments pursuing national interests; they alone have legal sovereignty, and they alone have the political legitimacy that comes from being democratically elected. Put another way, governments have more autonomy than the neofunctional view allows.

which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, and combined the

neofunctionalist view of the importance of domestic politics with the role of the governments of the EU member states in making major political choices.
Proponents argue that European integration has moved forward as a result of a combination of factors such as the commercial interests of economic producers, and the relative bargaining power of important governments.

in recent years has been multi-level governance (MLG), which describes

a system in which power is shared among the supranational, national, sub-national, and local levels, with considerable interaction among them all.