European Union (EU) Today Is Essay

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Eight more countries join the EU in May, 2004 (Czech Republic; Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania; Hungary; Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia); soon after, Malta and Cyprus are welcomed into the EU. In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania were welcomed as members of the EU.

In October, 2004, the now twenty-five EU countries sign a "Treaty Establishing a European Constitution" which is "designed to streamline democratic decision-making and management" of the EU (http://europa.eu). The constitution states that the EU is "open to any European country that fulfills the democratic, political and economic criteria for membership"; when a new member asks to join, that member must be approved unanimously by the other 27 states.

Currently there are several countries that are being considered as potential members of the EU; they are Turkey (that is now a member of NATO), Croatia, Albania, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (http://europa.eu). The "Copenhagen Criteria" (rules that must be followed prior to admittance into the EU) lays out three specific criteria a country must prove it has accomplished: a) it must have "stable institutions" that guarantee democracy, "the rule of law," human rights and "protection for minorities"; b) it must have a "functioning market economy" and it must have the "capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the union"; and c) a country must have the ability to assume the "obligations of membership," and that includes "support for the aims of the Union" and having the administrative competencies to be capable of "applying and managing EU laws in practice" (http://europa.eu).

Several countries are potential candidates for admission into the Union, but are not applying for membership because public opinion is opposed to membership; they are: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

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The specifics of how the EU government works: a) the Council of the European Union represents all the member states and is the principal decision-making body; b) the European Parliament represents the people of all 27 states, and shares legislative and budgetary power with the Council of the European Union; and c) the European Commission is the executive body (in the same way the White House / president is the executive component of the U.S.), and can propose legislation; among its responsibilities are to ensure that the EU policies are "properly implemented" (http://europa.eu).

Meantime the Washington Post (Jahn, 2010) explains that "restrictive new laws" have been passed in Hungary that are causing concern among its EU neighbors. One of the laws appears to be undemocratic; a "hand-picked authority" will decide what newspapers and broadcast outlets to take to court (and fine those entities up to $1 million) for "reports it considers unbalanced" (Jahn, p. 1). This certainly appears to be restricting the freedom of the press, and the issue has vital importance in the EU because Hungary is scheduled to assume the presidency of the EU on January 1, 2011. Another recent story from the EU is the "sweeping powers" that the EU's new foreign minister has been given, according to a report in the EU Observer (Rettman, 2009). The foreign minister will manage general foreign relations and supervise "EU security and defense projects" like the EU's policing of Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia and Afghanistan, according to Rettman. But he will choose his own staff "independently of other EU institutions" as well as proposing how much money he needs annually as he takes charge of the European Commission's existing delegations globally.

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