The European Union: a Brief Introduction
| Publication year | 2002 |
| Pages | 9 |
| Citation | Vol. 31 No. 5 Pg. 9 |
2002, May, Pg. 9. The European Union: A Brief Introduction
Vol. 31, No. 5, Pg. 9
The Colorado Lawyer
May 2002
Vol. 31, No. 5 [Page 9]
May 2002
Vol. 31, No. 5 [Page 9]
Articles
The European Union: A Brief Introduction
by Troy A. Eid
C 2002 Troy A. Eid
by Troy A. Eid
C 2002 Troy A. Eid
This article gives a general overview of the legal framework
governance, and key institutions of the European Union. The
article provides background and context for attorneys whose
clients are considering business, trade, and investment
decisions in both established and emerging European markets
A companion article, focusing on the legal and regulatory
implications of conducting commercial transactions in Europe
will appear in the June 2002 issue of The Colorado Lawyer.
About the Author:
Troy A. Eid is Executive Director, Colorado Department of
Personnel and Administration, and Governor Bill Owens'
former Chief Legal Counsel?(303) 866-6559;
troy.eid@state.co.us. Eid was awarded an American Marshall
Memorial Fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the
United States ("GMF") in 2001 and named to the
U.S./Spain Young Leaders Program earlier this year. The
author thanks GMF's Craig Kennedy, Ellen Pope, and
Julianne Smith for enabling the visits to Washington, D.C.
and seven European nations that made this article possible.
The author also appreciates the help of MarÃa Fernandez-Shaw,
Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, and Antonio Garrigues Walker,
President of the Fundación and the U.S.-Spain Council. Thanks
also to Allison Eid, Heinrich Kreft, and Mara Warren for
their assistance in preparing this article.
The dramatic development of European law and institutions
since the fall of the Soviet Empire and the reunification of
Germany has generated scant attention in the mainstream U.S.
media. Americans hear updates from the United Nations
("UN") war-crimes trial of former Serbian leader
Slobodan Milosevich or watch the made-for-TV violence of
so-called anti-globalization protestors. However, few
Americans know much about the European Union ("EU"
or "Union"), let alone track its latest
developments.
In contrast, the word "Brussels"?headquarters to
the EU and shorthand for just about anything related to
European politics and governance?is increasingly on the lips
of Europeans. They pay their bills in Euros. Many do business
in English, the unofficial language of the EU. They also look
more to Brussels, and less to their national capitals, for
the latest political and economic developments.
Faced with this reality, and given the increased willingness
of European allies to act independently of the United States,
even on sensitive foreign policy matters, American citizens
need to understand the tectonic political and institutional
shifts that are taking place in Europe today. This is
especially true for a growing number of U.S. attorneys and
legal professionals, whose responsibilities for client
service and the administration of justice may sometimes
extend beyond America's shores. These lawyers must be
well versed not only with European commercial law and legal
practice, but also with the overarching political and policy
decisions that are shaping the business and investment
climate in those countries and within the EU itself.
The unfolding geographical expansion of the EU eastward is a
case in point. Since its inception in 1951, the EU has grown
from six to fifteen nations, making it the world's
largest commercial trading bloc (see Figure 1). Another
thirteen comparatively less wealthy (and in some cases, poor)
countries now seek to join the EU through a process known as
"enlargement," which would further expand the
EU's scope. EU enlargement also will raise significant
economic and political challenges for companies making
business and investment decisions in these countries.
Along with EU enlargement, the separate but largely mutually
reinforcing expansion of the U.S.-commanded North Atlantic
Treaty Organization ("NATO") is a dominant force
driving both political and economic liberalization in Central
and Eastern Europe today. The pace with which these new
European markets emerge, as well as their ultimate value, is
directly tied to EU enlargement and NATO expansion ?and the
powerful corporate lobbying that is helping to drive each.
U.S. lawyers should be aware of these trends.
This article briefly reviews the legal framework and key
enabling institutions of the EU, including their origins,
purpose, and functions, and some of the theories behind them.
The purpose of this article is not to provide an exhaustive
treatment of the subject, but to give Colorado lawyers just
enough information to allow them to begin to develop the
perspective necessary to offer appropriate legal advice to
their U.S. and European business clients. A companion article
in the June 2002 issue of The Colorado Lawyer will focus on
some of the specific legal and regulatory issues that
corporate attorneys may face in conducting business
transactions in Europe.
Figure 1: Europe (2002)
© 2002 FOTW Flags of the World:
www.flagspot.net/flags/geo-copy#disc.
ORIGINS OF THE EU
As World War II raged, an exiled Frenchman named Jean Monnet
dreamed of a new Europe. Monnet, an international economist
who spent the war in Washington, D.C., imagined a new
European order in which each country delegated part of its
national sovereignty to a set of shared institutions. Monnet
argued in an influential Fortune magazine article in 1944
that such economic and political interdependence would lead
to a more prosperous and peaceful Europe.
When the war ended, Monnet found a receptive audience with
two of Europe's rising political stars: French Foreign
Minister Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer, the first
chancellor of West Germany. The three men would go down in
history as the founding fathers of the EU. Their legacy is a
political and economic confederation that now unites fifteen
European nations, 377 million people, and $8.4 trillion in
combined annual gross domestic product.
Schuman, who grew up in the mixed French-German region of
Alsace-Lorraine, spoke German fluently and even served in the
Kaiser's army during World War I. He methodically earned
and kept Adenauer's confidence without getting too far
ahead of his charismatic but volatile boss, French Resistance
leader-turned-president, Charles De Gaulle. Schuman
understood and perhaps shared De Gaulle's fervent belief
that the French must never again play second fiddle to the
"Anglo-Saxons"?the British and Americans?in shaping
European politics and institutions. Instead, Schuman thought
France's future lay squarely with Germany as the leaders
of a new union of European states rooted in continental
values and traditions.1
Royal Air Force World War II veterans honor their fallen
comrades at a March 2002 memorial service in London. Early EU
architects often cited the need to prevent future wars as a
central reason for integrating Europe's political and
economic institutions.
The former mayor of Cologne, Adenauer had been a leading
figure in Germany's doomed Weimar Republic, and had twice
been imprisoned by the Nazis during the Third Reich. He saw
the push for continental institutions as a bulwark against a
fascist revival in Germany. Adenauer also believed a union of
European states was the most likely means by which the allied
Occupation Powers?the United States, Great Britain, and
France?could accept the early entry of a fully independent
West Germany into the community of nations.2
In their own ways and for their own reasons, the trio of
Adenauer, Schuman, and Monnet pressed for the creation of
what former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946
called "a kind of United States of Europe."3 France
and West Germany took a defining first step in 1951, adopting
Monnet's plan to beat swords into plowshares by pooling
their respective coal and steel industries into a six-nation
European Coal and Steel Community ("ECSC"). A
subsequent push to create a continental European Army,
strongly favored both by Adenauer and the United States,
failed when the French National Assembly defeated it in 1954.
Nevertheless, in 1957, the success of the ECSC led to the
Treaty of Rome, establishing a six-nation zone of commercial
cooperation known as the European Economic Community
("EEC").
By 1992, the EEC had become the EU, the world's largest
trading and commercial bloc. The economic reality of the
"new Europe" was symbolized a decade later, in
January 2002, when all but three EU members converted to a
single currency, the Euro, as part of a common monetary
policy and central European banking system. Just a
half-century from when it all began, the scope of today's
EU has expanded beyond trade and finance to include
historically domestic matters such as environmental
protection, employment and workplace issues, law enforcement,
and drug control. At the same time, the EU has taken an
increasingly assertive stance on the world stage.
The combined EU members recently surpassed the United States
as the world's largest contributor of foreign aid to
developing nations. Even the European Army concept has been
dusted off and recast as a shared "Common Foreign and
Security Policy" ("CFSP"), separate and
distinct from NATO. The interplay between the CFSP and NATO,
and their respective success in keeping the peace in Europe
while encouraging democratic reform and economic
liberalization, will continue to influence commercial
opportunities in tomorrow's Europe, especially in the
emerging markets of the former Eastern Bloc.
DEFINING THE EU
Many European opinion-makers still have a hard time agreeing
on a mutually acceptable, all-inclusive definition of the
Union...
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