The European Union: Development and the Primacy of Bureaucratic Politics

Abstract

Alongside national governments in Britain, France, Germany, and other West European countries, the European Union (EU) constitutes a crucial organization for the coordination and implementation of economic, social, and foreign policies on the regional level of governance. The significance of the EU lies not only in its economic status as the nucleus of the world’s largest trading bloc and integrated regional market but also in the declared intentions of political leaders in both the EU and its member countries to achieve economic, monetary, and political union by the end of the 1990s. Implementing these objectives will entail the further transfer of significant degrees of national decision-making authority to supranational institutions1—a process that began when the European integration movement was launched during the early 1950s. Once it is fully attained, economic, monetary, and political union will firmly establish the European Union as a powerful governmental system in its own right.