The Treaty of Maastricht: Designing the European Union

Abstract

The decision to create the European Union (EU), a unique achievement in the history of European construction, was a decisive step taken in the Kantian tradition of international relations. In 1991, the member states of the European Community (EC) negotiated the Treaty on European Union (TEU) to establish a single European currency and to create a new supranational institution, the European Central Bank (ECB). National governments decided to delegate their decision-making in monetary affairs to the ECB and to pool sovereignty in a key sector of domestic responsibility. The landmark agreement to place Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the first, or EC, pillar of the newly formed European Union was depicted by Commission President Jacques Delors as the ‘tiger in the tank’ of European integration. Two other pillars, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFPS) and Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) were created as a result of agreement in the Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union (ICG-PU), which concluded at the same time as that of the Intergovernmental Conference on Economic and Monetary Union (IGC-EMU). Integration did not advance as far or as deep in negotiations on Political Union.KeywordsEuropean UnionMember StateCentral BankEuropean Central BankEuropean CouncilThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.