Essay On European Integration

2003 Words9 Pages
Introduction The process of European Integration has come a very long way since its humble beginning in the 1950’s. The need for co-operation in Europe had become clear after the two world wars. The exact origins of the massive supranational institution of the European Union (EU) is often disputed, but we can trace it back to economic co-operation on small scale with institutions such as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) of 1952. Institutions like this were forerunners for the current day EU (Dinan, 2006). Many theories have been developed on the process of European integration. This paper will focus on two main theories, Supranationlism and Intergovernmentalism and use their main ideas to explain the adoption of the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986. These theories are both known as ‘Grand Theories’ meaning they look at the process of integration as a whole from the very starting points of integration in the 1950’s (Nugent, 2010, p. 430). Firstly this paper explains the SEA; secondly it defines Suprnationalism and analyzes its interpretation of the adoption of the SEA. Thirdly the paper does…show more content…
They emphasis the remaining importance of ‘spillovers’ during the 1980’s which could be seen by the example that the SEA was a ‘spillover’ of the failure of the common market that had supposedly been in place since the 1960’s, which lead to proposals for SMP in the early 1980’s. The common market had been restricted by non-tariff barriers (NTB’s), the SEA/ SMP set out to abolish these (Ludlow, 2006, p. 222, 223). Sandholtz and Zyman (1989) also recognize three other explanations for the adoption of the SEA. Firstly the failures of national economic policies had combined with the change in domestic politics with the outing of leftist governments throughout Europe in favour of more euro-optimistic governments, had given the commission the chance to seize initiative (p. 108 –

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