The European Union is one of the most famous Economic blocs in our recent times. It is the culmination of efforts after the devastating Second World War. It currently includes 28 states with varied cultural and historical backgrounds and even different languages. It now has more than 30 separate international trade agreements with many countries such as Colombia and South Korea (Encyclopedia of Management). The EU and the trade agreements entered into by member countries are examples of economic integration and cooperation. The benefits of joining an economic or trading bloc and reducing trade barriers can be plenty and they encourage countries to join them, and can be gained by all of the countries who are part in the economic integration agreement. Economic integration would open foreign markets for local manufacturers and producers. This would increase their business opportunities and give them access to bigger demand, which in turn would encourage them to build their capacity and increase their efficiency. Once the producers gain access to foreign markets they will be able to produce with larger volumes to meet the demand and thus achieve economies of scale. This would decrease costs for those producers while maintaining a high level of production. Increased business opportunity would prompt businesses to hire more workers. This would drive down unemployment and stimulate demand for skilled workers. And if there is agreement about free movement of labor skilled
The European Union (EU) is a political economic union of 28 members. The founders are France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Italy, Netherlands, and Germany. The Maastricht treaty established the European Union in 1993. The EU aims to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital and regional development. These 28 member states have successfully integrated because of their similar cultural lifestyles.
Europe has been quite successful in integrating its economies because of the various geopolitical and economic activities. The first and foremost reason is that these countries are small and the economy of the one country can be integrated with the economy of the other country. Their integration has been made possible because the aspiration and believe of the different countries are very much similar. Moreover, their cultural and economic history is moreover same. European Union as it has been called now has been the most developed model of the regional integration though challenged by economic crisis now a days.
The advantages of economic integration (for insiders) are trade creation, greater consensus political cooperation, and employment opportunities. On the other hand the disadvantages (outsiders) are creation of trading blocks, trade diversion, and national sovereignty. Now, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) guidelines include the following: trade without discrimination, freer trade through negotiation, predictability through binding and transparency, fair competition, encourages development and economic reform, protects copyrights, external tariffs remain, and tariffs among members eliminate, but external tariffs remain. In my option, I think insiders have the more definite fair advantage, due to the eliminating factor of tariffs for them.
First with western Europe, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the east as well. Many of these attempts were successful. One of the first of these attempts was the Marshall Plan which was used as an instrument to restore the economies of western Europe and to establish democracies. The plan would provide economic aid to fight the post war affects of poverty and in return expected cooperation for mutual benefit. The plan strengthened western Europe not as allies with each other and not against anyone. Another internal cooperation efforts was the formation of the European Economic Community(or Common Market) in 1957. The six original members were very successful and managed to eliminate all tariffs within their countries. After seeing this success, other nations applied for membership and EEC became what is presently know as the European Union. The European Union has been very successful in its endeavors to mutually help the member economies. One of these successful endeavours was the implementation of a common currency. As of 2002, seventeen countries now share the euro as their currency. This unifies where language and culture are barriers but money is not. Another major success in unification was the addition of ten members of the European union in 2004. Most of these additions were former Soviet bloc countries who had just a little over a decade free from Soviet influence. While this was a
The supporters, on the other hand, felt that trade liberalisation would help the country gain regarding increased trade base on comparative advantage. The cheap imports from Mexico would help both the companies in purchasing of
The European Union as we know it is an economic union of countries which make their own policies concerning economies, societies, and law. Created in 1993, the European Union now contains 28 countries in total, and is now the biggest economic union in the world by GDP. For big countries, the creation of EU was the removal of many trade and non-tariff barriers. Trade has increased approximately 30% since 1992. For smaller countries, it was a stepping stones for economic growth and negotiation power with larger nations. Since before the creation of EU in 1993, Europe were already the world largest trading regions, but the trading were complicated by
The roots of the European Union can be traced back to the early 1950’s when a small number of countries made a decision to join together as a way to resolve any potential conflict nurture economic growth and common values across the continent. There was a desire to promote common values and membership was opened to all European countries. Since the inception the number of members has grown from a founding six countries to what we now know as the modern day EU with a current total of 28 countries with a further 8 countries under application review. In 1992, what was then a group of twelve countries, joined together to form the Customs Community Code which was eventually introduced in January 1993. The code effectively merged the individual customs regulations in to a single customs union.
After World War II, it was clear that Europe was in need of economic restructuring. The European Community (EC) originated in 1957 an d eventually became the European Union, now made up of 28 member states. (Gerber , 2014). The EU trade bloc allows free movement of goods,
The Second World War is considered to be the bloodiest conflict in the history of mankind with over 60 million deaths in a span of six years. After the end of the war in 1945, many people, Europeans, were determined to prevent any more bloodshed and destruction of that scale from happening again. The first step towards communion between the European countries was to implement economic cooperation. Economic cooperation is the cooperation between countries in terms of imports or exports of goods and borrowing or lending of capital and payments. This soon led to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958. This increased economic cooperation between Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium. Over time, this economic union became an organization that was involved in the environment and aid. The EEC soon changed its name to the European Union (EU). So far, the EU has been successful in maintaining peace in Europe. It has brought many benefits to its member state. Since its creation, peace has been maintained and outbreak of a war has been prevented. The Lisbon Treaty came into effect in 2009 and was signed by 13 of the EU’s member states. The states benefited from a common foreign and security policy. The civil and political rights of its citizens are being protected under the European Court of Human Rights. However in the economic field, the EU has some problems. The Eurozone Crisis showed the inability of the member states to manage
The EU (European Union) has become a formidable power through trade, hence creating more problems with the rest of the world. Occasionally its dominance has helped it manipulate its trading partners. Starting with regional labor standards to development policies, and internationally ranging from global governance to foreign policy (Marshall & Jaggers, 2010).This paper will mainly focus on the EU as a dominant trade block. A factor that has undoubtedly contributed to the many conflicts it has internationally. The analysis includes different but recent trade related conflicts the EU is involved in and points out the factors that led to the misunderstanding, and in some cases if there was a third party involved in the issue. The analysis also shows if a form of solution was reached or if the dispute was left unresolved, and the possible outcomes it had during the time of the confrontation. Lastly, it summarizes the main ideas of the paper and gives a comprehensive overview of the analysis.
People have created unions many times but not all of them were successful, specifically when we consider alliances among number of countries with different economics, political systems and culture. For instance, last century brought both the biggest collapse and the most promising union in the modern history. Although U.S.S.R has disappeared from geographical maps, some of its members joined another alliance. The European Union (EU) is an economic and political partnership that united 28 countries on the European part of Eurasia and represents a unique form of cooperation among members today.
According to the Europa.eu (1), The European Union is one of strongest economic areas in the world. There is an estimated five hundred million people. Europe also make up of seven point three percent of the world 's population,
It can pass the costs of R & D and production costs over a larger volume of production and thereby reduce the unit cost total. The global scale permits huge economies as the benefits of scale taken from the experience in one market are developed in others.
Economic union is a type of trade bloc, which consists of a common market with the Customs Union. It involves both common policies on product regulation, free movement of goods, services and factors of production (capital and labour), and the policy of the joint participation of foreign trade. When it includes a common currency within an economic union, it becomes an economic and monetary union. The purpose for the establishment of an economic union usually includes increasing economic efficiency and establishes political and cultural relations between the member states. European Economic Union is one of the specialties that have been changing the world. Secondly, I will also mention in this
According from the concept of economic integration, which defined by Mattli Walter in his book (The Logic of Regional Integration. Europe and Beyond). Although, the regional integration can describe in many different aspects of cooperation, but it is mostly used in a condition of economy and international trade. Integration then becomes economic integration and can be defined as “the voluntary linking in the economic domain of two or more formerly independent states to the extent that authority over key areas of domestic regulation and policy is shifted to the supranational level”. (Mattli 1999)