Essays on European Integration

Introduction

The European Union is the result of the flow of economic integration in the world. It was created in 1958 and became a powerful economic group. Within the framework of the Union, the benefits of mutual trade are established, the general economic policy is carried out, and restrictions on the movement of goods, capital, and labor are constantly removed (Krugman, Obstfeld, and Melitz, 2014). The creation of the EU was due primarily to the fact that in Western Europe after the Second World War, the contradiction between the international character of modern production and the narrow national and state ...

The first proposals of the European integration have been made at the Paris Conference in 1867. However, the practical realization of the idea of integration was not accomplished: the contradictions between the two countries were so deep that the awareness of the need to cooperate in the union went through two world wars and several local wars. Integration trends in Europe re-emerged immediately after the Second World War, when major European countries have realized that the restoration and development of national economies is the only possible way combining efforts and resources. Plan for the creation of the European Community ...

The journey towards the European Union (EU) integration has experienced several turnings. This section of the essay will detail some of the core turning points in the EU integration. Establishment of a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was a major turning point in EU integration. The Treaty of Rome defined the specific objectives of the CAP. The CAP was introduced in 1962 (Folmern.p). The establishment of the CAP was enshrined to the state of food shortages after World War II. The aim of the CAP was to build a common European Community market and to cut off tariffs on agricultural ...

Essay

Question 1. Why and how did Unilever change its management strategy in Europe? Compare and contrast Unilever’s former multinational approach to strategy with the new ‘One Unilever’ strategy. Initially European integration was connected with a number of difficulties that Unilever never expected to face. The issue can easily be explained by the fact that Unilever treated European market as a single one. It happened because Unilever had the experience of operating only within the local (national) market. The need for the change of management and strategy was obvious as the company needed to acquire knowledge of the product ...

Question 1.

The European Integration has undergone several changes to be what it is now. Several incidents and treaties marked the turning points for the EU in its infancy years to create a more stable and unified European cooperation. The Marshall Plan formed in 1948 consolidated democracy in Europe after the German defeat in the WW2 (Dinan 1122). The United States proposed the plan to speed up economic development in the transatlantic region. The plan saw the creation of the OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) liberalize trade and the Coal and Steel Community to oversee the extraction of coal in ...

Explain the terms “widening” and “deepening” in terms of how they apply to the European Union.

Deepening could be defined as the gradual process of formal, vertical institutionalization. On the other hand, widening could be defined as the gradual process of formal, horizontal institutionalization. The European integration process has many different dimensions. It highlights historical, political, economic, sociological and judicial dimensions. Deepening and widening have distinct meanings when applied to the different dimensions of European integration (European Commission, 2009). Deepening and widening are schools of thought showing how the European Union should develop. The European Union has evolved progressively to what is termed as the first-ever close union among European people. Its clear manifestation is ...

On first January 1999, eleven European countries decided to denominate their currencies into a single currency. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty had established a convergence criterion for countries wishing to join the European Monetary Union (EMU). The criterion was designed to be a foundation for qualifying for the EMU and related to the size of national debts, interest rates, inflation and budget deficits. The Euro system consisted of the European Central Bank with eleven central banks of the participating states presuming the roles in monetary policy (Mody et al. 2012). In 2002, the Euro took the form of coins and ...

Introduction

The ongoing "refugee crisis" remains one of the troubling issues and increasing problem in the European integration. Over the last few years, the European Union (EU) has experienced crises resulting from Russia and Ukraine conflict and economic instability in Greece. However, these issues cannot be compared to the current unprecedented influx. The communities in the EU are now struggling to cope with the unanticipated increase of the migrants and asylum-seekers, which started few years ago but considered to reach a climax in 2015. In this year, it is estimated that more than one million refugees and migrants entered into ...