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Alex White s CEO Should the UK remain in the EU? [/b][/b] The European Union is an international organisation, which contains 27 member states and was founded in 1951. It has disproportional political and economic importance to its land mass (about 6 % of the world) and it counts among its member states half of G 8. The EU is both supranational and intergovernmental in its operation. It was established for economic benefits and to avoid another war (Europe had just endured a bloody period of conflict) however relatively recently its role has changed and it now deals with policy with would previously have been left to the member states own government. It is a common misconception that the European Union has ultimate power over member governments in all cases but this is not true; while some areas of policy are out of the hands of national governments, most are still dealt with internally. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (which is usually referred to as the United Kingdom or UK) is a state situated in North Western Europe (see map 1).
It is made up of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and other territory around the world, for example Gibraltar. Its population is about sixty million people. The main language of the UK is English but Welsh is also a national language. Its government type is parliamentary constitutional monarchy which, simply put, means that the UK is a democracy with a sovereign who technically has supreme power but it is unlikely that it would ever be used. The UK has great international importance; both economic and political. The UKs main moneymakers are services; for example banking.
The European Union, if good for nothing else, is a fascinating experiment in politics and it is completely unprecedented. The EU is, and always will be a topic of great debate. It is intergovernmental, it is supranational and it is certainly hard to understand. There is much debate over the EU and the main topic of debate is should membership be retained. This debate is not limited to the UK and is a topic of political discussion throughout the member states. It is worth noting that the UKs public are more anti-EU than most of the member states.
In this essay I will look at whether or not the UK should remain in the EU; to do this I will look at the history of the EU, the structure of the EU, its effects on the UK, and finally the different arguments for and against membership in the European Union. The European Union was formed after World War II to avoid conflict especially between France and Germany whose hostility had been significant factors in both World Wars. To avoid any more conflict various schemes were tried. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was the most significant of these and it was established in the early 1950 s by Robert Schuman (the then French foreign minister) and Jean Monnet (the then Planning Commissioner in France). The member states were: the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg. The aim was to share resources (mostly coal and steel - hence the name) to rebuild Western Europe, which had been destroyed after World War II.
To make these countries share their coal and steel an organisation was needed; the ECSC created the Commission, Council and Parliament. In 1957 the ECSC became the European Economic Community, or Common Market, in the Treaty of Rome. All EU treaty law is amendments of the Treaty of Rome and it still holds great significance. Technically the treaty was mostly an economic institution until 1980, but it did state at the beginning of the treaty that it was for an ever closer union between the peoples of Europe. The Treaty was essentially made to establish European government bodies, give member states the freedom to transfer goods, people and money (capital), and to introduce inter-state cohesion i. e.
states support each other economically so that every state can grow at the same pace. There were three other options open for free trading in Europe at that time all of which were operating completely separately from the ECC. They were the European Free Trade Area, the Baltic Free Trade Area and the Central European Free Trade Agreement. The EFTA is the only one likely to continue to have importance, as its members have not expressed any wish to join the European Union. The UK made two unsuccessful attempts to join the ECC in 1963 and 1967 mainly due to the efforts of the French Prime Minister Charles De Gaulle. Edward Heath was the British Prime Minister who eventually gained entrance, this occurring 1973.
In 1975 the new British Prime Minister Harold Wilson held a referendum on membership in the EEC. Significantly both major UK political parties split over the question of membership and the conservative party remains so. In the late seventies the European Parliament began to have more power and in 1979 all EU citizens (i. e.
citizens of the member states) could vote for their Member of European Parliament (MEP). 1979 was also an important year as it saw the introduction of the European Monetary System (EMS). The point of which being, to achieve a single currency and implement the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) that was a method of keeping exchange rates stable. This was good for trade and was important in the construction of the single market. In 1986 the Single European Act (SEA) was signed which was, as the name suggests, an attempt to unify the EEC. It was the first real attempt to amend the Treaty of Rome and its aims were quite significantly different.
Whereas the Treaty of Rome was mostly an economic pact, the Single European Act was an attempt at creating the common market that still did not really exist. The SEA stated that by 1992 a Single Market should be in place. A single market is a common economic policy, which means that each member state must adhere to central policy. A good example of this is interest rates; the central bank of a nation cannot change them if necessary and it must keep them at the standard rate. Most of Europe has a single market and it is, monetarily, one state. This single market is now known as the European Monetary Union (EMU) and it is so advanced...
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