Week 3 - Summarized Notes + Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering European integration stages, economic integration levels, differentiated integration models, the failing forward hypothesis, EU institutions, and rule of law mechanisms.

Free Trade Agreement (FTA)

An agreement in which member states agree to remove or lower tariffs and other trade barriers among themselves.

Customs Union

An agreement in which member states establish free trade among themselves and adopt a shared external trade policy toward non-members.

Single Market

An economic arrangement guaranteeing the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people across member state borders.

Economic Union

A level of economic integration combining a single market with unified or coordinated fiscal policy and monetary integration.

Treaty of Paris (1951)

The treaty creating the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to communitarize coal and steel production, establishing the High Authority, Parliamentary Assembly, and Court of Justice.

Treaties of Rome (1957)

Treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and Euratom, proposing a customs union, single market, and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Single European Act (1986)

An act completing the Customs Union and setting a formal deadline for the establishment of the European Single Market.

Maastricht Treaty (1993)

The treaty establishing the European Single Market and marking the formal founding of the European Union.

Internal Differentiation

A feature of European integration allowing EU member states to opt out or be temporarily excluded from specific integration systems, such as Schengen or the Eurozone.

External Differentiation

A process through which non-EU member states selectively adopt and participate in specific EU policies, agreements, or single market arrangements.

Supranational Institutions

Bodies granted independent authority by member states to create rules applying directly to all members, such as the European Commission, European Parliament, Court of Justice, and ECB.

Intergovernmental Institutions

Bodies in which member states retain national authority and directly represent national interests, such as the European Council and Council of Ministers.

Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP)

The standard legislative process where the European Commission proposes laws, and the Council (typically via QMV) and Parliament jointly amend or adopt them.

Intergovernmental Method

A decision-making process where member states propose legislation directly to the Council, typically requiring unanimity for adoption in sensitive fields like foreign policy and taxation.

Failing Forward

A dynamic of European integration where intergovernmental bargaining yields incomplete, lowest common denominator institutions, which unleash functional spillovers and crises that force member states into subsequent cycles of deeper integration.

Liberal Intergovernmentalism

An integration theory positing that short-term integration decisions are determined by interstate bargaining driven by domestically defined national economic preferences, producing lowest common denominator outcomes.

Neofunctionalism

An integration theory suggesting that initial steps toward economic integration generate functional spillovers into adjacent policy fields, creating long-term pressure for further deepening.

Lamfalussy Process

A multi-stage regulatory framework for European financial markets created in the early 2000s, combining corporate self-regulation with soft coordination among national regulatory authorities.

Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)

A compromise reform granting the European Central Bank direct supervisory authority over systemically important European banks following the Eurozone crisis.

Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT)

An ECB program announced by Mario Draghi allowing potentially unlimited purchases of short-term sovereign bonds of euro area states participating in a formal fiscal adjustment program.

Permissive Consensus

An era in early EU history during which citizens passively allowed political elites to direct the process and speed of European integration without major public contestation.

Constraining Dissensus

A modern political environment in which citizens actively scrutinize, contest, and limit further European deepening and widening through referendums and public mobilization.

Multi-Speed Europe

A model of differentiated integration where all member states pursue common objectives, but do so over different time frames due to temporary exemptions or capacity differences.

Concentric Circles Model

A model of differentiated integration consisting of an avant-garde inner core of highly integrated states surrounded by outer circles of states with permanent opt-outs.

À la Carte Europe

A functional model of differentiated integration allowing member states to selectively pick and choose which policy areas to join or opt out of.

Enhanced Cooperation

A constitutional mechanism enabling a minimum of nine member states to pursue deeper integration in specific policy fields using EU institutions without forcing reluctant states to join.

Differentiated Disintegration

The selective reduction of a state's level and scope of integration with the European Union, exemplified by Brexit.

European Political Community (EPC)

An informal political entity proposed by Emmanuel Macron in May 2022 to foster political, security, and energy cooperation among European nations without offering immediate EU accession.

Rule of Law Framework

A three-stage procedure (assessment, recommendation, monitoring) introduced by the European Commission in 2014 to address systemic threats to the rule of law in a member state before triggering Article 7 TEU.

Article 7 TEU Procedure

A treaty mechanism designed to safeguard core EU values, comprising preventive warnings (7(1)) and sanctioning mechanisms (7(2)/(3)) capable of suspending a member state's voting rights.

Abusive Constitutionalism

The intentional utilization of mechanisms of legal and constitutional change by a governing majority to make a state significantly less democratic.

Regulation 2020/2092 (Conditionality Regulation)

An EU mechanism designed to protect the Union budget by proposing measures such as the suspension of EU funds against member states where rule of law breaches affect sound financial management.

1992 Edinburgh Agreement

An agreement granting Denmark legal opt-outs in four policy fields (EMU, JHA, Defence, and EU Citizenship) following its initial rejection of the Maastricht Treaty.

E6 (Two-Speed Europe)

A proposed grouping of six core EU finance ministers coordinating investments and market integration, representing an avant-garde group within a two-speed Europe model.

Schengen Area Accession Map

A map depicting the timeline and regional expansion of European countries entering the border-control-free Schengen area across member and non-member states.

Possible Future EU Enlargements Timeline

An analytical projection timeline highlighting candidate and potential candidate countries along with their estimated accession years to the EU.