Maastricht Treaty Essay

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The Maastricht Treaty is the supranational agreement that  created  the  European  Union  (EU) and  moved member states closer to economic and political unity. Also known  as the  Treaty  on  European  Union,  it derives its name from the Dutch  city Maastricht  in which it was signed on February 7, 1992, following a prolonged  period of often fractious and politically charged negotiations.  After eventually being ratified by all members, the Maastricht  Treaty took effect on November  1 of the  following year, superseding  the Treaty  of Rome and the European  Economic Community  (EEC) and  marking  the  greatest  degree  of multinational cooperation  achieved  to  date  among European member states. The treaty can be regarded as the continuation of a decades-long trend  wherein many European nations have been progressively moving toward economic and political unity.

At the time the Maastricht  Treaty brought  the EU into existence, it contained  12 original member countries, with Austria, Finland, and Sweden later joining as additional signatories in 1995. In 2004 and again in 2007, the treaty was amended to permit the inclusion of 12 additional  states (10 in 2004, two in 2007) into the EU. Presently three countries are candidates for EU membership, and the treaty is expected to be expanded again with the anticipated accession of Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey into the EU, although as of 2008 no admission date had been agreed upon. However, in the wake of the rapid expansion of the EU in the first years of the 21st century, many citizens of current  member states advocate a slower rate of expansion.

Subsequent  external  protocols  associated with the Maastricht Treaty facilitated the adoption of new policies related to political and economic unity, including the establishment  of EU citizenship, giving citizens of states holding full EU membership the right to live and work in any EU state and the right to vote in elections in that state. Many aspects of EU law and the Maastricht Treaty regulate matters unrelated to trade or economic affairs, such as television broadcast standards, exhaust regulations  for automobiles,  public health guidelines, and the elimination of capital punishment.

While  many dimensions  of the  Maastricht  Treaty also address social and political issues, arguably its primary function is to strengthen its members economically. Specifically, cultivation  of closer economic  linkages between member states improves the ability of the community as a whole to compete in the arena of global trade. By eliminating or reducing tariffs and by simplifying the movement of goods and labor across borders, the community as a whole was foreseen as becoming more economically efficient and competitive. The Maastricht Treaty delineated  policies and distinct  phases of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that eventually led to the introduction of the euro in 1999 and established it as the common currency of most EU member states. The treaty also established the economic  criteria that EU states must fulfill as members.

Additionally, the treaty created  a body of institutions  that  have  become  collectively known  as  the “Three Pillars of the EU”: the European Communities (EC) pillar that  had existed in previous form within the European Community  (EC) organization, the Common  Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) pillar, and the Police and Judicial Cooperation  in Criminal Matters  (PJCC) pillar. The first pillar, or EC Pillar, is concerned principally with economic, environmental, and social policies and addresses matters such as agriculture, customs, economic/monetary union, healthcare, and immigration  and citizenship  policies. The second, or CFSP Pillar, addresses foreign policy and military matters  such as deployment  of peacekeepers. The third, or PJCC Pillar, promotes  cooperation in combating  smuggling, terrorism,  and other forms of crime. The pillar structure  of organizing laws and regulations is slated to be abolished by merging into a single, consolidated  European  Union  authority  in 2009 pending the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon.

Support for the Maastricht Treaty has not been universal, and its ratification was contested heavily in several nations  including Britain, Denmark,  and France. Elements within both the British government  and the general public were opposed  to certain  social provisions proposed by Maastricht, and Britain was initially granted  exemptions  from  the  social chapter  of the treaty such as those regulating workers’ pay and benefits. After a change in government, Britain eventually did adopt  Maastricht’s social protocols,  but together with Denmark and Sweden has declined to adopt the euro as its currency. After initially voting against the treaty by a narrow margin, Danish voters later narrowly voted to ratify Maastricht  after Denmark was permitted to opt out of certain  of the treaty’s sociopolitical provisions. Maastricht was only narrowly approved by French voters in a 1993 referendum.  More recently, in 2005, Maastricht’s constitution was to be ratified, facilitating a greater merging of sovereignty among members, but opposition was voiced in many countries and voters in both France and the Netherlands rejected the EU constitution via referendum.

Bibliography:  

  1. Stefania Baroncelli, Carlo  Spagnolo,  and Leila Simona  Talani,  Back  to  Maastricht:  Obstacles  to Constitutional  Reform Within  the EU Treaty (1991–2007) (Cambridge  Scholars, 2008);
  2. Michael J. Baun, An Imperfect Union: The Maastricht Treaty and the New Politics of European Integration (Westview  Press,  1996);
  3. Elizabeth E. Bomberg and  Alexander  -G.  Stubb,  The European Union: How Does it Work? (Oxford University Press, 2003);
  4. European Union, The Treaty of the European Union, Mastricht Treaty,  February  7,  1992,  eurotreaties.com (cited March  2009);
  5. Paul Hoebink, The Treaty  of Maastrict and Europe’s Development Co-operation (Aksant Academic Publishers, 2004);
  6. Berthold Rittberger, Building Europe’s Parliament: Democratic Representation  Beyond the Nation-State  (Oxford University Press, 2005);
  7. James D. Savage, Making the EMU: The Politics of Budgetary Surveillance and the Enforcement of Maastricht (Oxford University Press, 2007);
  8. Constantin Stefanou, The Dynamic of the Maastricht Process (Bruylant, 2007).

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