Europa heute - eine Bestandsaufnahme

The European intergration, institutionalised in the European Union and Community, is one of the most significant and most surprising transformations in the last century. After the first gradual accession, now almost every Central and Western European Member State has joined into a comprehensive organisation owning extensive rights, which grants its own organisations and rights. The few European States that are not joined, link to it through conventions. The participating States made this merger on the basis of a contract and, in contrast to the historical patterns, it was not estabilished on the pressure of constraint, dictatorship or hegemony. It is a widespread theory that the European Union was primarily only an economic community and only later, after the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht, it became a political union, but it does not meet the happenings. The union has been a political union - even incomplete and rudimentary - since the beggining, not only because of its political objectives, but because of its interest; and it was expanded gradually, with the consolidation of national policies.