Introduction: The idea of Europe and EU history Prof. Andreas Bieler

Structure of the lecture Explanation of module guide; ‘Integration’; EU member states; Key dates in EU history; Key EU institutions;

2. ‘Integration’: integration involves the partial transfer of sovereignty to supranational institutions and/or the pooling of sovereignty via QMV (Nugent 2006: 108-9) in the Council of Ministers; co-operation implies that nation states fully retain their sovereignty and cannot be outvoted at the international level;

3. EU member states: 1952 European Coal and Steel Community: France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands;   1973 first enlargement: Britain, Ireland and Denmark join the EU; 1981 accession of Greece to the EU; 1986 accession of Spain and Portugal to the EU;

EU member states: 1995 accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the EU;   2004 accession of 8 Central and Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia) as well as Malta and Cyprus; 2007 Bulgaria and Romania join the EU, bringing the number of EU members up to 27;

Member States of European Union Member States of European Union 2009. ©Ssolbergj: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Member_States_of_the_European_Union_(polar_stereographic_projection)_EN.svg Licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported