The European Parliament, Sovereignty And The Limits Of European Integration

The European Parliament, Sovereignty And The Limits Of European Integration Presented by: Dr. Krunková Date: 22 March 2024 European Integration - - Efforts to integrate European states were under way in earlier historical periods: • Pan-European Movement - 1923, • An attempt at a European Federal Union in 1929 • An appeal to the United States of Europe in 1946. Only the combination of integration of European communities (the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community, and the European Atomic Energy Community) gave it a different dimension. - Expansion in its popularity in several stages : • Requests for enlargement of the then European Communities • The creation of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for the European Union an appeal to the United States of Europe in 1946. • - Great enlargement in 2004 a stage Equally indisputable is the fact that European integration in each of its phases faced certain limitations or limits that it tried to overcome in its next (subsequent) phase of integration (such as the internal market, monetary union, etc.). Legal Limits Factual Limits - Basic legally legitimate limits: • Equality of Member States before treaties • Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality • National identity • Fundamental political systems • Fundamental constitutional systems • Regional and local governments • Fundamental state functions, • Ensuring the territorial integrity of the state, • Maintenance of law and order • Ensuring national security, • Principles of the rule of law. State Sovereignty - Independence, Sovereignty of State power • Sovereignty is expressed as a principle, the tenet of equality and selfdetermination of nations and, at the same time, it is one of the fundamental principles of international law in the sense of the Declaration of Principles of International Law adopted by the UN Special Committee in 1964- - The sovereignty of power is its legitimacy - LEGITIMATION CHAIN - the source of power (citizen) - elections - state authorities - the implementation of power - It is the State authorities that are the facet through which legitimacy and sovereignty translate into practice European Union - Long-standing dispute over sovereignty between the Member States and the institutions of the Union in the form of a latent conflict over the relationship of European Union law with the constitutions of the Member States - Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union (hereinafter referred to as the EU Treaty) and Art. 223 et seq. of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) the bodies of the European Union: • The European Parliament, • The European Council, • The Council Of The European Union, • The European Commission, • The Court Of Justice Of The European Union, • The European Central Bank, And The Court Of Auditors. Federalism - At the level of federalism (and in composite states), it is the federal authorities that perform essential tasks not only in relation to the law of the federation. Particular attention is paid to those federation bodies that are created directly, so their legitimacy is unquestionable. - In the European Union, only the European Parliament is such a body. Elections to the European Parliament will soon take place in all Member States this year. At the same time, the European Parliament is the body whose transformational development is the most pronounced among the bodies of the European Union. The European Parliament - Historical milestones: • The predecessor of the European Parliament was the Parliamentary Assembly 78 representatives - delegates from the national parliaments of the six founding countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg). • Thus, it was in the position of an indirectly created body, from members of the parliaments of the Member States, i.e., from representatives of the legislative power within individual Member States. • In accordance with the founding agreement, it was vested with mainly consultative (in budgetary matters) and supervisory powers. Its task was also to supervise the activities of the High Office, evaluate its annual report, or divest it of full powers in justified cases permissible by the treaty. • The first Assembly conceived in this way convened on September 10, 1952 in Strasbourg. • In March 1962, the Assembly was renamed the "European Parliament". • The first direct elections to the Parliament were held in June 1979, in July of the same year the European Parliament began to operate with 410 Members from nine Member States at its headquarters in Strasbourg. • The Single European Act once again extended the role of the European Parliament. • The Maastricht Treaty significantly strengthened the role of the European Parliament in both legislative and supervisory work. • The Treaty of Amsterdam - the number of sectoral policies in which the codecision principle was applied to the adoption of legal acts was increased. • The current European Council Decision (EU) 2023/2061 of 22 September 2023 establishing the composition of the European Parliament changed the number of Members of Parliament to 720. Citizen Of The European Union - An any natural person who holds the citizenship of any of the Member States. - One of the basic limits of European integration - the clash of state sovereignty with the personification of citizenship. - Negation the basic principle on which sovereign states stand. - Euro-citizenship does not play an important role in relation to the creation of the European Parliament, the citizenship of a Member State is crucial in this respect Elections To The European Parliament - The area of countries whose borders form the external borders of the EU (sometimes not very correctly referred to as the EU area) is more than 4 million km². - The population accounted for by the Member States is approximately 448.4 million. - The elections to the European Parliament have been held a total of 9 times. - The electoral turnout of citizens of all Member States oscillates around 50%. - The highest turnout was in 1979. - The lowest turnout was in 2004. - Only half of the possible voters exercise the sovereignty of their power in relation to the EU. - The European Union will have to face in the future, and even when organizing relations with Member States, it will have to reflect on the personnel substrate behind it. CONCLUSIONS - Quintus Horatius Flaccus • "Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines."  "There is a way to go about anything, but everything has its limits."