The Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in December 2009, aims to make the European Union both more efficient and legitimate. Two new important posts were created; an elected President of the European Council and a High Representative (HR) of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy who will also be a Vice-President of the Commission. Leading international scholars have been gathered together to examine the institutional choices and innovations of the Lisbon Treaty and discuss the likely effects of these changes. Will the changes meet the declared goals of a more efficient and democratic...

This volume features up-to-date studies of regional integration efforts in all major parts of the world, especially North America, South America, and East Asia. Comparisons are drawn between these efforts and those made in the EU, where integration has progressed much further. The book asks: what explains the variation in achievements? What kind of agreements and institutions are needed to produce regional integration? Is 'pooling and delegation' of sovereignty necessary to overcome 'collective action problems'? How important is regional leadership? This work is a major new contribution to...

This book outlines the content of the main treaties that form the 'constitutional' basis of the European Union and analyses changes in these over time. The EU has expanded its policy scope and taken in many more members transferring powers to common supranational institutions in a way seen nowhere else in the world.

By contrasting different theoretical perspectives on regional integration, this valuable text advances our understanding of this important phenomenon in international relations. The volume contains theoretical considerations with empirical studies of integration efforts in many parts of the world including Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Structured in four sections: governmentalist perspectives; power perspectives; constructivist perspectives; and neofunctionalist and historical institutionalist perspectives, the book offers important insights to theorists, policy makers, students and...

This book analyses the EU's Constitutional Treaty, which emerged in draft form from the European Convention in the summer of 2003 and which was finalised by an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in June 2004. It describes the main novelties of the treaty and looks at policies of important actors, Member States and Community actors (the Commission and European Parliament) and the roles played by the Convention and the Italian and Irish Presidencies during the process of deliberation and negotiation that produced the treaty. It further studies the failure of ratification in France and the...

The global financial crisis, which started in the United States in 2007, spread to Europe in 2009. It especially hit Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, countries which have introduced the single currency, the euro. These eurozone countries no longer have monetary policy autonomy, so they do not have the option of devaluation to increase competitiveness. The crisis has shown that the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) created in 1993, and which led to the single currency in 1999, is faulty. Its built-in asymmetry, with centralised monetary policy and decentralised fiscal policy,...

The Development of the EU as a Sea-Policy Actor explores the marine and maritime policies of the European Union (EU), including fisheries, maritime transport, marine environment and maritime safety policies. These policies have made the EU an important sea-policy actor internally and externally. The author places the EU's sea-related policies in a historical context and discusses the explanatory power of various political science theories, international relations and regional integration theories in particular. What emerges clearly is that no one theory can explain the observed...