Supreme bodies of authority in the European Union

The European Council of Ministers is made up of a ministerial representative from each member state. When agriculture is being discussed, then countries are represented by their agriculture ministers. When broad economic issues are discussed, it will be finance ministers who are present. New policies put forward by the European Commission are either approved or rejected by the Council of Ministers. Hence, the Council of Ministers is the most important decision-making body. In most areas, there has to be a unanimous vote for a policy to be approved. However, in some areas, only a majority vote is needed.

The European Parliament, based in Strasbourg, is made up of elected representatives (MEPs) from the member states. The European Parliament is a relatively weak body: Until recently, it had almost no decision-making powers at all and even since the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), when its powers were increased, it has been able to do little more than rubber stamp decisions made elsewhere. The intention is that the European Parliament will, over time, increase its powers to become more like a national parliament.

The European Court of Justice, which meets in Luxembourg, is another powerful body. It is the ultimate court of law and is responsible for making judgements on EU law. It regularly passes judgements which have a significant impact on individual countries or the entire Community. For instance, its judgement on equal pension rights in 1992 forced the UK government to move towards equalizing the state retiring age for men and women in the UK at 65.

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Globalization

The term globalization entered the economic vocabulary not very long ago, at the end of the 20th century. At present by globalization economists mean geographical shifts in domestic economic activity around the world and away from nation states. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development defines globalization as “the geographic dispersion of.industrial and service activities (for example research and development, sourcing of inputs, production and distribution) and the cross-border networking of companies (for example through joint ventures and the sharing of assets).” The most obvious manifestations of this process are the facts that the annual rate of growth in international trade has been consistently higher than that of world production, while multinational corporations have continued to extend their operations. However, globalization no longer necessarily requires a physical presence in other countries, or even exports and imports; for instance, activity can be shifted abroad by licensing, which only needs information and finance to cross borders. Although not new, the pace of globalization has accelerated in the post-Second World War period, facilitated by improvements in transport and communications, the promotion of deregulation in different sectors, the removal of trade restrictions and exchange controls (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). The motives for globalization include lower labor costs and other favorable factor endowments abroad and the circumvention of remaining tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Concern has been expressed that economic activity and employment in the advanced countries will drain away to the developing countries, but the theory of international trade and past experience suggest that all nations in the globalization process will gain in the long run.

That has not allayed concerns that certain sections of the population in richer countries — notably, relatively unskilled workers — will lose, as an abundance of unskilled labor makes itself available to the world’s companies.

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