The Expansion of European Integrative Processes Essay

The Expansion of European Integrative Processes - Essay Example The European Union has also fostered peace, security, justice and freedom among the nations formed the organization. The European integration is the process of economic, legal, industrial and political unification of the European states. European integration, formerly European federalism, was changed to its current name by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher three decades since its formation in the 1950s years shortly after the devastating second World War and serves many functions, which include lowering of risks and emergence of war, eliminating of trade barriers at the national level that has led to the economic growth among the member states of the union. Through the removal of trade barriers, the European integration has led to the development of European Economic Community,which has enabled better exchange of goods and services among the member states. This includes, for example, import and export sector, which, in turn, entails goods like machinery, automobiles, chemicals, in dustrial goods, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology products, not mention other import and export goods.European Economic Integrative Processes Over the years European Union has undergone several integrative processes which have helped it achieve its objectives.The integration processes include the economic, regional, social and political integrations. To begin with is the economic integration which forms the most important function of the European Union. ... process is ensured by the EEC which eliminated the quotas, tariffs and preference on the imports and exports among its members thereby creating a Free Trade Area (FTA). According to the Free Trade Association, all types of the national legislation- all that caused hindrance to the manufacturers from moving freely from one market to the other had to vanish and infrastructure later improved. This led to many countries signing the European Union Association Agreement (AA) that had the Free Trade Area provisions and included Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Tunisia among the many nations. Other agreements signed include Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) and the Eastern Partnership (Haines 59). As per the Maastricht Treaty created in 1992, EU’s main goal was to ensure creation and maintaining of a solitary market which guaranteed the â€Å"four basic freedoms† to make certain the liberated movements of goods, capital, people and services across the EU market. This led t o the creation of European Economic Area (EEA) which allowed three nations: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to participate in the EU single market without necessarily joining it (Segell 200). Several custom unions were also created for instance the European Customs Union which defined the removal of the tariff barriers which were imposed internally among the EEC constituent member states which was brought into impact in 1968. The countries that belong to the EU custom union include the San Marino and Andorra while Turkey was given the association by the EUTCU (European Union –Turkey Customs Union) (Kramberger 56). Several European economic integrative processes followed on then and these include the fiscal unions and other monetary unions which have assisted in the realization of economic growth