The European Union

Introduction

 

At the turn of the XXI century. The European Union is entering a new and unprecedented phase in its expansion. The number of members from Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states is planned to increase from 15 to 26. Given the attendant geopolitical factors, serious observers have compared such an event leading to the establishment of the Common Market of forty years ago.

Walking to the East, the EU is significantly expanding its resource potential (area - 34%, the population - 29%), turns to the world's largest market with 500 million consumers, preserves the spatial dynamics of integration. Politically, the hegemony of the European Union formed the main part of Europe, which gives it an entirely different international influence, status and position. Architects of the expansion is not without reason, hoping that the new format, it will be much more active "in demand" in the global decision-making, strengthen its position in the WTO, IMF, OECD and NATO, will become a recognized leader in terms of models of integration and the development of modern international right. It is no accident CEC Chairman J. Santer sees future expansion not only as "the greatest event in the European integration," "a wonderful gift which we are presenting this to themselves, the acceding countries and the world at large."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contemporary social policy of the EU

 

At the present stage of development of the EU there was a new social redistribution of functions between its institutions and national governments. Based on the provisions of the Treaty, the European Commission has prepared three policy papers - Green Paper "Alternatives for the Union", dedicated to European social policy (November 1993), White Paper "European social policy: a way for the Union" (July 1994) and "Medium-term program of social action, 1995-1997" (April 1995). This list will certainly be included as the White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment (December 1993), in which the EU formulated a principled approach to the relationship of economic and social policy in general, and in the first place - to determine the optimal balance between the promotion of increased competitiveness and economic growth, on the one hand, and providing a high level of employment, social protection guarantees - on the other.

The long-term employment policy priority number one is named in all the important documents of EC, published in 1993-1997. This course is aimed at achieving the twin goals - first, the effective use of human resources to fully realize the benefits of the world's largest single market, thereby strengthening the EU's position in the global economy and, secondly, to raise the level of political support for population planning further European unification.

A new approach to the problem of employment, perhaps most clearly articulated in the White Paper on social policy: "For too long, Europe has concentrated its efforts on the regulation of unemployment, whereas the highest priority should be to stimulate job creation." The solution of this problem requires the coordination of a number of areas of economic and social policies, as necessary, on the one hand, stimulate economic growth and productive investments that create new jobs, but on the other - to increase investment in "human capital", ie, in the preparation of the workforce new quality. This approach is reflected in the employment strategy adopted at the European Council in Brussels in December 1993 it was allocated in the seven key areas for action:

- Improving education and training;

- A more flexible policy at the enterprise level and the labor market as a whole;

- Organizational restructuring work at the enterprise level;

- Focused on the rate of reduction of indirect labor costs;

- More efficient use of public funds, created to address the problems of unemployment;

- Implementation of special programs for the purpose of training young people;

- Promoting the growth of employment with the new requirements.

Such a reorientation of the employment strategy is inextricably linked with the task of creating a single labor market in the EU. As noted in the White Paper on social policy, a "real European labor market has not yet been established." To solve this problem not only because labor mobility is much inferior to the mobility of capital. The social program of the European Union provides a number of measures to facilitate labor mobility, such as ensuring the right of residence, the recognition of professional qualifications, the settlement of pension rights and the taxation of citizens of one Member State working in another Member State, etc. There are also a number of improvements to the rights of migrant workers from third countries, if they moved in, living and working in EU countries legally. (In the mid-90s migrants from third countries amounted to about 5% of the economically active population of the European Union.

Functions of the institutions of the European Union                        

The functions of the EU institutions are very important and diverse. Among them: developing strategies, frameworks, common guidelines, research, promotion of dialogue through conferences and other forms of debate, the collection and dissemination of information, including statistics, analysis of the situation and monitoring compliance with the agreed policy and the implementation of decisions taken in Member States and, if necessary, make recommendations to their governments, the general coordination of Member States, development of supranational regulations and monitoring their implementation in national legislation, and finally, develop and implement their own programs, funded from the EU budget, by loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) or from other sources. Organizational Development and implementation of the overall employment strategy operates as head of the EU institutions - the European Council, Council, Commission, European Parliament, the Court and the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions - and the specialized agencies, functionally related to social policy in the broad sense of the word .

This system is the interaction of EU institutions and Member States, as well as the institutional mechanism through which the agreed policy of employment, may be called typical of the current stage of development of the EU. In particular, this applies to the EU activities in the social sphere. They can be grouped into three groups:

assistance in solving specific social problems that exacerbate the situation of certain categories of workers (women, youth, seniors and the elderly, disabled, or disabilities), or workers in some sectors of the economy (agriculture, fisheries, transport, etc.);

contribute to improving the health and safety, quality of life;

promote the gradual convergence of national social systems through the development of common social norms included in EU law.

As the first group, the functions of the EU institutions include both legal regulation, and coordination of Member States and implementation of their programs ("initiatives") due to allocations from the budget. Bo-second and third cases, the predominant if not exclusive, form of action at EU level is the legal regulation, which has a clear limit. As outlined in the White Paper, "the current approach is aimed not, harmonization of national social protection systems, and effective coordination of these systems within the Union," and this principle is once again confirmed in the medium-term program of social action: "full harmonization of national egg-owls social policy is not on the agenda of the Commission and the Union. " At the same time the European Commission insists that the White Paper on the need to move more rapidly into the national legislation of the scope and increase its performance.

In the above formulation is a contradiction, but it reflects the dynamics of integration processes defined by a clash between two principles - national and supranational. The overall result was usually a gradual "spillover" of functions from the national public sphere in a supra-national (or transnational). It is tempting to predict the further development of this trend at an exponential rate. But we would have to be careful. This induces a deeper analysis of the interaction between the two levels of decision-making process of European integration.

In fact, neither its theoretical nor politicians who developed an integration strategy for the Community and then Union never considered supranational instruments for its implementation as the only ones. Discussions on the ratio of the two levels of decision-making affected all areas of economic regulation and social welfare. But the accusations against the opponents of expanding the competence of supranational institutions, perhaps, never sounded so sharply and have not had such a frank ideological nature, both in terms of social policy. This was largely due to the activities of the Left, especially the Communist parties and were under the influence of trade unions. Meanwhile, the question of the relationship between national and supranational social policy can not be reduced to a clash, "innovators" and "reactionaries" or "antagonism" between the interests of labor and capital. This question is worthy of analysis in the functional approach. To begin with, the policies implemented by the Community institutions, from the outset and throughout the history of European integration has been built on top of the policy pursued by national governments. These two levels of decision-making and implementation are different from each other functionally. The base has been and remains a national level - even where the organs of the Community (and now - the Union) took over the exclusive right of decision-making (eg, customs policy, trade agreements with third countries, monetary policy), because the transfer of a member state part of its sovereign rights does not mean its out of them. As a rule, these two levels are related as complementary. It is this version of social policy is implemented.

The main function of social policy in Western Europe is the redistribution of social product in the firs provide collective social needs (health and safety, the shield of the environment, education and vocational training) and social welfare of populations in need of state support (pensioners, persons with zero or disabilities, the unemployed, large families, etc.). It is this new feature, the new directions of state regulation are reflected in the theory and practice of the "welfare state".

The main function of a supra-national social policy is to coordinate social policies implemented by the Member States, and only secondly - to use and redistribute scarce financial resources for social programs of common interest to Member States and promoting the development of integration. The ratio of national and supranational levels of social policy, as well as the differences between their functions is perhaps most evident when comparing the financial resources that are used in the EU's social objectives.

Social costs include not only the costs of social goals, derived from the state budget. Last - about half as much. But funds from structural funds are spent, strictly speaking, not only for social purposes. You can with absolute certainty that over the next 10-15 years, no sequence changes in this ratio will not happen.

The desire of Member States to counteract the tendency towards excessive centralization of management functions in the EU is reflected Article 5 of the Treaty, which established the European Company (consolidated version), according to which the competence of the institutions at various levels: from local to supranational - are distributed on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity. The essence of the principle is that a higher level shall be only those solutions that can not be taken at a lower level. The countries of the EU - are still at different levels of economic development, so the social cost per capita, expressed in absolute terms, differ by several times. For example, in 1994, three countries with the highest rates were Denmark (8020 ECU), Luxembourg (7279) and Germany (6520), and three with the lowest - Greece (1236 ECU), Portugal (1435) and Spain (2451). And although the EU is a redistribution of gross product (including a specially created for this purpose the Cohesion Fund), the extent of his very modest. Expect them to increase is not necessary, since it would involve lowering of social standards and the real standard of living in "rich" countries. In any case, the national social security system, and especially their finances probably will remain in charge of the Member States. Situation is somewhat different to the harmonization of social systems and social policy. Postmaastrihtskaya action program in the social field includes further progress in this direction, although it is the objective of full harmonization is not raised. However, this trend will continue. The farther comes the process of forming a single economic space, the more there are impulses to create a common social space. With regard to economic space is sometimes referred to as its homogeneity. In fact, if this uniformity is, it is relative, even in the current EU, and after the accession of Central and Eastern Europe on the need to just forget it.

This applies to the formation of a common social space in the EU. It is not homogeneous, if we consider the actual social situation in individual Member States and their regions. To a great extent this is why such a space is formed slowly. But it is gradually emerging as one legally. Step by step, the EU is moving towards the development and adoption of common legal rules governing the free movement of persons, their career and professional activities, occupational safety and health, environmental protection and consumer rights, etc. etc. The key role played in the promotion of basic documents - the treaty establishing the European Community three (especially the Rome treaty establishing EEC), the Single European Act, Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. Each of them establishes a general framework and main directions of development of community law, defining the legal framework, which can act in the principal institutions of the Union, taking regulatory decisions. It went this way the expansion of legal regulation in the social sphere, the accumulation of an array of relevant regulations, the development of EU law, which is recognized as a priority over national legislation and shall be included in the latter. In postmaastrihtsky between the scale and intensity of EU action in this area has increased significantly and, in all likelihood, will continue to grow. As he wrote at the European University Institute in Florence G. Maggioni in 1993, "The future of" social Europe "there is not a supranational welfare state, as well as an increasingly rich area of ​​policies and institutions of social control. Reports on EU activities in the social field, which are an integral part of the annual "General report on the activities of the European Union", indicate that during the period 1992-1998, the saturation of the area of ​​social regulation increased significantly. However, there is no doubt that further progress is to be equally dynamic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Список использованной литературы

 

1. МЭ и МО, № 8 – 2000.
2. МЭ и МО, № 3 – 2001.
3. «Европа» (журнал Европейского Союза), №3 – 2001.
4. «Регион: экономика и социология», №3, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minestry of Higher Education Youth and Sport of Ukraine

Odessa National Economic University

 

Chair of Foreign Languages

 

 

Report

                  The European Union

 

 

 

 

Group№11

Faculty:OED

Barbasura Svetlana

Supervisor:Bogdanchic L.V.

 

 

 

 

Odessa2012