European Union

This paper will try to clarify the argument that the national executives increase their political power and authority with the integration process. For doing this, several theories that explains the European integration will be mentioned. France will exemplify what tactics the executive uses to increase its authority. According to this paper, there are serious limits to such an argument since the European Union consists of different levels of integration and a multi-faceted bargaining process. Also, it is fallacious to generalize all member states as having equal amount of say in the regional policy implementation process.
Introduction:

Globalization and free market economy movements have strongly affected on the rise of minority nations’ voice.  Although European Union does not have any direct implementation on providing special rights and conditions for minority nations, reality of rising rights of minority nations and regions cannot be covered. While Catalonia, Flemish, Wales within the EU and Québec in NAFTA are getting stronger and minority national regions which are gaining rights on the way of becoming international actor. Each of them shows some differences from the one another in various areas like social and security rights, education, economic welfare, right to vote and elected. “Furthermore, as compared to Canada and the United Kingdom, Belgium presents a unique situation, in part because Flanders, the region where the sub-state nationalism is strong, is the country’s richest and most populated area.”

It is almost more than four decades since Turkey signed the Association Agreement with the European Community following its application for membership. During T.Ozal adminstration Turkey applied again for membership in 1987 and two years later got response from the EC Commission stating that due to EC’s own situation concerning the completion process of the Single Market, EC could not undertake any enlargement, but Turkey was accepted as eligible country for the EU membership candidacy. Apart from this, EC Authorities indicated Turkey’s possible integration into the Customs Union in near future, which took place later in 1995 following the signing of the Customs Union agreement between EU and Turkey. But it was not given candidate state status then. After couple of years, Turkey became candidate state as a consequence of talks during the Helsinki EU Summit of 1999, which proposed that Turkey was to become more integrated as soon as the country would be in convergence with three Copenhagen Criteria. After intense talks between EU and Turkey which were accompanied by many political and constitutional reforms such as abolishment of death penalty, extension of human rights and so on, further step was undertaken in 17th December of 2004 by deciding to begin...

Tomorrow people go for the Federal Elections in Germany so that new government can be formed and lead the country until the next round of elections after four years after the electors cast their ballots. There are main five parties that claim to get enough votes to have a share in government coalition with another or two parties. These are CDU (Christian Democrats), SPD (Social Democrats), FDP (Liberals), the Left Party, and the Green Party from which the first couple are currently in coalition government whereas the rest comprises the opposition in Bundestag.