The UK as a member of the EU - Курсовая работа

Белорусский Государственный Университет Гуманитарный факультет Кафедра общенаучных дисциплин Курсовая работа по страноведению The UK as a member of the EU Студентки 3 курса Специальности СИЯ-КО Кореньковой Н.Н. Научный руководитель Старший преподаватель Рябова И.В Минск - 2009 Content Introduction Chapter 1. History and reasons of the EU creation 1.1 A peaceful Europe (1945-1959) 1.1.1 The Robert Schuman declaration, 9 May 1950 1.2 Attempts of Britain 1.3 Government of M. Thatcher 1.4 The Treaty of Maastricht 1.5 Government of T. Blair 1.5.1 Social Chapter 1.5.2 The Treaty of Nice 1.5.3 Treaty of Accession 1.5.4 Under the Constitutional Treaty Chapter 2. European economic integration 2.1 European Community Budget 2.1.1The budget as a source of problems among the EU partners 2.1.2 Budgetary revenues and expenditures 2.1.3 Reforms 2.2 Common Agricultural Policy 2.2.1 CAP objectives 2.2.2 CAP policies 2.2.3 UK policies 2.2.4 CAP inconsistencies 2.2.5 The 1992 and 1999 reforms 2.2.6 The 2003 reforms 2.2.7 The 2007-08 CAP Heath check 2.3 Economic and Monetary Union 2.3.1 European Monetary Union: reasons and history 2.3.2 Benefits and costs 2.3.3 The UK case 2.3.4 Summary and conclusions Chapter 3. Politic integration the EU and the UK 3.1 Common foreign and security policy 3.1.1 Aims 3.1.2 The Main Players in CFSP 3.1.3 Common Security & Defense Policy (CSDP) 3.1.4 Conclusion 3.2 European constitution 3.2.1 The British Constitutional option: No constitution 3.2.2 Option 2: a none cosmetic revision Conclusion References Introduction The topic of my project is “The UK as a member of the EU”, which I have choose for my course paper. I consider this topic to be very actual and significant, because nowadays the European Union is the greatest political and economic centre of the world, an intergovernmental and supranational union of 27 democratic member states. The Union is constantly pretending to be the leader in world policy, but it has resistance on the part of several Member States. Traditionally Britain is one of them. Reason of such relations lies in a number of historical, cultural, political and economic factors. Relations with the EU for Britain are one of priority directions of policy, but at the same time the UK is craving for soverenity and independence and trying to keep influence on the political arena. That is why we can say “Britain is in the European Union, but not with it”. The purpose of my project is to examine political and economic role of the UK in Europe. I have established following problems for performance of the purpose of the project: 1. Reasons of creation the EU and prerequisites for Britain to enter the Union 2. History of relations 3. Political and economic role of the UK in Europe and main problems, connected with it My work includes besides introduction, conclusion and 3 chapters. Chapter 1 describes the history the EU creation, premises of British membership and problems connected with it. Chapter 2 examines the role of GB in the European Economic Integration basically in main spheres such as Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), European Community Budget and Monetary system. Benefits and difficulties in each branch are scrutinized as well. Chapter 3 considers political place of Britain in the Union, its influence on coming to conclusions and attitude of British government towards European Constitution. Chapter 1. History and reasons of creating the EU 1.1 A peaceful Europe (1945-1959) The historical roots of the European Union lie in the Second World War. Europeans are determined to prevent such killing and destruction ever happening again. Soon after the war, Europe is split into East and West as the 40-year-long Cold War begins. West European nations create the Council of Europe , Ray MacSharry) was the first significant reform of the CAP. Support prices were reduced and compensatory “direct payments” were introduced. These compensatory payments are still being made today - around €18 billion a year of direct payments date back to this first reforms.3 similar reforms occurred in 1999, but the next major step was taken in 2003 when the link between direct payments and production was broken. This reduced the negative economic impact of the payments, and made receipt dependent on meeting minimum standards of good agricultural and environmental condition. [1, p.19] Although with these reforms the EU took a big step towards market liberalization, the process of change was slow, and this triggered the need for further reforms. The new agreement for CAP reform was signed in 1999. The new reforms extended the direct farm payments and the cuts in support prices by as much as 50 per cent. They also attempted, but without success, to ease the budgetary imbalance of the big contributors to the EU budget-Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, and the UK-by a partial renationalization of farm spending which would have cut CAPs income support from 100 to 75 per cent, the members paying the