THESES ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION ON THE MEMBER STATES‟ ADMINISTRATION
THESES ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION ON THE MEMBER STATES‟ ADMINISTRATION

Summary/Abstract: The European Union - called into existence by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 - has undertaken a giant task without any previous precedents in the world history, when it set the dual target of implementing the financial, monetary and political union. These designated objectives are to be pursued by a unique and constructed institutional system based on three pillars which are in co-operation with the Member States. The First Pillar of the European Union is the institutional system of the European Communities (and their common institutional system from 1965). The Second Pillar is the ―Common Foreign and Security Policy‖ and the Third Pillar is the ―Home Affairs and Justice Co-operation‖. This structure is still operating nowadays (autumn of 2008), though the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) had a significant impact on the Third Pillar, as seven fields of cooperation (out of the nine) have been removed to the First Pillar. At the same time the Third Pillar‘s name has been changed as ‗Police and Justice Co-operation in Criminal Matters‘. Concerning these three pillars there are differences not only between the different fields of cooperation (called policies), but in their functioning model as well. While the First Pillar operates on principle of ―Community Model‖, the Second and the Third Pillars operate on principle of ―Intergovernmental Model‖. To make it simple it means: - each participant of the common institutional system interferes with the questions of the First Pillar fields (policies). The decisions are prepared by the European Commission, and they are made by the European Council in co-operation with the European Parliament and the other ―players‖. These decisions are brought with qualified majority comprising at least 255 votes out of 345 which are divided between the 27 Member States. - only the European Commission has the right to interfere with questions relating to Second and Third Pillar fields (policies) and during the decision making it can solely do it with consensus. All these are mentioned in advance to demonstrate how complicated the European Union institutional system and its operation is. We consider this complexity true, that we can do without any hesitation, we should believe the extreme complexity of the relationship between the Member States and common institutional system at supranational level. As it is complicated we need to simplify we want to say when we restrict the relation-system to the public administration.

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