The following lecture will focus on the development of the integration process in 1970´s, 1980´s and the beginning of 1990´s. We will deal primarily with the first waves of the EC´s enlargement to the North (Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom) and to the South (Greece, Spain+Portugal) and with the attempts to give new impulses into the stagnating integration process (the initiatives of Delors´ Commission in the 1980´s and The Single European Act).

In the second part of the lecture we will focus in a detail on the  construction of the EU based on the Treaty on European Union signed in 1992. Special attention will be devoted to the Maastricht Temple and the division of competences between EU institutions and the member states, the establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs, the introduction of the EU citizenship etc.
Topics for discussion: What where the main impulses (both economic and political), which led to the transformation of the EC into the EU? What where the main problems (economic, political,…), which the EC was solving in the end of the 1980´s? How the transformation of the EC into the EU contributed to the solution of these problems?

Lelieveldt, H. and Princen, S. (2015): The Politics of the European Union. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, pp. 14 – 16. (3 pages)

Mazzucelli, C. (2012): The Treaty of Maastricht: Designing the European Union. In: Laursen, F. (ed.; 2012): Designing the European Union. From Paris to Lisbon. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 147 – 179. (32 pages)

McAllister, R. (1997): From EC to EU: an historical and political survey. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 208-227. (19 pages)

Treaty of Maastricht on European Union (fact sheet)

Margaret Thatcher: Speech to the College of Europe ("The Bruges Speech"), 20 September, 1988

The Hague Summit: Final communiqué of the meeting of heads of state or government of the EC countries. The Hague, 2 December 1969

The Single European Act