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Maastricht Treaty: European Union
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The Maastricht Treaty significantly modified the EEC's institutions and decision-making processes. The Commission was reformed to increase its accountability to the Parliament. Beginning in 1995, the term of office for commissioners, who now had to be approved by the Parliament, was lengthened to five years to correspond to the terms served by members of the Parliament. The ECJ was granted the authority to impose fines on members for noncompliance. Several new institutions were created, including the European Central Bank, the European System of Central Banks, and the European Monetary Institute. The treaty ... created a regional committee, which served as an advisory body for commissioners and the Council of Ministers on issues relevant to subnational, regional, or local constituencies.
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In the wake of the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty ... expands the role of the European Parliament. The scope of the cooperation procedure and the assent procedure has been extended to new areas. Besides, the Treaty creates a new codecision procedure which allows the European Parliament to adopt acts in conjunction with the Council. This procedure entails stronger contacts between the Parliament and the Council in order to reach agreement. Besides, the Treaty involves Parliament in the procedure for confirming the Commission. The role played by the European political parties in European integration is recognised.
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The foregoing sketch of developments since the Maastricht Treaty shows the dominating influence German proposals had on the debate on differentiation, flexibility and now closer cooperation. Against the background of the Federal Republic's general European policy commitment, this is not surprising. Germany can... assume that it will be in the frontline of all future advances in integration. Yet open cooperation mechanisms for closer cooperation between individual Member States rooted in the EU Treaty are not, even from the German viewpoint, any patent recipe for overcoming the EU's institutional difficulties. It was and continues to be much more important to secure progress in replacing the unanimity requirement by the possibility of majority decisions. It was and continues to be more important to shift more areas still in the intergovernmental second and third pillars into the first pillar, thereby communitarizing them.
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The introduction of euro notes and coins on Jan. 1, 2002, is the last step in the process the Maastricht Treaty started. Its great triumph was to force European Union nations to curb deficits and tame inflation as a prelude to monetary union. Yet, from the depths of the worldwide recession, it is clear that the treaty has deep flaws. Unless they're fixed, Europe's hard-won economic stability is at risk.
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Maastricht represented a major expansion and amendment of the Treaty of Rome in regard to the organizational framework of the EU, and as such its ratification caused much economic and political conflict within and between EU member states. Some countries were extremely reluctant to relinquish national control over their monetary policies, notably Denmark and the United Kingdom, which were both given the option not to participate in some aspects of the process of unification. Maastricht commenced a three-stage gradual progress towards monetary union that by 1999 saw the creation of the single European currency, the Euro, and 11 of the now 15 members of the EU irrevocably set the exchange rate between their national currencies and the Euro. In the same year the European Central Bank was established to manage the new currency, and by 2001 12 EU states were embarked upon economic and monetary union. On January 1, 2002, the Euro became legal tender in 12 EU member states.
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Christian Joerges' contribution on 'European Economic Law, the Nation-State and the Maastricht Treaty' examines closely one fundamental aspect of Maastricht that is generally overlooked. This aspect could have legal consequences depending on future interpretations by the Court. Undoubtedly, the idea of maximization of resources through competition underlies the EC and some authors have argued that the Community enshrined the market economy as a principle of law. After Maastricht, the market economy has become the Law as a general principle enshrined in Article 3A EC requests Member States, and the Community to conduct their activities 'in accordance with the principle of an open market economy with free competition'. Joerges queries if this is the EC's consecration of economic interpretation of the Law.
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