The European Community

This volume analyzes the character of the EU as an actor in international affairs. The authors consider the questions such as: Does the EU have an identity of its own in global affairs, distinct from that of its member states? And what is its relationship with other major international actors?

The surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic Community and what its past inclusion means for extracontinental membership in today’s European Union. On their face, the mid-1950s negotiations over European integration were aimed at securing unity in order to prevent violent conflict and boost economies emerging from the disaster of World War II. But French diplomats had other motives, too. From Africa to Southeast Asia, France’s empire was unraveling. France insisted that Algeria—the crown jewel of the empire and home to a nationalist movement then pleading its case to the United Nations—be included in the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community. The French hoped that Algeria’s involvement in the EEC would quell colonial unrest and confirm international agreement that Algeria was indeed French. French authorities harnessed Algeria’s legal status as an official département within the empire to claim that European trade regulations and labor rights should traverse the Mediterranean. Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany conceded in order to move forward with the treaty, and Algeria entered a rights regime that allowed free movement of labor and guaranteed security for the families of migrant workers. Even after independence in 1962, Algeria remained part of the community, although its ongoing inclusion was a matter of debate. Still, Algeria’s membership continued until 1976, when a formal treaty removed it from the European community. The Seventh Member State combats understandings of Europe’s “natural” borders by emphasizing the extracontinental contours of the early union. The unification vision was never spatially limited, suggesting that contemporary arguments for geographic boundaries excluding Turkey and areas of Eastern Europe from the European Union must be seen as ahistorical.

The sixteenth edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play has a triple ambition. First, it provides easily accessible information to a wide audience about recent developments in both EU and domestic social policymaking. Second, the volume provides a more analytical reading, embedding the key developments of the year 2014 in the most recent academic discourses. Third, the forward-looking perspective of the book aims to provide stakeholders and policymakers with specific tools that allow them to discern new opportunities to influence policymaking. In this 2015 edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play, the authors tackle the topics of the state of EU politics after the parliamentary elections, the socialisation of the European Semester, methods of political protest, the Juncker investment plan, the EU’s contradictory education investment, the EU’s contested influence on national healthcare reforms, and the neoliberal Trojan Horse of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

In this timely contribution to the debates on citizenship, Elizabeth Meehan provides an incisive analysis of the meaning of citizenship, and the links between civil, political and social citizenship. The book provides a clear account of the development of social rights within the European community in three key areas: social security and assistance; participation by workers in the undertakings in which they are employed; and the equal treatment of men and women. The author critically assesses the extent to which inequalities of class, gender and ethnicity are successfully addressed by community social policies.

Second in a biennial series of yearbooks on the state of the European Community, this book, which covers 1991 and 1992, takes up where The State of the European Community: Policies, Institutions, and Debates in the Transition Years (edited by Leon Hurwitz and Christian Lequesne) left off. The current volume not only provides a description of key issues and developments in the European Community (EC) during 1991-1992, but also comments on and analyzes events from a variety of conceptual and theoretical perspectives. Community Studies Association (ECSA). ECSA exists to develop a community of people interested in the EC and to raise the level of knowledge about it.

The European Community has long been the largest trading bloc in the world. It is also on the way to becoming the world's largest integrated economic zone. Its trade, aid and development cooperation policies are therefore of great importance to developing countries. At the same time, the developing countries have continued to be of interest to the Community, both as outlets for its exports and capital investments and as sources of raw materials. This 1993 book analyses and evaluates European Community trade, aid and industrial policies towards developing countries - their origin, main features, logic, evolution and effectiveness in reaching the goals assigned to them. The author sums up the state of Europe's development policies by describing them as regional in scope, colonial in geographical emphasis, discriminatory in their effects and lacking in overall cogency. This incisive re-evaluation illustrates the different strategies the EC countries might pursue in their relations with the outside world as they progress towards fuller economic integration.

The period since 1945 has seen political events and socio-economic developments of enormous significance for the human race. This series explores these developments.