Brad Fitzpatrick
Geography 100, AT
February 12, 2001
"Institutions of
the European Union", Europa, <http://europa.eu.int/inst-en.htm>.
This page from the European Union's information site, Europa, describes the 10 different bodies that make up the European Union. I will use this information as a base so I'm sure to address each one of them, or at least the most important ones. Of particular interest is the "European Ombudsman", which handle complaints from citizens or companies that believe they've been treated unfairly by the EU. I find it interesting that this part of the union exists, and will investigate it more.
Hämäläinen, Sirkka. "The euro and European integration", The Finnish Culture Institute, February 2001, <http://www.ecb.int/key/01/sp010212.htm>.
This article is a transcript of a speech directed at the people of Finland and gives them basically a "state of the union" address, covering both the history and future of the European Union. The speaker addresses their fears and explains that they won't lose their national identity, and that the short-term decline of the euro is not of importance, since the real benefit will be in the long term. She also explains that because of globalization, it's important that EU countries work together more productively. I'm going to use this article in my paper to back up my likely conclusions that people in Europe aren't entirely confident the EU is a good thing.
Fontaine, Nicole. "Overview of the European
Parliament", Europa,
<http://www.europarl.eu.int/presentation/default_en.htm>.
This page describes the structure and workings of the European Parliament, the main body of the European Union. The interesting thing about this article is the discussion about how the parliament is funded, from what they call the EU's "own resources". A breakdown of this shows that these resources are mainly just taxes, both on the citizens and on import/exports. The trade tariffs are what I'm most interested in discussing in my paper … to support the people that say the EU hurts globalization by not support free trade with non-member countries.
"Competition",
Europa, <http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l26055.htm>.
This page is one of several dozen policy overview pages on the Europa website. This one describe the EU's policy on competition, both within the "internal market" (countries in the EU), and regulating trade practices across borders. I intend to use this get the EU's rationale on their competition regulations and compare them with the opponent's criticisms of those practices.
Britannica, Encyclopedia. "European Union", Encyclopedia Britannica. <http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,33850+1+33265,00.html>.
This encyclopedia article gives a broad overview of the European Union as a whole, its structure, its bodies, and the different related organizations. The article doesn't make any points, so it's naturally unbiased. I'm going to use this information in my paper as a base of facts and information about the different parts of the union as I describe them and present information about them.
"The European Union: A Guide for Americans", Europe: Magazine of the European Union, <http://www.eurunion.org/infores/euguide/euguide.htm>.
This is a very long guide to everything about the European Union, written especially for Americans. It also has sections with summaries of all of the EU's policies, including foreign policy. Most interesting, it talks about the transition from native currencies to the euro, and gives statistics on citizens' acceptance of the new currency. I'll use this in my paper both as background information for myself to help me write a more informed paper, but also because I want to cite the statistics the guide gives.