Institutions of the EU - development, transformation, difficulty

This diploma thesis seeks to summarize the institutional development taken by the European Union so far (with a particular view to the changes brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon), and, based on this, to provide an assessment of the direction into which the European Union is headed at the beginning of this decade. Within this context, my thesis attempts to outline the various alternative scenarios for the future development of the EU's institutional framework; the likely candidates, to put it simply, are, on the one hand, even deeper integration in the form of a fiscal and political union, or, conversely, the abandonment of the idea of closer cooperation. Since the beginnings of the 1950s, the European Communities and, later, the European Union have been developing towards ever-increasing integration. Even today, one observes obvious tendencies towards intensifying this integration. However, this does not allow for the unambiguous conclusion that the European Union must result in the creation of a fiscal and political union. It is perfectly conceivable that the elected political representatives of individual member states may assume the opposite view, and that tendencies will prevail within the European Union towards a more informal collaboration among separate countries. The present work also attempts a comparison of the views held by politicians, political scientists, analysts, and intellectuals. One finds that even these authors do not arrive at clear-cut conclusions, nor should one expect them to be able to make such conclusions. This thesis draws attention to a number of contradictory aspects - chiefly among them the violation of the Maastricht criteria, and the obvious breach of Article 125 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which prohibits mutual financial assistance.