The EU

        How has our country/life changed since we entered EU?
        Pros and cons of Schengen borderless zone
        Studies and work in EU
        European institutions and elections
        Euro or national currencies?

Hello everyone, at the very beginning I’d like to say some facts about the EU, even though it’s not in the task, but I consider that as something very important to know.

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member countries
The EU has developed a single ensuring the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital.
History of EU

It’s necessary to know some of the history of EU.

The modern-day European Union is a direct result of a determination among European politicians to prevent future violent conflicts in Europe after World War II. The original aim was to tie (svázat, nebo put) countries together by forging closer industrial and economic cooperation. Since then, the EU’s responsibilities have grown in response to new challenges and many more countries have joined.

1950 – The European Coal and Steel community was established in The Treaty of Paris with six members: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany.

The community had evolved through the years, many countries joined this organization during that time.

Big change came in 1992, when the city Maastrich in Netherlands hosted the European Council.
The Treaty of Maastricht is signed, creating the European Union and introducing new forms of cooperation between Member State governments – for example, on defence and justice and home affairs issues. EU leaders also agree to create an Economic and Monetary Union, with a single currency managed by a European Central Bank, within a decade.
1999 - Europe’s single currency – the euro – is officially launched and 11 EU
On 1th of May we joined the European Union together with countries from central and Eastern Europe.

The population of the EU is about 500 million people. The biggest country is Germany (over 80 million)

The official currency is Euro – the currency of 13 states; the UK has Pounds, we’ve got the Czech krowns.
We should know some names – the Herman Rompuy is the President of the European Council (unformal president of the EU) . Barosso is the President of the European Commission and Stefan Fule is our European Commissioner

How has our country/life changed since we entered EU?

We joined the EU on 1th of May. We have many advantages because of that.
You can travel, study and work wherever you want in the European Union countries, if you are an EU citizen. In most countries of the EU you can travel without carrying your passport. There are no borders, so aren´t stopped for checks. Mostly you may buy anything you want anywhere you want and take it back home with you without being checked.
The EU supports young people very much, gives them opportunities to start a successful career and find work – I’ll talk about that later.
It’s unthinkable to fight with any of EU country.. keeping the peace is one of the goals of EU
The free movement of service means that firms can offer their service in all countries of the EU. The EU supports scientific research, universities, using modern technologies, finances various projects which deal with industry, medicine and other things. The EU tries to solve environmental problems, eliminate pollution and clear our nature. Pollution is very harmful; it can endanger our health and cause serious problems. It tries to prevent air and water pollution.

Pros and cons of Schengen borderless zone
The Schengen Area comprises the territories of twenty-five European countries based on The Schengen Agreement. We joined the Schengen zone on the first of May in 2008. The good point is, that you need only your ID when you travel to other country in the schengen zone, so there are not any longer queues at the border.
On the other hand the criminals can travel free…

Studies and work in EU
Now it’s much easier to work or study abroad.
The EU ensures that all students should have the same condition for studying, doesn’t matter from what country the student is … that’s why many student programme were founded - (Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Socrates..). You can use some of them at university.. if you take the posibility to go study abroad, you can apply for the stipendium…
Another good point of being in the EU is the posibility of finding jobs You can work without work permit in most of the countries in EU. Unfortunately, some countries like Germany and France are little bit afraid of the workers from the eastern Europe, so they still don’t allow to work there with no restriction as they should.

European institutions and elections

Elections in the European Union takes place every five years when 736 persons are elected to the European Parliament. Every from 27 countries have to set up elections where we vote for parties. Then in the voting list we have a schedule [šedjůl] of candidates and there we should circle these persons which we want to see in European Parliament. The party with the highest amount of votes is able to send more of its members to the European Parliament. The maximum size of members depends on a number of people living in the country. For Czech Republic is recently possible to choose 22 members to the European Parliament. The parliament includes many parties but the most powerful are these: The European People's Party, The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

The European Union is governed by seven institutions:
Political institutions:
1.    European Parliament - is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union; together with the Council of the European Union, it forms the legislative (able to create a law) of the EU and has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world; it has 736 members; recent president is Jerzy Buzek
2.    European Council - is the institution of the European Union responsible for defining [dyfanájink] the general political direction and priorities of the Union
3.    Council of the European Union - is the principal decision-making institution of the European Union and shares the legislative authority with European Parliament; it concludes twenty seven prime ministers (one per state)
4.    European Commission - is the executive of the European Union; it is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing (to put into effect) decisions and the general day-to-day running of the Union
5.    European Union legislative procedure - is principally divided between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, with the power to initiate laws (the power to propose law proposals)
Non-political institutions
6.    European Central bank (Frankfurt)
7.    Court of Justice of the European Union (Luxemburg)
Euro or national currencies?

Every country which wants to convert their currency to Euro has to do some economical requests called “Maastricht convergent criteria”. They include four main conditions:
1.    Price stability
2.    Government finances is divided to two following criteria:
a)    annual (every year) government deficit (lack of something) - the ratio of annual government deficit to gross domestic product must not exceed 3% at the end of the preceding financial year
b)    government debt - the ratio of gross government debt to GDP must not have exceed 60% at the end of the preceding financial year
3.    Exchange rates - applicant countries should not have devaluated its currency during the period of two years (exchange rate between two currencies specifies how much one currency is worth in term of the other; for example an exchange rate of 19 Czech crowns to the United states dollar means that 19 Czech crowns is worth the same as 1 American dollar)
4.    Long-term interest rates - the rate must not be more 2 percentage points higher than the three lowest inflation member states; to keep low rate of inflation
Why accept Euro?
•    it will be possible to pay all over the European Union with one currency (except Great Britain - they have a special exception), it won’t be necessary to convert
•    the activity of our domestic companies will increase because of deleting convert risks in the Eurozone
•    the interest rate will decrease and this is linked with higher investing activity
On the other side there were many comments about that the Euro won’t bring the economic boom. But these speculations are generally only not concrete sentences and phrases on internet B-level websites and we can’t carry on them much.
Czech Republic isn’t prepared yet for accepting Euro currency because we have problems with the second point of convergent criteria (annual government deficit). Judgments (predictions) say that we will be prepared probably in 2015 or 2016 but who knows...