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European Integration

Author/Instructor: Ulrich Brückner

Credits: 8

• To make students understand the development of the European Communities/European Union from West European integration project to reunification of the continent with first former communist countries in Eastern Europe joining in 2004
• To equip students with a toolbox to study and explain the process of European integration and EU eastward enlargement in particular

• Overview of the European Union: historical development and current stage of this supranational entity of its own kind, key features and functioning of the political, economic and legal system, strengths and weaknesses of European integration, widening and deepening
• Key questions of the mutual relationship between the EU and Eastern Europe: negotiations for EU accession since 1998, various calculations and forecasts of the financial costs and benefits of EU enlargement for the old and the new members, impact of EU membership on the sovereign states of Eastern Europe and their transforming society and economy, acceptance and stability of an enlarged Union, need for internal reform and various proposals to deal with this challenge
• Possible trends for further developments
• Case studies dealing with the Schengen arrangement and an integrated immigration policy, the European labor market, the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and special country specific questions (e.g. land purchase in Poland)

Students must complete and pass a specified number of module tasks including a research paper and participate in online discussions.