ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on European Union (EU) institutions, leaving detailed examination of national level ones for subsequent ones. The EU is the main institutional force behind Europeanization. The apparently unstoppable EU, however, ran into a more powerful force: its own citizens, as Dutch and French voters in 2005 and Irish voters in 2008 put a brake on treaties that would reform and presumably strengthen EU institutions. The most developed area of EU policy is in the vast number of laws and regulations necessary to establish and maintain a common market. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is the highest judicial organ in the EU and one that is clearly supranational in orientation. For the French, the Common Agricultural Policy was a means to make the rest of Europe pay for its agricultural subsidies. The European Parliament must approve the entire slate of the twenty-eight nominated commissioners; it cannot vote against an individual nominee.
