ABSTRACT
The first chapter of this book addresses the fundamental inter-governmental steps that, from the establishment of the European Economic Community in 1957 with 6 Member States, have made possible, through the development of the European Community in 1993, the birth in 2009 of the European Union with the participation of 28 Member States. Special consideration is devoted to the underlying treaties that are the binding agreements among the participating Member States to set out common objectives and institutions and their rules and procedures. The main European Union (EU) institutions addressed in this chapter in more detail are the European Commission, the Council and the Parliament, whereas a number of other EU institutions and institutional bodies are more synthetically covered. The remaining part of this chapter deals with the EU legislative procedures considering both the “Ordinary Legislative Procedure” that clearly indicates that the Commission has to send each legislative proposal to the Parliament and Council who are in charge of its adoption as a common text or its rejection and the legislative procedure applicable to the Regulations whose adoption is delegated by a primary legislation jointly to the European Commission and representatives of Member States. The “Conciliation” and “Scrutiny” procedures are also addressed in this chapter.
