November 1 - The European Union is Established

This Day in History: 1 November 2020

 

1 November 1993

 

27 years ago, today, the European Union was established, when the Maastricht Treaty came into effect. This was drafted in 1991 by delegates from the European Community meeting at Maastricht in the Netherlands, whose main architects were Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand, and was officially signed in 1992. The agreement called for a strengthened European parliament, the creation of a central European bank and common foreign and security policies. As well as this, it laid the groundwork for the establishment of a single European currency, known as the 'euro', and established European citizenship.

 

By 1993, 12 nations had ratified the Maastricht Treaty and joined the European Union: Great Britain, France, Germany, the Irish Republic, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Two years later, in 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden became members of the EU. After suffering through centuries of bloody and destructive conflict, the nations of Western Europe were finally united in the spirit of economic cooperation. However, in 2016, in what became popularly known as 'Brexit', the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. They officially left in January 2020, and currently, the nation is in a transitional phase until December 2020.

 

Want to find out more about the history of the EU? Click here for more information, or here for more about the history of Brexit.

A Politics Student's view on the European Referendum

When David Cameron returned from the European Parliament clutching his ‘new deal for Britain’ it seemed to me that the concessions that had been granted were minor and didn’t address any of the real problems that the British people wanted resolving in the first place. The whole renegotiation process seemed to be a pre-arranged charade agreed by EU leaders which aimed to fool the UK public into rejecting Brexit and stay in a virtually unreformed European Union.

Mr. Cameron knows that anti-EU feeling in the country is growing so he has called for a referendum in just 4 months’ time on the 23^rd June 2016. It’s times like these where we will be seeing the establishment whip out any tactic to sway ordinary people in their favour. “EU exit could threaten jobs” and “sterling could lose another 20% of its value” are just two of the many headlines that will effectively scare Britons into voting ‘remain’ and not thoroughly thinking through the consequences of living under a superstate which is, in the words of the late Tony Benn, on board a ‘federal escalator, moving as we talk, going towards a federal objective we do not wish to reach.’.

The British people are faced with a once-in-a-lifetime decision – are we to be a self-governing nation or not? The so-called trading bloc has grown into much more than just an economic community, we are now dealing with a union which is inherently undemocratic and starves its member states of the power they once had. A fundamental principle of the UK’s constitution is the fact that parliament is sovereign. However, as a member of the EU, Britain must take all EU law over the statutory law passed in Westminster or the common law ruled by judges and it all, in effect, comes to nothing if the European Parliament passes a law that is conflicting.

No doubt, over the next few months we will be hearing endless claim and counterclaim from both sides of the argument, but in reality, no-one can know exactly what will happen if we leave the EU. Brexit will offer Britain a key to the rest of the world as we are relinquished from the harnesses of a powerful few at the top of the European food chain. I only hope that the British public will realise soon enough that we are a strong country, ready to break the status quo and once again trade with the whole world on our own terms, especially with the Commonwealth countries who we so shamefully abandoned when we joined the Common Market.  

The issue of ‘in or out’ rises above party politics and isn’t a question of whether you’re on the right or the left, it’s whether or not you believe in Britain and its people to govern themselves. If we do leave, whatever happens afterwards will be down to us to tackle as a sovereign state once more.

JW