Retrospektívy a perspektívy Európskej únie
RETROSPECTIVE AND PERSPECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Summary/Abstract: The European integration processes enter the second half-a-century of their existence. The origins of integration have been marked by activities of many significant post-war political personalities. A special position among them is reserved for two Frenchmen: Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. Monnet’s international relations concept originated from the following principles: preference of law to power, unification of people, shift of sovereignty to common institu-tions, power of institutions, equal rights. A threat for the future was the division of the European continent into two social and economic systems. It had taken more then forty years before the Berlin wall fell and before the beginning of a new era for the future of Europe was announced. And it had taken more than fifty years before the circumstances, that would enable the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to join the original six West European states, which founded the European Coal and Steel Community (and additional nine, that have been joining them gradually), arose. Support of the political stability in those countries, which decided to join the integra-tion process, assumed economic strengthening and pursuing economic liberalisation. The „liberalisation tactics“ should have been based on the following principles: Con-tinuity Principle, Parallel Start Principle, Actual Compensation Principle, Universality Principle, Concentrated Approach Principle. Experience from the development of integration relations in the European Union have shown that despite the fact that these principles were used as guiding principles, they have not been applied completely – sometimes only temporarily and merely in some cases. It has proved, on the other hand, that in many cases it was the application of these principles (e. g. of the compensation principle) that helped to overcome existence diffi-culties of the integration community. The European Union nowadays faces an important crossroad of the past and of the future. The summit of the highest EU Member States’ representatives held on 14 and 15 December 2001 in Laeken has become a significant step forward to the future of an en-larged European Union. The summit facilitated the decision to create a Convent of 105 members the goal of which is to analyse the shortcomings of EU institutions and to pro-pose structural changes, by means of which the EU should get ready for its enlargement in 2004. Problems exist in several areas. Citizens demand a more intensive participation of the EU in maintaining justice and security, fighting international crime, the control of migra-tion inflow and receiving asylum-seekers and refugees from more distant military zones, solving employment problems, fighting poverty and exclusion from the society, and in economic and social cohesion, common measures regarding pollution of the environ-ment, climatic changes, food fitness and safety, and managing issues regarding world events, security and defence ...

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