European section of Ministry of Interior

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European Union

Principles

The European Union is guided by two mutually reinforcing principles. The first is that local, regional, national and European authorities should cooperate and complement each other. The second one favours a gradual transfer of sovereignty from national to community level. Today, the two ideas have merged in a conviction that national and regional authorities need to be matched by independent, democratic European institutions with responsibility for those areas in which joint action is more effective than action by individual states: the single market, monetary policy, economic and social cohesion, foreign and security policy, employment policy, environmental protection, foreign and defence policy, the creation of an area of freedom and justice.

Economic and political integration between the member states of the European Union means that these countries have to take joint decisions on many matters. So they have developed common policies in a very wide range of fields-from agriculture to culture, from consumer affairs to competition, from the environment and energy to transport and trade.

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Updated on at Thursday, June 14, 2007