Introduction to the Political System of the European Union

Author: Hussein Kassim

Publisher: Pedio

ISBN: 978-618-249-028-0

Year of publication: 2025

Cover: Hardcover

Pages: 704

The EU building is a creation of the state and increasingly resembles one. However, identifying the type of organization implemented by the European Union has been and remains highly ambiguous both for science and for politics. This ambiguity is heightened as the current EU structure includes almost all existing and accepted forms of political organization (federation, confederation, etc.) with the central, yet key feature of the famous “Community Method,” whose main characteristics establish the uniqueness of the European Union compared to both the state and traditional international organizations. Thus, a new complex form of organization emerges that possesses the fundamental characteristics of, as Hix aptly phrases it, “a political system, but not a state,” which, while transcending the limits of a centralized and territorially defined state, coexists in its development with the political systems of the member countries that form it. In other words, the process of European integration constitutes the continually evolving framework within which the state as a political organization is transformed, shaping the political system of an integrated Europe and vice versa.