Achievements of the EU

• Mao Julin
• Hay Jean
• Leang Pisey
• Kim Chansreynich
• Hao Kanhamonisopea
• Bun Kimsour

European Union (EU) is a union formed by mainly European countries, which is established in term of economy and politics. Its origin is European Community that formally created in November 1, 1993 which involves with

6 members-Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Netherland. Nowadays, there are 28 members. EU’s headquarter is located in Brussels, Belgium. So far, European Union has reached many achievements such as the promotion and expansion of cooperation with its Member States in economic, trade, social issues, foreign policy, security, defense, and judicial issues. Another major accomplishment of EU is the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that makes EU succeed in having a single currency (EURO) along with a common monetary policy.

EU is famous for its economy on which many countries around the world are being focused. Economic integration is one of the main goals that EU has considered since its first establishment in 1957, and it has a significantly visible success based on fundamentally by a single currency-the Euro. It is a common currency in the circle of euro area that recently can facilitate the monetary circulation in 18 countries of the member states. Interestingly, its achievement of becoming the second largest currency of the world after dollars has pushed the European community’s economy to flourish further. Euro contributes to maintain the stability and prospect of economic society climate, which attract more investment and international or regional trade through the convenient calculation without involving with the foreign exchange rate.

The common monetary policy has been adopted in order to acquire greater achievement, common objective and ensure benefits of all euro area states that use euro as their currency. In addition, cross-border trade and investment are the ultimate goal of Euro zone countries. EU removed trade barriers in order to facilitate the flow of goods and services, which can fill in each other’s gap between the Member States. The common purpose is to increase competition and take away all restriction obstacles of the free movement of goods in the Common Market so that they can accelerate the economic development. The mobility of products, goods and capital facilitate human consumption within the region. Moreover, the free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchase and buying of shares between countries. All intra-EU transfers in euro are considered as domestic payments and bear the corresponding domestic transfer costs. Another EU achievement is a so-called Custom Union, which was established in an attempt to adopt the common arrangement for imports from other countries based on common external tariff, provides to all members. This effort is made to develop the world trade and facilitate trade beyond border from all countries around the world.

What is more important about its achievements is to establish a society with the same rule for different nationalities; for example, people from each country in the name as membership of EU can possibly travel and move freely to settle down, work, retire, or vote, either permanently or temporarily, without any discrimination. For students who want to experience cross-border education. Thousands of students from EU citizen can get a common standard of education simultaneously experience intercultural understanding and good condition of living and studying in other European member states annually. Due to common passport creation, it has been granted to EU people in order to be indicated as EU citizen and move freely.

Along with its accomplishment in term of economy, EU is most recognized because of its fame related to regional stability. It is proved that EU is a confederation organization, which is created on behalf of the promotion of stability and peace within the whole region. As many wars and conflicts have happened across the world year-on-year, EU has been seeking to promote tranquility. Simultaneously, EU has sided human rights, democracy, and law promotion. Crucially, EU has been concentrated on the right of children, women, minorities, and displaced people, and it seeks to abolish death penalty, torture, racism and discrimination in any other cases. In the meantime, EU has struggled to promote justice to be widespread in the whole area by giving all citizens in all 28 members with fair jurisdiction. The European security and Defense was established in order to promote peace, prevent conflict and ensure security externally and internally. It also has the ability to take action in peacekeeping mission to pursue peace in the world scale. It has reinforced its external security by fighting against any terrorism. For instance, in the autumn of 2001, the European Council agreed on a common definition of terrorism, an EU-wide search and arrest warrant, and a common list of suspected terrorist organizations. The European police co-operation agency, Europol, was given a dedicated anti- terrorism unit and there was increased sharing of intelligence by national agencies. Common standard for the retention of communication data will make it harder for terrorists to communicate easily in the EU.

EU has been trying to enhance the quality of food rather than expanse the quantity, they simply makes sure that their foods and farming products in European market is what their consumers need- healthy nutritious and affordable price. By doing this, EU has decided to create CAP (Common Agriculture Policy) which was launched in 1960s, and it is being cooperated with all the Member States of European Union. Its purpose is to set the conditions that will allow farmers to fulfill their multiple functions in the society — the first of which is to produce quality food. Additionally, the CPA aims to improve agricultural productivity, help farmers facing climate change, provide them with financial assistance and manage the using of natural resources prudently. For this reason, EU farmers can make a reasonable living and in the same time conserve the environment.

Meanwhile, the EU is also working on the environment by choosing the method of recycling “tri-selectif‟‟ or “waste sorting” which is really practical among the European states. Waste Sorting is the process which waste is separated into different elements- dry and wet. The 3R that consists in “waste sorting” are Recycling, Reusing and Repairing. To protect the environment, EU chooses to ratify this regulation everywhere in Europe, so far all the acts, which oppose to the rule of waste sorting, will be counted as penalty. Moreover, the use of plastic bag is prohibited in the large commercial area such as supermarkets or hypermarkets. They’ve been working on the environment for many decades by safeguarding water, air and soil.

In brief, we can see that EU has fulfilled many accomplishments. Even though EU has met some futilities such as failure of Kyoto and European Energy Policy, it’s still considered as the first successful integration community in the world. Recently, ASEAN community, which is going to have an economic integration in 2015, is looking at EU as a good model and trying to be as successful as possible.