Advantages and Disadvantages of EU membership

According to europa.eu (2012),''the European Union is a unique economic and political partnership between 27 European countries.It has delivered half a century of peace, stability, and prosperity, helped raise living standards, launched a single European currency, and is progressively building a single Europe-wide market in which people, goods, services, and capital move among Member States as freely as within one country.E-notes.(2011),Advantages and disadvantages of the EU,available at:http://www.enotes.com/soc/discuss/what-advantages-disadvantages-european-union-96207

The EU was created in the aftermath of the second world war. The first steps were to foster economic cooperation countries that trade with one another are economically interdependent and will thus avoid conflict.Since then, the union has developed into a huge single market with the euro as its common currency. What began as a purely economic union has evolved into an organisation spanning all areas, from development aid to environmental needs.''

The European Union has lots of advantages and disadvantages to member nations and we are going to highlight some of them in this post.

ADVANTAGES:

• The biggest advantage of the European Union is the free trade zone.This has helped countries within the  EU to develop economically.
• The common currency makes it easy to do business across the EU countries.
• Another advantage is the free borders across the EU nations because this has helped the economic and tourism growth amongst member nations.
• Member nations get financial help when they run into bad times just like the case of Portugal and Greece.

DISADVANTAGES:

• Sovereignty of member nations are encroached upon because some laws made by the EU are not applicable in all countries but this laws are made whether they are applicable or not.The member nations cannot also legislate on certain matters because there are EU laws on such matters.
• The problem of financial difficulties means that other member nations need to poll together tax payers money in their own states to fund bailout packages for the financially unstable states when those funds could have been used to develop their own countries.

                                                             
 PART 2
The leader of the Conservatives party is Britain's new Prime Minister. Majority of the seats were won by the Conservatives which gives the Conservatives the upper hands in the Britain parliament. The Liberal democrats (or Lib Dems for short) organised a government in 65 years because the Conservatives or Labour have been ruling after the Second World War in 1945. The Lib Dems and Conservatives merged together in five days after the general election. The Lib Dems have been regarded as standing in between the Conservatives and Labour. The Lib Dems wanted a different electoral system in future during the negotiations following the huge parliament. Until this year the British general elections always resulted in the party that won the highest number of seats in parliament having more seats than other parties.

According to Foreign Secretary,William Hague,(cited in the Foreign and Commonwealth office 2012),the British coalition government will be a more active member of the European Union by being more involved from the outset.

REFERENCES:
E-notes (2011) Advantages and Disadvantages of the EU .Available at: http://www.enotes.com/soc/discuss/what-advantages-disadvantages-european-union-96207 .(Accessed:8th February 2012)

European Union (2012)  How the E.U works. Available at:http://europa.eu/about-eu/index_en.htm .(Accessed:8th February 2012)
 
Google Images (2012) The E.U logo. Available at:http://www.delfji.ec.europa.eu/en/images/img/1img.gif (Accessed :8th February 2012)