"Treaty of Amsterdam The Treaty of Amsterdam, officially the Treaty of Amsterdam amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related acts, was signed on 2 October 1997, and entered into force on 1 May 1999; it made substantial changes to the Treaty of Maastricht, which had been signed in 1992. Under the Treaty of Amsterdam, member states agreed to transfer certain powers from national governments to the European Parliament across diverse areas, including legislating on immigration, adopting civil and criminal laws, and enacting foreign and security policy (CFSP), as well as implementing institutional"
"the Treaty of Maastricht (1992). After the preamble the consolidated treaty text is divided into six parts. The first deals with common provisions. Article 1 establishes the European Union on the basis of the European Community and lays out the legal value of the treaties. Article 2 states that the EU is ""founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities"". The member states share a ""society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men"
"of the then-27 EU member states. The Maastricht Treaty, which was signed in February 1992 and entered into force on 1 November 1993, outlined the 5 convergence criteria EU member states are required to comply with to adopt the new currency the euro. The purpose of setting the criteria was to achieve price stability within the eurozone and ensure it wasn't negatively impacted when new member states accede. The framework of the five criteria was outlined by of the Maastricht Treaty, and the attached and . The original treaty article was later renumbered to become article 121.1 of the Amsterdam"
"European Union countries signed the Maastricht Treaty which outlined a three-stage plan to accelerate progress toward an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The first stage centered on liberalizing capital mobility and aligning macroeconomic policies between countries. The second stage established the European Monetary Institute which was ultimately dissolved in tandem with the establishment in 1998 of the European Central Bank (ECB) and European System of Central Banks. Key to the Maastricht Treaty was the outlining of convergence criteria that EU members would need to satisfy before being permitted to proceed. The third and final stage introduced a common currency for"
"of new enlargements on the way, the Maastricht Treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 which established the European Union when it came into force the following year. On 1 November 1993, under the third Delors Commission, the Maastricht Treaty became effective, creating the European Union with its pillar system, including foreign and home affairs alongside the European Community. The 1994 European elections were held resulting in the Socialist group maintaining their position as the largest party in Parliament. The Council proposed Jacques Santer as Commission President but he was seen as a second choice candidate, undermining his position. Parliament"
"in the Maastricht Treaty, which entered into force in 1993 and established the European Union. While the previously existing supranational European Economic Community became one of three pillars, two more pillars were erected. The second CFSP-pillar was based on intergovernmentalism, which meant unanimity between members in the Council of Ministers and little influence by the other institutions. The Amsterdam Treaty created the office of the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (held by Javier Solana until 1 December 2009) to co-ordinate and represent the EU's foreign policy. The Treaty of Lisbon took effect in December 2009 and"
"into force. To save on resources, these separate executives created by the Rome Treaties were merged in 1965 by the Merger Treaty. The institutions of the EEC would take over responsibilities for the running of the EEC and Euratom, with all three then becoming known as the European Communities even if each legally existed separately. In 1993, the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union, which absorbed the Communities into the European Community pillar, yet Euratom still maintained a distinct legal personality. The European Constitution was intended to consolidate all previous treaties and increase democratic accountability in them. The Euratom treaty"
"Treaty of Maastricht. Initially the UK had opted-out, because of opposition by the Conservative Party, but was acceded to when the Labour Party won the 1997 general election in the Treaty of Amsterdam. The first group of Directives create a range of individual rights in EU employment relationships. The Employment Information Directive 1991 requires that every employee (however defined by member state law) has the right to a written statement of their employment contract. While there is no wage regulation, the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision Directive 2003 requires that pension benefits are protected through a national insurance fund, that"
"the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised. The creation of a European single currency became an official objective of the European Economic Community in 1969. In 1992, having negotiated the structure and procedures of a currency union, the member states signed the Maastricht Treaty and were legally bound to fulfil the agreed-on rules including the convergence criteria if they wanted to join the monetary union. The states wanting to participate had first to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. In 1999 the currency union started, first as"
"In 1987, the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher enacted it into UK law. The Maastricht Treaty transformed the European Community into the European Union. In 1992, the Conservative government under John Major ratified it, against the opposition of his backbench Maastricht Rebels. The Treaty of Lisbon introduced many changes to the treaties of the Union. Prominent changes included more qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers, increased involvement of the European Parliament in the legislative process through extended codecision with the Council of Ministers, eliminating the pillar system and the creation of a President of the European Council with"
"1991, arranged a ceremony inside the government buildings of the Limburg province on the river Maas (Meuse). Representatives from the twelve member states of the European Communities were present, and signed the treaty as plenipotentiaries, marking the conclusion of the period of negotiations. Only three countries held referenda (France, Denmark and Ireland – all required by their respective constitutions). The process of ratifying the treaty was fraught with difficulties in three states. In Denmark, the first Danish Maastricht Treaty referendum was held on 2 June 1992 and ratification of the treaty was rejected by a margin of 50.7% to 49.3%."
"eliminating the transaction costs and fluctuations of currency exchange. Following a Report of the Delors Commission in 1988, the Treaty of Maastricht made economic and monetary union an objective, first by completing the internal market, second by creating a European System of Central Banks to co-ordinate common monetary policy, and third by locking exchange rates and introducing a single currency, the euro. Today, 19 member states have adopted the euro, while 9 member states have either determined to opt-out or their accession has been delayed, particularly since the Eurozone crisis. According to TFEU articles 119 and 127, the objective of"
"close fiscal integration with the introduction of the euro was not matched by institutional oversight making things more troubling. Attempts to solve the problems and to make the EU more efficient and coherent had limited success. The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty—whose main architects were Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand—came into force on 1 November 1993. The treaty also gave the name European Community to the EEC, even if it was referred as such before the treaty. With further enlargement planned to include the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Cyprus"
"Peace of Münster The Peace of Münster was a treaty between the Lords States General of the United Netherlands and the Spanish Crown, the terms of which were agreed on 30 January 1648. The Treaty is a key event in Dutch history marking formal recognition of the independent Dutch Republic and formed part of the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War. The Dutch Revolt or the Eighty Years' War of 1568–1648 is the name given to the struggle by the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands for independence from the Spanish Empire. It"
"with the Belgian revolutionaries. In 1831, arbitration by the Great Powers allocated the city to the Netherlands. However, neither the Dutch nor the Belgians agreed to this and the arrangement was not implemented until the 1839 Treaty of London. During this period of isolation Maastricht developed into an early industrial town. Because of its eccentric location in the southeastern Netherlands, and its geographical and cultural proximity to Belgium and Germany, integration of Maastricht and Limburg into the Netherlands did not come about easily. Maastricht retained a distinctly non-Dutch appearance during much of the 19th century and it was not until"
"Maastricht Treaty, and established standards for new entrants so their suitability could be judged. These Copenhagen criteria stated in 1993 that a country must be a democracy, operate a free market, and be willing to adopt the entire body of EU law already agreed upon. Also in 1993 the European Economic Area was established with the EFTA states except Switzerland. Most of the new EEA states pursued full EU membership as the EEA did not sufficiently satisfy the needs of their export based corporations. The EU has also preferred these states to integrate via the EEA rather than full membership"
"and regional hub. It became well-known through the Maastricht Treaty and as the birthplace of the Euro. Maastricht has 1677 national heritage buildings (""Rijksmonumenten""), the second highest number in the Netherlands, after Amsterdam. The city is popular with tourists for shopping and recreation, and has a large international student population. Maastricht is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network and is part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, which includes the nearby German and Belgian cities of Aachen, Eupen, Hasselt, Liège, and Tongeren. The Meuse-Rhine Euroregion is a metropolis with a population of about 3.9 million with several international universities."
"its member nations. When the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1993 the aims of the supranational organisation was enlarged and incorporated other institutions like the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the European Parliament. This was enough to convince the court that previous cases based on ""Walrave"" could be modified or supplanted. Meca-Medina and Majcen (also represented by Jean-Louis DUPONT) subsequently filed a case against the executive body of the European Union, the European Commission, that the rules adopted by the International Olympic Committee concerning doping control were incompatible with the EC rules on"
"of other supranational groupings of countries. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty imposed reciprocity inside the European Union concerning voting rights in local elections; this already existed for the European elections. In several European states, the public debate on the right of foreigners to vote was therefore renewed, as some foreign residents had the right to vote (European foreign residents) while others, non-Europeans, did not. As a result of this debate, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Slovenia and Belgium extended the right to vote, in different manners, to all foreign residents (which was already the case in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Netherlands). The European Parliament,"
"modest to the most robust, and included Humanitarian, rescue and peacekeeping tasks as well as tasks for combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking. Upon the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, the European Union was established, consisting of three ""pillars"", of which the first was the European Communities, one was the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) - a replacement of the European Communities' EPC - and the last was the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). The CFSP pillar became a natural basis for a further deepening of EU defence policy cooperation. At the 1996 NATO"
"citizens with passports from European countries were able to move freely across borders into other European countries. Due to the increased ease of traversing borders, the ""Europeanization"" of individuals began to occur in which a new transnational identity could be conceived. The creation of the European Union only accelerated growing notions of transnational citizenship across the continent. The European Union came into being on November 1, 1993, when European nations signed the Treaty of Maastricht into law. The treaty established ""community policy"" in six new areas, one of which is termed ""trans-European networks."" The treaty also discusses the specific effects"
"Treaties of the European Union The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between the European Union (EU) member states which sets out the EU's constitutional basis. They establish the various EU institutions together with their remit, procedures and objectives. The EU can only act within the competences granted to it through these treaties and amendment to the treaties requires the agreement and ratification (according to their national procedures) of every single signatory. Two core functional treaties, the Treaty on European Union (originally signed in Maastricht in 1992, aka The Maastricht Treaty) and the Treaty on"
"Treaty of Brussels The Treaty of Brussels, also referred to as the Brussels Pact, was the founding treaty of the Western Union (WU) between 1948 and 1954, at which it point it was amended as the Modified Brussels Treaty (MTB) and served as the founding treaty of the Western European Union (WEU) until its termination in 2010. The treaty provided for the organisation of military, economic, social and cultural cooperation among member states, as well as a mutual defence clause. The treaty was signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom - the"
"established in the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht. However, at the local level it was already a key element of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, an instrument of the Council of Europe promulgated in 1985 (see Article 4, Paragraph 3 of the Charter) (which states that the exercise of public responsibilities should be decentralised). Subsidiarity is related in essence to, but should not be confused with, the concept of a margin of appreciation. Subsidiarity was established in EU law by the Treaty of Maastricht, which was signed on 7 February 1992 and entered into force on 1 November 1993. The"
"miners. Thatcher eventually defeated her opponents and radically changed the British economy, but the controversy never went away as shown by the hostile demonstrations at the time of her death in 2013. Following the end of the Cold War, the European Economic Community pushed for closer integration, co-operation in foreign and home affairs, and started to increase its membership into the neutral and former communist countries. In 1993, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union, succeeding the EEC and furthering political co-operation. The neutral countries of Austria, Finland and Sweden acceded to the EU, and those that didn't join were"
"Arrondissement of Maastricht The Arrondissement of Maastricht was an arrondissement of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands until the Treaty of London in 1839. It was a part of the Province of Limburg, which also included the Hasselt and Roermond. It was centred on the city of Maastricht. Unlike the surrounding countryside, which was, captured by Belgian rebels during the Belgian Revolution, the fortress of Maastricht remained loyal to the Dutch crown. As a result, the arrondissement was split between the Netherlands and Belgium, with the Belgian portion forming the rump of the new arrondissement of Tongeren (which also absorbed"
"citizenship"". This ultimately facilitates a new form of ""European identity"" that allows for members of the European Union to function as transnational actors beyond their countries' borders, establishing the entire continent as one cohesive entity. Finally, the creation of the euro serves as the pinnacle of Europe's newfound economic unification. On January 1, 1999, the euro replaced the pre-existing currency in 11 European countries. The Treaty of Maastricht also created the European System of Central Banks, which consists of the Central European Bank and national central banks working together to establish monetary policy across participating countries. Some scholars consider the"
"United Nations system as well as other multilateral organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization (WTO), and International Monetary Fund. The Netherlands is one of the founding members of what today is the European Union. It was one of the first countries to start European integration, through the Benelux in 1944 and the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. Being a small country with a history of neutrality it was the host country for the important Maastricht Treaty and Amsterdam Treaty and is the seat"
"the Maastricht treaty, the treaty establishing the European Union. The current European Ombudsman, holding office since October 1, 2013, is Emily O'Reilly, former national ombudsman of Ireland. The European Union Ombudsman investigates claims by individuals or companies which reside or have their interests within the European Union against incidents of bad administration by bodies or institutions of the European Union. In Finland the office of Parliamentary Ombudsman (, ), modelled after the Swedish Ombudsman, was established by the Constitution of 1919. The Ombudsman is appointed by Parliament, and has the task of ensuring that all government departments and officials follow"
"again to be made by special formal law. A special implementation by law of the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht determines that certain European Community decisions having force of treaty have to be approved by Parliament prior to even the conclusion itself. By treaty legislative, administrative and judicial powers may be conferred on organisations established under international law (Article 92). This has been done on many occasions, e.g. on the Benelux, the European Community, the United Nations, the Council of Europe and NATO. According to present doctrine, that of ""treaty monism"", treaties are in the Dutch legal system in principle self-executing;"
"Energy Community (Euratom) were created, sharing the same courts with the European Coal and Steel Community. The Maastricht Treaty was ratified in 1993, and created the European Union. The name of the Court did not change unlike the other institutions. The power of the Court resided in the Community pillar (the first pillar). The Court gained power in 1997 with the signing of the Amsterdam Treaty. Issues from the third pillar were transferred to the first pillar. Previously, these issues were settled between the member states. Following the entrance into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009,"
"through its ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The idea of a Union had long been envisaged by European leaders, including Winston Churchill, who in 1946 had called for a ""United States of Europe"" with the UK ""at the centre"". EU law has always been held to prevail in any conflict between member state laws for the limited fields in which it operates, but member states and citizens gain control over the scope of EU law, and so extend their sovereignty in international affairs, through joint representation in the European Parliament, Council of Ministers, and the Commission. This means"
"in his foreign service (and thus a former member of the EEC's political committee, where earlier multilateral amendments to the treaties had been negotiated), he was considered particularly effective as a major Irish negotiator of the Maastricht Treaty, which converted the European Community into the European Union as well as establishing the single currency or Euro, in negotiating for Ireland large subventions from the EU's Structural Funds and Cohesion Funds, and in negotiations relating to Europe's Common Agricultural Policy. He was also involved in the conversion of the Irish College of St Anthony in Louvain into the Leuven Institute for"