DIFFERENCES IN THE INTENT AND ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE EUROPEAN UNION
McCormick (2002) states that the original purpose of the European Union was to promote trade links between member countries which is still one of its main functions. However, Pinder (2001) reports that the EUÆs intent has become far more sociopolitical over the years. Today, the intent is to unify a large collective of individual countries into one united group of people for purposes of political and economic power on a global scale. Thus, the original intent of the EU was economic and it preserves this intent but has expanded upon this objective in terms of seeking unity among peoples of different countries for purposes of economic gain and sociopolitical power. ItÆs primary objectives are to create a large unified political body that has dominion over each separate country and works toward specific, shared goals.
Like the EU, the original intent of the United States had both an economic and a sociopolitical dimension. The intent was freedom from both the economic and political laws and regulations of England which it considered burdensome and unfair (Hakim, 2002). Thus, while the various states that comprise America did, like the EU, join together in order ôto form a more perfect union,ö the strongest element motivating the creation of the United States was not union but rather freedom, freedom from English rule. And it is the concept of freedom (most especially individual freedom) that has been the centerpiece of American thought regarding government ever since (Hakim, 2002).
Europe, on the other hand, is not forming a union in order to break away from a government that rules it and oppresses it. To be sure, some would argue that the United States of America, being a super power, does have an inordinate amount of power over Europe and that, at least in part, it is U.S. pressure and power from which Europe wants to break away (Kaga...