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07-24-2015, 12:54 PM
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A Highly Differentiated European Reality
A study paper of Nicole König features a clarifying illustration of the EU. Pdf in annex We are de facto living in a highly differentiated European Union (EU). A prime example is the Schengen agreement, which five out of the then ten EU member states signed three decades ago. Now it has legal status and comprises 26 countries, 22 of which are EU members. Since the 1990s most of the Union’s core policy areas underwent some form of differentiation1. More recently, the financial and sovereign debt crises fuelled deeper integration within the Eurozone and led to the emergence of new forms of differentiation within and outside of the Union’s legal and institutional framework. A stable core of six EU member states participates in most differentiated integration projects while groups of ‘outsiders’ vary on a case-by-case basis (see Figure 1). Pdf in annex |