History
Further information: History of the European UnionMost EU institutions were created with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in the 1950s. Much change since then has been in the context the shifting of the power balance away from the Council and towards the Parliament. The role of the Commission has often been to mediate between the two or tip the balance. However the Commission is becoming more accountable to the Parliament: in 1999 it forced the resignation of the Santer Commission and forced a reshuffle of the proposed Barroso Commission in 2004. The development of the institutions, with incremental changes from treaties and agreements, is testament to the evolution of the Union's structures without one clear "master plan". Some such as Tom Reid of the Washington Post said of the institutions that "nobody would have deliberately designed a government as complex and as redundant as the EU".
Read more about this topic: Institutions Of The European Union
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
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“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)