Three Pillars of The European Union - Chart

Chart

European Union
European Communities Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC)
European Community (EC):
  • Customs union and Single market
  • Common Agricultural Policy
  • Common Fisheries Policy
  • EU competition law
  • Economic and monetary union
  • EU citizenship
  • Education and Culture
  • Trans-European Networks
  • Consumer protection
  • Healthcare
  • Research (e.g. 7th Framework Programme)
  • Environmental law
  • Social policy
  • Asylum policy
  • Schengen treaty
  • Immigration policy
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, until 2002):
  • Coal and steel industry
European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM):
  • Nuclear power
Foreign policy:
  • Human rights
  • Democracy
  • Foreign aid
Security policy:
  • Common Security and Defence Policy
  • EU battle groups
  • Helsinki Headline Goal Force Catalogue
  • Peacekeeping
  • Drug trafficking and weapons smuggling
  • Terrorism
  • Trafficking in human beings
  • Organised Crime
  • Bribery and fraud
First pillar: Community integration method Second pillar: Intergovernmental cooperation method Third pillar: Intergovernmental cooperation method

Within each pillar, a different balance was struck between the supranational and intergovernmental principles.

Supranationalism was strongest in the first pillar. Its function generally corresponded at first to the three European Communities (European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Economic Community (EEC) and Euratom) whose organisational structure had already been unified in 1965-67, through the Merger Treaty. Later, through the Treaty of Maastricht the word "Economic" was removed from the EEC, so it became simply the EC. Then with the Treaty of Amsterdam additional areas would be transferred from the third pillar to the first. In 2002, the ECSC (which had a lifetime of 50 years) ceased to exist because the treaty which established it, the Treaty of Paris, had expired.

In the CFSP and PJCC pillars the powers of the European Parliament, the Commission and European Court of Justice with respect to the Council were significantly limited, without however being altogether eliminated. The balance struck in the first pillar was frequently referred to as the "community method", since it was that used by the European Community.

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