In what ways is the EU similar/not similar to the United States?

Walnutcracker

I watched a clip from some American news channel awhile ago that has stuck with me. They were basically saying that they didn't know why the EU
hasn't yet become a united nation like the United States has and argued that we pretty much already were anyway (if i can find the clip i will post it here but i'm having trouble finding it, yet).

An example of what made me think about this again was when the states of Colorado and Washington approved the use of recreational marijuana. Even though the states made it legal, federal law rules above that decision if i understand correctly. So is it really legal? That made me think about european law. When do our laws become trumped by EU law? Where does that distinction start and end?

So, i suppose my question is two fold, what similarities do we have and what differences are there? Also, Can anyone here ever see it happening?

oscarBravo

The EU isn't a single federal nation because the people of the individual member states don't want it to be. If the talking heads on that news channel argued that we already are, then they clearly don't understand how the EU works.

Our laws are not so much trumped by EU law, as made to comply with EU law - which is fair enough, because EU law comes about through agreement between member state governments.

Scofflaw

Walnutcracker wrote: »

I watched a clip from some American news channel awhile ago that has stuck with me. They were basically saying that they didn't know why the EU
hasn't yet become a united nation like the United States has and argued that we pretty much already were anyway (if i can find the clip i will post it here but i'm having trouble finding it, yet).

An example of what made me think about this again was when the states of Colorado and Washington approved the use of recreational marijuana. Even though the states made it legal, federal law rules above that decision if i understand correctly. So is it really legal? That made me think about european law. When do our laws become trumped by EU law? Where does that distinction start and end?

So, i suppose my question is two fold, what similarities do we have and what differences are there? Also, Can anyone here ever see it happening?

EU law takes precedence over national law within the specific areas where the EU has been given competence by the Member States, which is similar to the US system. However, the range of powers the EU has is almost entirely different from the powers of the US federal government - the US government has all the external powers, and the majority of what one might call the traditional monarchic powers of central government, such as the right to create courts, tax, raise armies, maintain roads, combat piracy, issue currency, combat counterfeiting, and so on. The EU, on the other hand, has a rather random set of competences, the most comprehensive of which are trade regulation, reflecting the EU's genesis as the Coal and Steel Community. If you like, you could consider the US states as having delegated the "hard powers" to the federal government, while the EU's Member States have delegated only "soft powers".

So the relation between the states and the federal government is rather more similar to a feudal arrangement, where local governments have a good deal of autonomy, but are ultimately not independent, and cannot exercise the "kingly" powers. While the federal government can be described as "only having the powers the states delegate to it", in fact the federal government is the US, and the individual states are not.

The EU is the other way round - the Member States are the European Union, while the institutional EU is not, but is on the contrary only the servant of the Union. The EU very much has only those competences granted to it, and the process of that granting is far rougher than in the US.

This can be seen in the nexus of control of the US as opposed to the EU. Since the 17th Amendment in the US, there has been no really direct link between state legislatures and the federal government, and the federal government exists largely independent of the states themselves, whereas the control of the EU is actually in the hands of the Member States through the European Council and the Council of Ministers.

While it looks like EU legislation is created by the institutional EU in the form of the Commission, every bit of EU legislation has to pass the Council, which is to say the Member States - except where full control has occasionally been delegated to the Commission (as in trade regulation), something which is revocable at any time. Were the system similar in the US, it would mean that all US federal legislation had to be passed by the state governments - not something that happens. Even with majority voting, that's a very fundamental difference, and the core of the way that the EU remains subservient to the Member States rather than an external and generally superior power like the US federal government.

That's what gives rise to the famous "if I want to talk to Europe, who do I call?" question. Calling the head of the institutional EU, whether Commission, Council, or Parliament, is meaningless in terms of "talking to Europe", because those roles are senior servants of the Member States, not their masters or even their peers. There is no equivalent to the US President, because there is no federal government in the sense of an executive power superior to the members' own governments - instead, there is a shared civil service which exists to serve a framework for joint action by sovereign governments, and which is allowed limited autonomy for their greater convenience.

cordially,
Scofflaw

clairefontaine

Also Europe does not have a federalised banking system nor a three tiered tax out of your pay check. In the US you pay taxes to the federal government, state government [should your state have taxes - some don't] and municipal taxes.

So each state pays into the federal bank which is then redistributed throughout the nation or kept for federal interests [national security for example.]

The relationship between federal and state power is an on going debate and often what divides one party from another. For further understanding read THE FEDERALIST PAPERS. Some believe in more federal power and some are more statist believing it should be up to each state to decide things, like gay marriage for example. It is an ongoing tension and debate.

The US is one nation composed of a collection of states. The EU is a collection of nations with loose economic agreements and multiple identities and languages.