The Maastricht Treaty (officially the Treaty on European Union) was a treaty signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Communities in Maastricht, Netherlands, to further European integration. The twelve members of the European Communities signing the Treaty on 7 February 1991 were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Title I, Common Provisions, establishes the European Union (EU) on the foundation of the three, already partially merged, European Communities: the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). It introduced procedures that made the European Parliament "co-legislator with the Council of Ministers" and have since have since been developed and extended to nearly all areas where the Council decides by qualified majority voting. In these and other areas which do not fall within Community's "exclusive competence", in accordance with "the principle of subsidiarity" action is to be taken only if, "by reason of the scale or effects", the objectives cannot be more "efficiently" achieved by the Member States themselves.[4]. Free access to changing exhibitions. It means that the conversion rates between the currencies of member states were fixed as a prelude to the euro, which began circulating in 2002. "Failing a Council decision", which would require unanimity, a Member State is free to take such action as it considers "necessary". The main aim of the ECB is to maintain price stability in the region, i.e., to safeguard the euro’s value. These criteria in turn dictated the mandate of the European System of Central Banks comprising the national central banks, but to include the prospective currency-issuing European Central Bank.
The original twelve member states of the EU were West Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, Portugal, and Spain. The variable was set to 2%. It meant the freedom of movement, residence, and the right to contest in local and EU elections. Other amendments create the office of European Ombudsman, expand the Structural Fund assistance to the poorer EU regions; and broaden Community competencies in education, culture, public health, consumer protection, trans-European networks, industry and the environment. Gross domestic product (GDP) is a standard measure of a country’s economic health and an indicator of its standard of living. It means that the European Central Bank (ECB)European Central BankThe European Central Bank (ECB) is one of the seven institutions of the EU and the central bank for the entire Eurozone. The documents available on this Web site are the exclusive property of their authors or right holders.

The government uses these two tools to monitor and influence the economy. In several of these areas, the Treaty seeks to enhance the "democratic functioning" of the institutions by conceding the directly-elected European Parliament rights not only of consultation but also of co-decision.

The treaty was signed in 1991 by 12 member states and became effective in 1993. The Treaty of the European Union (EU), which is commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the international agreement that led to the formation of the European Union. Cooperation on law enforcement, criminal justice, asylum, and immigration and other judicial matters was being pursued under the 1990 Schengen Agreement and Convention. That phase of benign despotism is over. In September 1992, a referendum in France narrowly supported the ratification of the treaty, with 50.8% in favour. [17], Germany had considered a Deutschmark zone extending only to her more immediate and convergent neighbours: the Benelux countries and possibly Denmark. The CPI consists of a bundle of commonly purchased goods and services. [41] This, in part, was a concession to United Kingdom which continued to insist on the sufficiency of the North Atlantic alliance (supported by the neutral, non-aligned, Member States, the Republic of Ireland and Austria, at the 1997 Amsterdam summit the UK prevented a mergerof the WEU and the EU),[42][43]. Coordination in foreign and security policy had taken place since the beginning of the 1970s under the name of European Political Cooperation (EPC), which had been first written into the treaties by the 1987 Single European Act. Officially known as the Treaty on European Union, the Maastricht Treaty marked the beginning of ‘a new stage in the process of creating an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe’ by giving the previous communities a political dimension.

Following the accession of a further twelve states, ten from the former Eastern Bloc – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – plus Cyprus and Malta, and an aborted Treaty on a European Constitution, Maastricht was more comprehensively revisited. The EU is essentially a political and economic bloc.
It creates the European Union. It refers to an agreement between countries that allows products, services, and workers to cross borders freely. In the wake of the Eurozone debt crisis unfolding from 2009, the most enduring reference to the Maastricht Treaty has been to the rules of compliance – the "Maastricht criteria" – for the currency union. Without consulting with Karl Otto Pöhl, President of the Bundesbank, Kohl accepted the deal. Fiscal Policy refers to the budgetary policy of the government, which involves the government manipulating its level of spending and tax rates within the economy. Provided that all Member States ratify, it rules that the Treaty should come into force on 1 January 1993. – Der Kanzler öffnet die Akten über die deutsche Einheit. The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU) ― the principal framework for this unification. The long-term interest rates of each state cannot exceed by a set variable, the average inflation levels in the three countries with the lowest inflation levels in the region. Thus, for the convergence of the economies, the following goals were set. The "austerity" they had subsequently to impose as a condition of assistance from Germany and other of their trade-surplus EU partners, raised calls for new arrangements to better manage payment imbalances between member states, and ease the burden of adjustment upon wage-, and benefit-, dependent households. There is a real "moral hazard" in allowing Member States to accumulate higher debts within the Eurozone – higher debts which, ultimately, have no relationship to higher growth. The Treaty of Maastricht paved the way for the further European integration, in particular by introducing the Economic and Monetary Union. However, the price of German cooperation was widely perceived as German dictation of the terms. As envisaged by the Treaty,[30] the ECB replaced its shadow European Monetary Institute on 1 June 1998, and began exercising its full powers with the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999. The 2007 Lisbon amends and incorporates the Maastricht Treaty as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The treaty founded the European Union and established its pillar structure which stayed in … [6] In the cases of Denmark, France and Ireland this required referenda. By adding two new areas - justice and home affairs and a common foreign and security policy - to the existing European Community, the so-called three pillars of the Union were established. sets the monetary policy and print the single common currency for the member countries. Signed in 1992, it came into force on 1 November 1993. The FTA’s main aims are to bring down barriers in trading, specifically tariffs and import quotas, and encourage the free trade of goods. An economic union is one of the different types of trade blocs. Address: Limburglaan 10 6229GA Maastricht Visit the website. Join 350,600+ students who work for companies like Amazon, J.P. Morgan, and Ferrari, Certified Banking & Credit Analyst (CBCA)™, Capital Markets & Securities Analyst (CMSA)™, Financial Modeling and Valuation Analyst (FMVA)®, Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA)®. The general budget deficit of each member state may not exceed more than 3% of the gross domestic product. The Treaty noted that it should be "ratified by the High Contracting Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional requirement". Insert free text, CELEX number or descriptors. "[45] Jacques Santer, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, conceded that consensus around the principle of subsidiarity had been possible only because "it conceals different interpretations". It is the sister strategy to monetary policy. ", "Still rooted in Maastricht: EU external relations as a 'third-generation hybrid, The Treaty on European Union, signed at Maastricht on 7 February 1992, The History of the European Union – The Treaty of Maastricht, Proposed 1962 treaty establishing a "European Union", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maastricht_Treaty&oldid=985414434, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 October 2020, at 20:33. It represents the biggest development of the treaties until the Lisbon Treaty. It amends the EEC's Treaty of Rome constitution, renaming it the European Community to reflect the Union's broader ambition. International agreement that led to the formation of the European Union, A free trade area (FTA) refers to a specific region wherein a group of countries within the said region signs an agreement that seals the economic cooperation among them. By the time of their own ratifications debates, France and Denmark also found themselves under pressure in foreign exchange markets, their currencies trading close to the bottom of their ERM bands. Expansion plans may also be in jeopardy", "The Maastricht Debate: Major 'driven to confidence factor': Commons Exchanges: Treaty issue 'cannot fester any longer, 1990–1992: Britain and the politics of the European exchange rate mechanism, Conflicting Authorities: States, Currency Markets and the ERM Crisis of 1992–93, "A Practitioner's Guide to the Maastricht Treaty". [13] This common and parallel citizenship accords the Member State migrants not only the civil right to take up residence and employment, but also, and for the first time, political rights. Having "resolved to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", the Treaty proposes "further steps to be taken in order to advance European integration"[2] under seven titles. The CPI consists of a bundle of commonly purchased goods and services. In establishing the European Union the Maastricht Treaty amended the treaties that had established the European Communities in the 1950s.