Identifying Three Major Barriers Of International Relations To The Polotical Integration Within The EU

The situation in the political integration within the EU has raised much more concerns and worries about its impacts on international relations since the EU has made less progress in carrying out integration of politics than that of economy, although much more contributions have been made to it by member states of the EU after the Cold War. From the views of history and reality and the levels of inside and outside respectively, this thesis points out that three major barriers stand in the way of the political integration within the EU, which are the conflicts among France, Germany, and Britain, the strong divergence of views on power allocation of the EU, and the America抯 containment toward the EU. In order to probe why member states chose access to the political Integration, why and how three major barriers resist integration, this thesis picks up four different aspects to answer them as follows: Firstly, from the view of culture, it analyses that the political integration within the EU is based upon the similar cultures of politics and values among its member states. Secondly, from the two views of geopolitics and economic interests, it describes that the interactions of geopolitics and economy among France, Germany and Britain have raised conflicts among them and brought about negative influences to the integration. Thirdly, based on demonstrating the structures and characteristics of main organs of the EU, it researches into conflicts between transferring and defending of state sovereignty, their interactions with political integration and imbalance between transferring of rights and obtaining of interests among member states, especially, between the big countries and the small countries, and then, negative impacts on integration caused by them. Finally, from the views of economy, politics, military and security, it analyses the conflicts between American global strategy of hegemony and EU抯 strategy of development and the reaction toward EU抯 political integration resulted from America抯 containment policy.