[MUSIC] After discussing and learning about the EU institution actors, it is now time to turn to those who actually decided to launch the European game. The European member states. As you must know by now, 28 sovereign states have, over the years, joined the European Union. At the moment of their accession, member states transfer some of their original powers and competences to the union. As a result, an increasing number of decisions binding those states are no longer adopted at the national level, by national parliaments, but at the European level among the European institutions. The European Union has not always been made of 28 member states. These have rather joined the EU venture progressively in several enlargement steps. As you know very well, everything started in 1952 when six countries got the ball rolling. Do you remember which were these countries? Yes, I'm sure you do. Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Basically, the Benelux countries. Plus France, Germany and Italy. That's the way I remember. They cooperated for more than 20 years and given the appeal of this well-functioning partnership three further countries decided to join in 1973, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark. The 70's and 80's saw the end of dictatorships in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Countries who decided when turning to democracy to enter the European Union. This occurred in 1981 for Greece and in 1986 for Portugal and Spain. The European Union at 12, rather than at six, was quite different from the initial six-member union, and in light of the numerous achievements, the European Union attracted a new set of well-off countries who, until then, belonged to a competing, yet looser forms of integration, the so-called European Free Trade Area, that still exists today. Its remaining members today are Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Lichtenstein as you can see from the flags in this line. This organization is linked to the European Union with, via the European Economic Area, the EEA, which however, has not been signed up to by Switzerland. The EEA extend the European internal market to the EFTA countries, the four countries I mentioned previously, except from Switzerland. By aligning their policy to the EU, these EFTA countries are de facto members of the European Union. 1995 marked the fourth enlargement with Sweden, Finland and Austria acceding as new member states. The following enlargement was made possible by the fall of authoritarian Communist regimes that disappeared in Central and Eastern Europe after 19, 1989. And the, and the fall of course of the Berlin Wall which some how epitomized such regime change. But anyway do you know which events were responsible for the end of Communism in, in Europe? The disappearing of the Soviet Union and the recreation of independent Baltic States, the disappearing of Yugoslavia and the creation of distinct Balkan States ;the breakup of Czechoslovakia into Czech Republic and Slovakia; the reunification of East and West Germany, and finally, the division of Cyprus into two ent, to two entities. Well, all options are correct except for the last one. Which relates to Cyprus which, of course occurred according to different historical circumstances. East Germany merging into Germany, who joined the EU. And at that time, the countries in the region also turned to the European integration process. Their desire materialized in 2004 when eight countries from central and eastern Europe were able to join the EU: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary, plus the two Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus. Shortly after in 2007, two other former Communist countries, Bulgaria and Romania, joined the pact by making a European Union of 27 countries. A further accession occurred in 2013, when Croatia joined the European Union. This is the second country of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to enter the EU after its collapse in 1992, and the Balkan Wars that followed, until the end of the 20th century. Other remaining states of this region are expected to join quite soon. Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo. Turkey as you may know, acquired its candidate status already some years ago back in 1999, but negotiations have stalled in recent years. Iceland has also been a candidate country and this candidacy has been triggered by the so called economic crisis and the financial difficulties Iceland faced back in 2008. Division has always been a specificity of Europe. No other place in the world has a comparable number of states in such a small geographical area. The European project respects these differences among sovereign states, this unique diversity, while at the same time ensuring that they never again evolve into wars of the continent. This is why the phrase unity and diversity or united in diversity has been chosen as the motto of the European Union. That you can, for fun, compare to the US motto, e pluribus unum. But states remain sovereign and independent and national democracies still have the final say on their relationship with the European Union. Therefore, should a country decide it doesn't intend to cooperate anymore with other European countries it can leave the Union any time. Moreover, if some new independent states appear like, maybe Scotland or some say Catalonia, in Spain, they will immediately be out of the union and would need to apply to join the union as new member states. Now that I briefly showed to you who are these member states, let me quickly tell you what they do within the European games, which are the kind of moves they can engage into? Well in a nutshell, the member states are in charge of implementing the policies, and regulations elaborated by the European institutions. Therefore, a same policy, the very same policy may sometimes be implemented differently in each member state depending on a number of variables such as, different political ideologies or the capacity of the competence of the member state's administration and infrastructure. For instance the common agricultural policy which represents a significant portion of the European budget is very differently implemented at, at the national level. Notably member states can choose to distribute subsidies directly to farmers or to regional entities attributing them money according to the criteria they choose. For instance the past levels of farmers production, the size of the lands, the implementation of environmentally friendly practices. So forth and so on.
