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“ To what extent can the Kingdom of Norway be regarded as the 28th Member State of the European Union? “

Bartels, Anne (2011) “ To what extent can the Kingdom of Norway be regarded as the 28th Member State of the European Union? “.

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Abstract:The Kingdom of Norway has a very close cooperation with the European Union although it is not formally a member state of it. Therefore the following research question arises: “To what extent can the Kingdom of Norway be regarded as the 28th member state of the European Union?” In order to be able to answer the mentioned research question it is defined what constitutes membership in the EU. A mixture of formal and informal criteria can identify membership within the European Union Formal criteria for memberships are covered by the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) in article 6 and article 49. Informal criteria identified and selected are comprised of the involvement in fishery, the involvement in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the involvement in the EU budget and the involvement in the European Monetary Union (EMU). It is assessed in what way the Kingdom of Norway complies with those. In terms of formal criteria, the Kingdom of Norway could be regarded as a member already due to the fact that the country fulfils all mentioned aspects and bases its principles on the same as the EU does. Despite that the country also acts as a member state in the informal criteria, the involvement in the EU budget and partially in the informal criterion, the involvement in the European Monetary Union (EMU). However in terms of two informal criteria the Kingdom of Norway can only partially be regarded as a member of the EU. Those two criteria are the involvement in fishery and the involvement in CAP. In both situations the Kingdom did not act as a member and requested amendments to the existing policies. After analysing the criteria for membership and after assessing the relationship in terms of the theory of social constructivism, neo-functionalism as well as intergovernmentalism it becomes clear that the EU-Norway relation is very special. Membership in the European Union can be seen as a variable concept and whether or not the Kingdom can be regarded as the 28th member states of the EU depends on the area of interest.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:89 political science
Programme:European Studies BSc (56627)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/61104
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