Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union)

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990 changed the context of European integration. The twelve member states of the European Communities negotiated a new treaty covering both political union and economic and monetary union. The result was the Treaty on European Union, signed in Maastricht on 7 February 1992. It entered into force on 1 November 1993, the date on which the European Union was born.

What it changed

The treaty organised the new Union in three “pillars”:

• The European Communities, the first pillar, where the Community institutions decided with their usual powers. The EEC was renamed the European Community, a sign that it now went beyond economics.
• The common foreign and security policy, the second pillar, run mainly by governments in an intergovernmental way, usually by unanimity.
• Justice and home affairs, the third pillar, also intergovernmental.

It also:

• laid down the rules and timetable for economic and monetary union, with a European System of Central Banks and a European Central Bank;
• created citizenship of the Union, held in addition to national citizenship;
• introduced the codecision procedure, which allows the European Parliament to block a law it does not accept;
• wrote the principle of subsidiarity into the treaties: outside its exclusive powers, the Union should act only if objectives cannot be better achieved by member states.

Example

The euro is the most visible result. Following the path set at Maastricht, the single currency was introduced on 1 January 1999 in 11 countries for financial transactions, and euro banknotes and coins entered circulation on 1 January 2002. The European Central Bank, provided for by the treaty, was set up in 1998 in Frankfurt.

Debates and limits

Ratification was difficult. In Denmark, voters rejected the treaty in a referendum on 2 June 1992. After the Edinburgh European Council of December 1992 confirmed Danish exemptions (opt-outs), notably from the single currency, a second referendum approved it on 18 May 1993. In France, the referendum of 20 September 1992 approved the treaty with just over 51% of valid votes (13,162,992 yes against 12,623,582 no), according to the Constitutional Council.

Supporters presented Maastricht as the step that gave Europe a political dimension and a currency. Opponents argued that it transferred too much sovereignty, especially over money, without enough democratic control. The intergovernmental pillars were also criticised as complex, and later treaties progressively merged them, until the Treaty of Lisbon abolished the pillar structure.