The increasing power of the Eu ro pean Parliament is another change. Since the
mid-1980s, the parliament has gained a greater legislative and supervisory role.
Because members are elected by universal suffrage, this body has an ele ment of demo-
cratic accountability not found in the other institutions. The relatively low turnout in
the 2014 parliamentary elections, 43 percent, indicates that the legitimacy of the
institutions remains a prob lem.
So, too, has the power of the Eu ro pean Court of Justice (ECJ) expanded. The
court’s wide- ranging responsibilities for interpreting and enforcing EU law include
ruling on the constitutionality of all EU law; interpreting treaties; providing advisory
opinions to national courts; and settling disputes among member states, EU institu-
tions, corporations, and individuals. Member states are obligated to uphold EU law. If
they fail to comply, the Eu ro pean Commission may undertake infringement proceed-
ings that may include fines or imposition of sanctions. Virtually every member state
has been brought before the court at some point for failing to fulfill its obligations.
The 28 judges of the ECJ have heard nearly 15,000 cases and issued more than 7,500
judgments covering such diverse topics as disputes over customs duties, tax discrimina-
tion, elimination of nontariff barriers, agricultural subsidies, environmental law, con-
sumer safety issues, and mobility of labor. More than its found ers ever envisioned, the
ECJ plays a major institutional role in Eu ro pean regionalism and the new legal order
that is embodied in EU law. EU law represents the pooled sovereignty that makes the
EU very diff er ent from other IGOs.
Policies and Prob lems
The EU has moved progressively into more policy areas, from trade and agriculture to
transport, competition, social policy, monetary policy, the environment, justice, and
common foreign and security policy. Among the many controversial issues are the
prob lems of trade, agriculture, and the euro, discussed in Chapter 9. The difficulties
forging a common Eu ro pean foreign and security policy, the prob lem of immigration
and asylum, and the disputes over membership are addressed below.
The functionalist aspiration was that the EU eventually would be able to forge a
common foreign and security policy. But that has proven difficult. Indeed, on several
major foreign policy issues, members of the EU were split. During the 2003 Iraq War,
Great Britain, Spain, and Poland strongly supported the United States, sending in
their military, while Germany and France opposed the policy, mainly because the UN
Security Council had not given authorization. After Rus sia annexed the Crimea,
Eu ro pean Union leaders again were divided over punishing Rus sia. Great Britain’s
prime minister David Cameron called for tough new sanctions to punish Rus sia, while
Germany’s Angela Merkel argued that Rus sia would have to send its military into east-
ern Ukraine to trigger stronger mea sures. Britain, Sweden, and East Eu ro pean mem-
236 CHAPTER SEvEn ■ i Gos, international law, and nGos