June 1, 2012 Reviewed by: Professor Gabriela Carmen Pascariu
The evolution of the European integration process throughout 50 years of institutional development has led to the creation of a complex governance system, often weakly balanced, associating intergovernmental instruments and methods with a supranational organization. Such an institutional structural dualism is the result of the diversity of the member states strategic options concerning the functioning and political perspectives of the European Union, and of the functional logic of the governance system which was forced to provide an answer to the association of several types of interests: those of the Union’s, of the states’ (as basic entities of the Union), of the regional entities’(very powerful and, in certain cases, with increased autonomy), of the citizens’ (especially, after including in the treaties the European citizenship and the direct relationship between citizen and Union).