European Union member states in the context of "Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism"

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⭐ Core Definition: European Union member states

The European Union (EU) is a supranational union of 27 member states that are party to the EU's founding treaties, and thereby subject to the privileges and obligations of membership. They have agreed by the treaties to share their own sovereignty through the institutions of the European Union in certain aspects of government. State governments must agree unanimously in the Council for the union to adopt some policies; for others, collective decisions are made by qualified majority voting. These obligations and sharing of sovereignty (also known by some as "pooling of sovereignty") within the EU make it unique among international organisations, as it has established its own legal order which by the provisions of the founding treaties is both legally binding and supreme on all the member states (after a landmark ruling of the ECJ in 1964). A founding principle of the union is subsidiarity, meaning that decisions are taken collectively if and only if they cannot realistically be taken individually.

Each member country appoints to the European Commission a European commissioner. The commissioners do not represent their member state, but instead work collectively in the interests of all the member states within the EU.

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👉 European Union member states in the context of Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism

The Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism was signed by the member states of the eurozone to found the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an international organisation located in Luxembourg, to act as a permanent source of financial assistance for member states in financial difficulty, with a maximum lending capacity of €500 billion. It replaced two earlier temporary EU funding programmes: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). All new bailouts of eurozone member states will be covered by ESM, while the EFSF and EFSM will continue to handle money transfers and program monitoring for bailouts previously approved for Ireland, Portugal and Greece.

The treaty stipulated that the organization would be established if member states representing 90% of its original capital requirements ratified the founding treaty. This threshold was surpassed with Germany's ratification on 27 September 2012, bringing the treaty into force on that date for the sixteen states which had ratified the agreement. The ESM commenced its operations at a meeting on 8 October 2012. A separate treaty, amending Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to authorize the establishment of the ESM under EU law, was planned to enter into force on 1 January 2013. However, the last of the 27 European Union member states to ratify the amendment, the Czech Republic, did not do so until 23 April 2013, resulting in its entry into force on 1 May 2013. In June 2015, an updated EMU reform plan was released which envisaged that in the medium-term (between July 2017 and 2025) the ESM should be transposed from being an intergovernmental agreement to become fully integrated into the EU law framework applying to all eurozone member states, so that the ESM can be governed more smoothly by the EU institutions - under the competence provided for by the amended article 136 of the TFEU.

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European Union member states in the context of Nicosia

Nicosia, also known as Lefkosia or Lefkoşa, is the capital of Cyprus and the de jure capital of Northern Cyprus, which is geographically located in Asia. It is the southeasternmost capital city among European Union member states.

Nicosia has been continuously inhabited for over 5,500 years and has been the capital of Cyprus since the 10th century. It is the last divided capital in Europe; three years after Cyprus gained independence from British rule in 1960, the Bloody Christmas conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots triggered island-wide intercommunal violence, and Nicosia's Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities segregated into its south and north respectively in 1964. A decade later, Turkey invaded Cyprus following Greece's successful attempt to take over the island. The leaders of the takeover would later step down, but the dividing line running through Nicosia (and the rest of the island, interrupted only briefly by British military bases) became a demilitarised zone that remains under the control of Cyprus while heavily policed by the United Nations; it is now known as the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus between the Republic of Cyprus, which is internationally recognised, and Northern Cyprus, which is recognised only by Turkey. The ongoing dispute between the two communities is known as the Cyprus problem.

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European Union member states in the context of Eurosystem

The Eurosystem is the monetary authority of the eurozone, the collective of European Union member states that have adopted the euro as their sole official currency. The European Central Bank (ECB) has, under Article 16 of its Statute, the exclusive right to authorise the issuance of euro banknotes. Member states can issue euro coins, but the amount must be authorised by the ECB beforehand.

The Eurosystem consists of the ECB and the national central banks (NCB) of the 20 member states that are part of the eurozone. The national central banks apply the monetary policy of the ECB. The primary objective of the Eurosystem is price stability. Secondary objectives are financial stability and financial integration. The mission statement of the Eurosystem says that the ECB and the national central banks jointly contribute to achieving the objectives.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Nicosia ← Eurosystem ← National central bank (Eurosystem) ← Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
European Union → Supranational union → Lists of member states of the European Union → Treaties of the European Union → Institutions of the European Union → Council of the European Union → Qualified majority voting → Primacy of European Union law → Costa v ENEL → Subsidiarity → European Commission → European commissioner →