With the further development of European integration, the EU has gradually established and improved a series of policies, including customs union, agriculture, fisheries, region, society, currency, diplomacy and security, consumer protection and foreign trade. It reflects the unified European pattern in the fields of economy, politics, security and defense in the process of EU integration.

EU's policies reflect the coordination and unity of social and economic development. The process of EU economic integration begins with the customs union, and finally moves towards a comprehensive economic and monetary union by implementing the * * * common market and unifying the big market. 1968 In July, the European Union abolished all tariffs among its member states, established a unified tariff, and initially established a customs union, implementing the same tariff policy for products from third countries outside the region, so as to promote trade and economic development in the region. * * * The same agricultural policy is the first * * * same policy implemented by the EU. Its basic goal is to improve agricultural labor productivity, ensure the "fair" income of agricultural personnel, stabilize the agricultural product market, maintain the reasonable sales price of agricultural products and ensure the supply of agricultural products. Its main content is to set up an agricultural fund, unify the market and price of agricultural products, subsidize the export of agricultural products, and set up trade barriers such as differential taxes and quotas that are adjusted with the change of market supply and demand to protect EU agriculture from the competition of cheap agricultural products. The goal of regional policy is to "promote the coordinated development of the EU as a whole", "strengthen its economic and social integration", "narrow the development differences between different regions and eliminate the backwardness of the least developed areas or islands and rural areas". EU social policy and regional policy complement each other, and both aim at promoting the coordinated development of EU economy and society. In addition to the above policies, the EU has gradually strengthened its actions in the fields of employment, transportation, public health, environmental protection, scientific research, justice and internal affairs in recent years, which are complementary to the national measures taken by member States in these fields.

Successful experience

Compared with many similar economic regions in other parts of the world, the EU is the most successful model in terms of breadth and depth, status and influence.

As far as the breadth of the alliance is concerned, the EU has successfully launched an economic and political alliance of transnational cooperation, including many member countries. The European Union is a supranational organization, which has both the attributes of an international organization and the characteristics of a federation. The EU's successful regional policy is the basis of cooperation, which defines regional problems and problem areas as clearly as possible and links the vast areas together. Secondly, the regional policy has a clear overall goal: to narrow the gap between regions by implementing active regional policies and maximize the convergence of different regions within the EU. All these have laid a solid foundation for solving the problem of regional inequality and realizing the real union of the vast areas.

In the economic field, the EU has been committed to eliminating trade barriers among its member countries since its early days, and the EU has also implemented the same principle all over the world, which has greatly increased the weight and influence of the EU in world trade. The EU firmly believes that multilateral trade liberalization can bring great benefits to the global economy, among which developing countries benefit the most.

In depth, in 1958- 1968, at that time, the member countries of European economies had gradually abolished tariffs on industrial products, implemented a customs union for agricultural products, unified agricultural policies and prices, established agricultural funds, and implemented unified subsidies for agriculture. 1993 1 month, the European union launched a large internal market and implemented the free circulation of people, materials, capital and services among member States. 1999 65438+ 10 In October, the European Union 1 1 Member States took the lead in giving up their monetary sovereignty and adopting a unified currency, the euro. It is unique in human history that so many sovereign countries voluntarily give up the right to issue money and hand over this core sovereignty to their trusted supranational organizations. So far, no similar organization has the same decision-making body, the same executive body, the same parliament and the same central bank as the European Union. At the same time, the EU is still trying to implement the same foreign policy and security policy, and set about setting up a rapid reaction force. As a political entity, the EU has taken the most solid and important step.

existing problems

The EU is only a confederation of countries, but it is not a federal country. In the past 50 years, its political system has been developing and based on a series of treaties. In the process of realizing economic and political integration, there are inevitably some disadvantages, mainly in the following aspects: First, the decision-making mechanism of the European Union. The decision-making mechanism of the EU is the EU summit and Council. The summit adopts the parliamentary system. If you can't get the knowledge of a certain problem at the moment, put it off until the next summit. Although this decision-making mechanism reduces the probability of manipulation by big countries, there is a dilemma between fairness and efficiency. In addition, the size and allocation of seats in the European Commission (the executive body of the European Union) and the number and allocation of seats in the European Parliament are also controversial. The Council of the European Union distributes voting rights in proportion to the population of member States. Now that the EU has expanded from 15 to 25 countries, it is more difficult to make decisions.

The second is the distribution of benefits. The economic gap between member countries is large, and it is more difficult to organize and coordinate after the expansion; In order to cope with the increasing expenditure, the European Commission put forward the annual budget framework for the next decade in early 2004. It is estimated that the budget will increase from the current10 billion euros to 20143 billion euros in three years, accounting for 1. 15% of the EU's GDP. This proposal was opposed by net contributor countries. Due to the different economic bases of member countries, there is inevitably a problem of interest distribution between beneficiary countries and net beneficiary countries.

The third is the unity of the EU. Different economic strength bases determine that countries compete for the leadership of the EU's development direction, and their confidence and willingness for internal unity are also different. There are differences in the distribution of economic benefits between rich and poor countries; Big and small countries often quarrel over the distribution of power. What's more, the United States, an ally of the West, doesn't want to see the expansion of the influence of the European Union, and tries its best to sow discord and prevent the European Union from forming an independent and powerful force, which has some enlightenment for China's regional economic cooperation-taking the Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation as an example.

The European Union's spirit of "European coordination" means that world economic relations are changing from competition among countries to competition among regional economic organizations, and regional economic cooperation has become an important choice for countries and regions to promote economic development. The cooperation model of EU can be summarized as "regionalization model of stable and synchronous development" and "sustainable development model", with ecological and environmental protection as the premise of long-term economic growth and "sustainability" as the comprehensive goal of coordinated economic and social development. This is undoubtedly of great significance in today's continuous development of globalization. For the Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation, the successful experience of the EU also brings important enlightenment.

Enlightenment 1: * * The establishment of the market system is an important force for regional cooperation.

The essence of regional economic integration is market integration. In this regard, the EU has provided a set of policy and institutional framework to manage trade and investment among member States, especially to eliminate tariff barriers among member States and establish a common market. From the beginning of regional cooperation to the process of integration, the EU is often one step ahead of the economy. The change from product trade as the main form of communication to investment-based cooperation is also a sign of close relationship. The successful establishment of the euro system and the economic exchanges within and outside the region with "EU" as the main body and capital flow as the important form fully demonstrate that this unified market system is an important force to promote the process of EU integration. This has important implications for China Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation.

Enlightenment 2: Institutional innovation is an important guarantee for regional cooperation.

The process of EU economic integration is essentially a transnational institutional innovation process. The EU has enacted relevant laws at all stages of integration, and all member countries have adopted the same regional policies. Effective economic organization is the key to economic growth. From the process of EU integration, it can be seen that institutional integration in the region is an important guarantee to ensure the realization of its functional integration. At the same time, institutional integration needs to establish an efficient regional cooperation and coordination mechanism on the basis of breaking the original fragmentation. Therefore, drawing on the experience of EU, the core foundation of Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation is to establish management decision-making institutions with the same characteristics, break the shackles of administrative boundaries, and provide institutional guarantee for the transformation from "administrative region" to "economic region".

Enlightenment 3: The coordination of efficiency and fairness is the goal that regional cooperation should achieve.

In the integrated economic interaction, the EU has noticed the differences in economic development levels among countries, established a mechanism to eliminate regional disparities and poverty, and provided some protection and support for industries in relatively backward countries in cooperation agreements, which promoted complementary advantages and common development, and better enhanced the comprehensive competitiveness of the entire regional economy. At the same time, however, the decision-making mechanism has also caused conflicts of interest and coordination problems between beneficiary countries and net beneficiary countries, presenting a dilemma between efficiency and fairness. Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation should consider this issue. When making internal and external decisions, we should try our best to solve the problem of unbalanced regional development, realize the coordination of efficiency and fairness, constantly strengthen our strength in the process of economic and political integration, and expand our position and influence at home and abroad.

Enlightenment 4: The coordinated development of economy, culture and ecological environment is the basis of sustainable development of regional cooperation.

In the process of economic integration, the European Union pays special attention to the development of economy and culture and the protection of ecological environment, invests a lot of money in research and development, implements the scientific policy of "European research area", and strives to become a world-class knowledge-based economic zone. At the same time, it also established a unified European environmental law, that is, the EU environmental law. The formation of EU environmental law system is a miracle of contemporary environmental law. EU environmental law is not a short-term behavior, but a long-term historical phenomenon. 2 1 century, due to the acceleration of European political and economic union, the unified system of EU environmental law will be accelerated, which will certainly have an important impact on human environmental protection and legal civilization. Attaching importance to and absorbing the beneficial experience of the European Union is of great significance for China's Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation to realize the sustainable development of economy, culture and ecological environment.