Unit 2. The inter-institutional relations: how institutions and subsystems interact.

STEP 1. OVERVIEW

In the previous unit, we have learned that the EU is a supranational political system with its own politics, policy and polity, and that EU institutions belong to different legislative, executive, representative and judiciary sub-systems. In this unit, you are going to learn how these sub-systems and institutions interact and their mutual power relations. For this purpose, we will focus mainly on the executive and legislative sub-systems. The representative sub-system will be covered in the next unit, while EU law and judiciary powers are analyzed by a dedicated Eurasia course that you can check here (insert reference).

By focusing on EU legislative and executive powers, we will try to understand whether the institutions in the EU can be compared to those of Member States and you will also be able to reflect on a comparison between the EU and your favorite countries around the world. Moreover, we will try to understand whether the EU is more ‘similar’ to a parliamentary system or, rather, to a presidential one.