In February 2007 he resigned from the Shadow Cabinet after David Cameron changed the party's stance on fisheries, specifically the threat of withdrawal from the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.

This was the opening shot in a campaign to turn the formerly EU-sceptic party into pro-Europeans, a process that culminated in late 2004, with the party's rank-and-file following Holger K. Nielsen's advice, and endorsing a pro-ratification stance towards the EU's Draft Constitution.

The Stabilisation and Association Process ( SAP ) is the EU's policy framework.

The primary purpose of the Council is to act as one of the two chambers of the EU's legislative branch, the other chamber being the European Parliament.

The EU's legislative authority is divided between the Council and the Parliament.

The EU's budget ( which is around 116. 4 billion euro ) is subject to a form of the ordinary legislative procedure with a single reading giving Parliament power over the entire budget ( prior to 2009, its influence was limited to certain areas ) on an equal footing to the Council.

The EU is Egypt ’ s biggest trading partner currently accounting for 42 % of Egyptian exports and 37 % of imports, with the balance of trade still in the EU's favour.

The flag symbolises the EU as a whole but it is also the sole emblem of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.

Extraordinary flying of the flag is common on the EU's flag day, known as Europe Day, which is celebrated annually on 9 May.

The EU's Directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers ( AIFMD ) was passed by the EU Parliament on November 11, 2010 and is the first EU directive focused on " alternative investment fund managers ", including hedge fund managers.

South Korea is the EU's eighth largest trade partner, and the EU has become South Korea's second largest export destination.

The EU's lead is being followed by the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Central American States, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a " post-historical " world than the Americans ' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.

It is worth noting that one of the factors behind the 1992 reforms was the need to reach agreement with the EU's external trade partners at the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( GATT ) talks with regards to agricultural subsidies.

Only 5. 4 % of EU's population works on farms, and the farming sector is responsible for 1. 6 % of the GDP of the EU ( 2005 ).< ref > Turkey in Europe: Breaking the Vicious Circle.

Monaco is in the EU's customs and VAT area, is a de facto member of the Schengen Area due to its open border with France and uses the euro as is sole currency.

Milan is one of EU's most important tourist destinations, and Italy's second ; with 1. 902 million arrivals in 2007 and 1. 914 million in 2008, it places itself 42nd and 52nd respectively, most visited city in the world.

Foreign policy is chaired and represented by the EU's High Representative.

The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy | High Representative, Catherine Ashton, is the EU's spokesperson on foreign policy.

Counting the EU's own contributions and those of its member states together, the EU is the largest aid donor in the world.

It is legally distinct from the European Union ( EU ), but has the same membership, and is governed by the EU's institutions.

This greatly improves the viability of the Galileo project: " The EU's executive had previously said that if agreement was not reached by January 2008, the long-troubled project would essentially be dead.

The neutral countries of Austria, Finland and Sweden acceded to the EU, and those that didn't join were tied into the EU's economic market via the European Economic Area.

The Community Strategic Guidelines ( CSG ) contain the principles and priorities of the EU's cohesion policy and suggest ways the European regions can take full advantage of the funding that has been made available for national and regional aid programmes for the period 2007-2013.

Hence, for example, the EU's Quality Wines Produced in Specified Regions ( QWPSR ) covers all Spanish wines graded above the basic Vino de Mesa ( table wine ), within which the Spanish Denominación de Origen forms a subset.

He travelled all over the North Atlantic to produce a landmark Green Paper on Fisheries .< ref name = Conservatives_profile > Paterson joined the crew of the Kiroan, one of the few remaining trawlers out of Fleetwood, Lancashire, to view the fishing practices which have been created by the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.

The German budget deficit soared to 3. 8 %, the highest of all EU members ( also above the 3 % limit set by the EU's Stability Pact ).

In 2004, 24 % of all UK venture capital ( 8 % of all the EU's ) was received by Silicon Fen companies, according to the Cambridge Cluster Report 2004 produced by Library House and Grant Thornton.

Under the health check, the EU's rural development policy was given a boost in order to help farms and other rural businesses respond to pressing challenges such as fighting and adjusting to climate change ; managing water more carefully ; providing and using renewable energy ; conserving biodiversity and pursuing innovation in all of these areas.

The EU's Common Fisheries Policy, which began in 1970, aimed at creating a common market for fisheries products by providing for free access to the waters of all Member States and introducing structural funds to ensure modernisation of the sector.

He said that part of the responsibility lay with the EU's 1989 Framework Directive, which made risk assessments compulsory across all occupations, whether hazardous or not.

It represents all European Citizens in the EU's legislative process, in contrast to the Council, which represents the Member States.

Its accession treaty was drawn up in all of the EU's then-official treaty languages ( including English and Irish ) and, as such, the Irish state joined under both of its names, Éire and Ireland.

The EU's regional policy covers all European regions, although regions across the EU fall in different categories ( so-called objectives ), depending mostly on their economic situation.

It applies the EU's common external tariff to goods from other countries ( including the U. S .).

Although Norway's trade policies have long aimed at harmonizing its industrial and trade policy with the EU's, a new referendum in 1994 gave the same result as in 1972, and Norway remains one of only two Nordic countries outside the EU, the other being Iceland.

They also claimed that five applicant countries could have joined the EU without changing the EU's rules, and that others could have negotiated on an individual basis ; something opponents to the treaty argued would have been to the applicants ' advantage.

Today, around 71 % of the EU's agricultural imports originate from developing countries.

CFSP deals only with a specific part of the EU's external relations, which domains include mainly Trade and Commercial Policy and other areas such as funding to third countries, etc.

The potential benefits of becoming a member of the EU act as an incentive for both political and economic reform in states wishing to fulfil the EU's accession criteria, and are considered a major factor contributing to the reform and stabilisation of former Communist countries in Eastern Europe.

The countries argued that the EU's regulatory process was far too slow and its standards were unreasonable given that the overwhelming body of scientific evidence finds the crops safe.

It proposed a reversed form of the EU's principle of subsidiarity, meaning that it wanted the EU to handle issues only when ordered to do so by the member countries.

The EU's ' Developing Harmonised European Approaches for Transport Costing and Project Assessment ' ( HEATCO ) project, part of its Sixth Framework Programme, reviewed transport appraisal guidance across EU member states and found that significant differences exist between countries.

The first — Article 1 ( 1 )— precludes both the domestic courts in Poland and the UK and the EU's courts from finding that " laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action " in the countries to which it applies are inconsistent with the Charter.

According to the European Union's official site, and a statement by Commissioner Günter Verheugen, the aim is to have a ring of countries, sharing EU's democratic ideals and joining them in further integration without necessarily becoming full member states.

The entry of both the Czech Republic and Poland to the European Union in May 2004, and especially the entry of the countries to the EU's passport-free Schengen zone in late 2007, reduced the significance of territorial disputes, ending systematic controls on the border between the countries.

The Parliament's President meanwhile articulates the EU's values such as democratic elections in other countries.

Iceland is a member of the European Free Trade Association ( EFTA ), which is between non-EU European countries, but is integrated into the EU's European Economic Area ( EEA ) and the Schengen Area.

The EEA was established to give Iceland ( as well as a few other European countries outside the EU ) access to the EU's internal market.

As defined in article 214 TFEU, the EU's operations in the field of humanitarian aid are intended to provide ad hoc assistance and relief for people in third countries who are victims of natural or man-made disasters.

His initial portfolio in this mandate was External relations with Southern Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia ( except Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan ) including development aid ; in this period difficulties in implementing the EU's " mediterranean strategy " under his leadership began to lead to complaints of incompetence and of fraud.

The EU leaders did promise aid to the central European countries that suffered the most under the floods with monies coming from the EU's structural budget and this outreach to non-members was seen as symbolic in an effort to portray a truly united Europe.

The European Union has two different types of instrument to increase the quality and openness of the education and training systems of the EU's Member States: a set of policy instruments through which EU countries are encouraged to develop their own education systems and to learn from each others ' successes ; and a substantial programme to support exchanges, networks and mutual learning between schools, universities or training centres as well as between the political authorities responsible for these areas in the different Member States.