This master's thesis is dedicated to an in-depth examination of European values. At the beginning of the European integration, values of democracy, the rule of law and liberty were not completely forgotten, but neither did they occupy a prominent position in discussions on European unification.
More attention was paid to them later in the 1990s, firstly indirectly acknowledged in Article F of the Maastricht Treaty and later in Article 6 of the Amsterdam Treaty. Freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human rights were originally referred to as the principles of the European Union and were renamed as values only later in the new terminology of Article 2 of the Treaty of Lisbon (TEU-Liz).
As part of my assignment, I reviewed in which European documents we can find the notion of values, how they evolved over time and what is their special significance in the European area. Furthermore, I comprehensively analysed the values laid down in Article 2 of the TEU-Liz, among which I also mentioned the value of peace which, incidentally, is not mentioned in Article 2, but represents the foundation of European integration without which further advancement of European values would not be possible.
Finally, I expanded my research into the area of EU common foreign and security policy, where I investigated the impact of proliferation of European values in relation to third countries, states which are not members of the European Union. I analysed positive as well as negative aspects of the spread of European values under the auspices of universality and in this context, I examined the various theories regarding the expansion of European values through EU’s common foreign and security policy.
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