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topics also looks quite difficult. Public debates and public statements
demonstrate the inability to even differentiate between the “European
Council” and the “Council of Europe,” the “European Parliament” and
the “Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,” etc. There is
also a significant ambiguity in the wider Georgian public with regard
to “European Commission regulation,” “Resolutions of the European
Parliament,” “Decisions of the Council of the EU” and how such
documents relate to the EU decision-making process. Against such a
background, it looks even more challenging to comprehend the various
legal and administrative aspects of the functioning of the Union in order
to make a competent contribution to debates, relevant conclusions or
recommendations.

What Makes the EU a Unique Player in the International
Political Architecture?

The EU is a unique multilateral format by its structure as well as its
functioning and administrative toolboxes. The European Union is
neither an international organization (as some call it by mistake) nor a
confederation, a federal state, or a nation-state. The EU is a “Union” of
European states which operates through EU institutions.
The key to understanding the work of EU institutions is a founding
principle of the European Union: EU member states willingly handed
over some of their national competences to the EU institutions. This
means that EU members agreed that decisions on some issues of
national importance would better be taken with the involvement EU
institutions (or adopted solely by the institutions) than by member
states alone. From this point of view, the EU is indeed a unique unity
in which member states voluntarily give up part of their national
sovereignty for the benefit of the common good.