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national interests guided European states. The supranational system
of governance set a new goal – to make the entire Europe a place for
peace, development and wellbeing. The newest history of Europe has
proven the new approach efficient as it delivered tangible results in
quite a limited period of time.
Supranationalism does not represent intergovernmentalism upon
which international organizations are founded. Within international
organizations, nation states fully exercise their sovereign rights and
take joint decisions by consensus. As we have seen, national interests
have been sacrificed, or better to say “shared”, for supranational goals
in the case of supranationalism; that is objectives superior to national
interests.
Yet, the EU retains some national elements within its supranational
system of governance. Per se, supranational and national are indeed
confronting notions. However, it seems that in the case of the European
Union, a synergy of such contradicting concepts and their equilibrium
achieved through a complex set of intra-institutional communications
brings impressive results. The equilibrium itself rests on competence-
sharing between the EU institutions and the member states. The
competence-sharing itself will be best demonstrated through exploring
the EU decision-making process in the following chapters.

Supranationalism and Nationalism in EU Institutions

Striking a balance between supranationalism and the national interests
of the member states has always been an issue since the founding of
the European Union. Such a balance is necessary to ensure that the
national interests of EU member states are protected when managing
the Union through supranational institutions.
This was the case since the very first years of the establishment of
the European communities. In 1952, member states of the European Coal
and Steel Communities simultaneously set a council of ministers, which
became a counterweight to the supranational European Commission.