Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 15, University of Aberdeen, language: English, abstract: The EU nowadays is a very powerful political actor and has a very big influence, not only in Europe, but also in the rest of the world. Starting from a community for joint coal and steel administration it developed further and further. Today there is a discussion among scholars about the type of political actor the EU constitutes. Is it an international organization, a political system, a supranational state or something completely new and incomparable. This paper wants to prove that the European Union is not an international organization, despite having some of the appropriate characteristics, but rather a political system. In order to achieve that it will try to define the terms 'political system' and 'international organization' and then evaluate if the characteristics of those match with the European Union as a political actor.