From author: “As an undergraduate student some time last century, I remember grappling with a number of terms linked to the European Union (EU). These included words such as neo-functionalism, integration and supranationalism (to name but three). At that time, there was no resource to give brief explanations of such terms. Surprisingly, little has changed today. When people discuss issues surrounding the EU, they come into contact with terms which are unfamiliar to them. Concepts such as ‘subsidiarity’ or the ‘emergency brake’ may trip off the tongues of experts, but to the student or lay person they may as well be a foreign language”