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And yet, maybe
the EU will be providing an example to the Americas sometime in the future? What do you economists,
sociologists, planners and futurists think? What do the
Europeans say? Karen Watters
Cole Another Decade Of Diversity
How a newly expanded Europe will overcome its own divisions and become
a model for regional governance By Andrew Moravcsik Jan. 6
issue — The
big bang is done. The champagne’s
been drunk. A new Europe stretches
from Lisbon to Latvia. And now
what? The reality is that the EU’s
troubles are just beginning. History suggests that successful international cooperation rests
ultimately not on abstract rules but on convergence. As the great Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi observed more
than a half century ago, any stable economy must balance the disruption of market
forces with the protection of diverse socioeconomic and political arrangements. If the
underlying diversity is too great, conflict results. So with a wider and deeper
Union. The bigger it gets, the greater the challenge of managing its disparate
parts. This is why the EU has moved toward greater flexibility—”variable
geometry,” it’s called in Brussels. Nearly all major initiatives
of the past decade have been accepted by only a subset of the EU’s
membership. The single currency has yet to be accepted by three countries, and
the elimination of border controls by two. EU social policy has settled on loose coordination. Foreign and defense policies are based
on voluntary “coalitions of the willing.” Yet even with this flexibility, the EU may well be nearing
its maximum tolerance for diversity. Consider the European Monetary Union, which seeks to impose a single
monetary policy on a market region with divergent national macroeconomic
conditions. For years, economists
have cautioned that Europe’s diversity might ultimately be unmanageable. Remember the doomsday scenarios
centering on Italy, where it was feared that government incompetence, political
corruption and fiscal irresponsibility would drive up interest rates throughout
the entire Eurozone—triggering a political and financial crisis. Today’s culprit is Germany. One London think tank, Independent Strategy, sketches out
a dire scenario: the continuing global slowdown, tight money and a rising euro
will sap German export earnings, depress employment and consumer spending, and
eventually drive Germany into a “Japanese” stagnation, taking the rest of
Europe with it. The next two
years, the group predicts, could be a “very dangerous time,” with close to
a 50 percent chance of things going horribly wrong. The variety of the 10 new members—poorer, smaller and geographically
distant from the “core” of the EU—is sure to exacerbate such tensions. Poland is a case in
point. Private investment is
sluggish. Uncompetitive nationalized
industries, including the steel and energy sectors, must be integrated into the
EU. So too its farmers. Public administration and courts are
less than fully reliable, while reform of public finance has yet to begin. Regulatory standards in food safety,
fisheries management and environmental policy do not yet match those of the
West. Will Poland follow the lead
of Spain and Ireland, prior entrants that swiftly implemented market and
administrative reforms and were rewarded with rapid growth? Or will it resemble Greece, whose
bloated budgets, inefficient firms and corrupt government made the country a virtual pariah for a decade
after its entry in 1979? Were this not enough, Romania and Bulgaria are poised for membership in
2007—not to mention Turkey. It’s
often forgotten that EU laws are rarely implemented by Brussels, but by
national governments. Deep trust
between political systems is thus required. An Irish consumer buying Turkish
food, for example, must trust Turkish farmers, Turkish regulators, Turkish
border officials and, ultimately, Turkish judges to assure the origin and
safety of that food. Can such
trust be maintained with Turkey’s spotty record of democracy, rule of law and
human rights and its untried capacity for regulatory oversight? Small wonder that European leaders at Copenhagen rebuffed Washington’s
efforts to push Turkey’s candidacy. Americans simply cannot imagine the depth of cooperation
entailed. Turkish
accession would be the equivalent, in North American terms, of U.S.
integration with Mexico: elimination of border controls, disbursement of 3
percent of U.S. federal spending as aid and comanagement with Mexico of the
Federal Reserve, a single currency, foreign-trade negotiations, antitrust
policy, environmental policy, agricultural subsidies and a dozen other federal
functions—all overseen by a supranational supreme court and a jointly elected
parliament. Put this way, the challenge of diversity sounds insurmountable. Yet the EU is likely to do what it has
always done: muddle through. Compromises
will cushion the shock of enlargement and monetary convergence. And when the EU emerges from its
decade of diversity, its distinctive strategy of trade, aid and multilateral
engagement may well emerge as the pre-eminent model for the future of world
politics—one very different from that currently advocated by Washington. Successful enlargement will
demonstrate that the European experience is relevant not only to a small number
of rich, culturally homogeneous democracies with a totalitarian past. The EU
will have established itself as a viable model for regional governance across
the globe. Moravcsik
is professor of government and director of the European Union Program at
Harvard University. http://www.msnbc.com/news/850665.asp?0cv=CB30 Outgoing Mail
Scanned by NAV 2002 |
- [Futurework] As Keith was saying Karen Watters Cole
- [Futurework] As Keith was saying Keith Hudson
