|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Europe 1992, Majority Rule, and the Role of Culture
| Article
# : |
18184 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1990 |
3,340 Words |
| Author
: |
Kyle E. McSlarrow
Kyle E. McSlarrow practices law in Washington, D.C. |
Little notices just a few years ago, the European Community's plan for achieving a single market by 1992 has increasingly been the subject of scrutiny. Among Europeans, discussion has centered on how to make the EC's project work; those outside Europe have focused on its consequences. But there is one dissenter - the British Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher has registered a jarring note by repeatedly questioning the goals her fellow leaders have in mind. True, her government signed the Single European Act in 1986, which endorsed a single market. But it is a measure of the accelerated pace of activities toward that end within the European Commission, led by its president Jacques Delors, that she has felt compelled to apply the brakes, unilaterally if need be.
Within the Community a consensus developed that if a single market were to be achieved, many other reforms would be needed - in particular, those addressing the so-called social dimension. Truly to achieve a single market, the argument ran, it was necessary to eliminate potential distortions of trade through legislation that touched, for example, on environmental, labor, and monetary issues. Changes in Eastern Europe, far from reducing the significance of 1992, have actually provided additional ammunition for Mr. Delors and his allies. Theirs is the none too subtle argument that the nationalism of a unified Germany is best trussed up, like Gulliver, in the webbing of an overarching Community - over which, no doubt, preside beneficent "Eurocrats." This is a profoundly different task than that originally contemplated by the 1992 project. The result is that the "single market" mask has fallen. The task, according to the ministers who met in the spring of 1990, should now be pursuit of "political union."
POLITICAL UNION AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
The rhetoric of political union assumes that we are witnessing the approach of a new epoch: the evolution from the nation-states that replaced feudalism in the West into a supranational government incorporating the form of republican democracy. Not that this is a novel idea, of course. Launched in optimism, the United Nations continues to founder in reality. Far from appreciating this precedent, however, many within the EC seem prepared to go well beyond the United Nations in terms of the impositions placed on national sovereignty. Recalling Jean Monnet's dream, the EC is to have a federal government; but, as its proponents would say, a "true" federal government that leaves the essentials of sovereignty untouched. I am not persuaded that any such creature would be worth the
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
