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Introduction: The High Road to European Unity
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19615 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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10 / 1991 |
589 Words |
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When the United States and the Soviet Union brought down the walls of the Cold War in Europe, the European Community found itself the sole pillar of the common European home.
The ECs foundations, however, were set long ago. It broke ground in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome. With that success, the Common Market opened shop in 1958, and West Europeans have been signing on ever since. So would the rest of Europe, if, in 1989, the EC had not closed the Euro-club to further membership under the guise of assessing the collapse of communism. The vacuum left by the departing superpowers seems liable to be filled by the nonaligned, market-oriented EC: hence, the global emergence of Euro-clout.
However, when the new world order ended the decades of hostility that separated East and West, it also opened the doors to the old horrors of nationalism and rivalry. And while the EC attempts to place the final touches on a common economic market, the international community is forcing the EC to play a mediating superpower political role. This leaves analysts wondering whether in 1992--while Portuguese doctors are treating Dutch patients in a modern German hospital or Greek businessmen are selling stocks in London--a new branch of the EC will be a peacekeeping arm for the new club of Europe? THE WORLD & I asked leading experts on Europe to assess the benefits and risks of European unity.
Terry McNeill, chairman of the political science department at the University of Hull, believes that the ingredients for a new European community based on economics, environment, and human rights are now available. McNeill envisions a group of federated states at the core of the new Europe. The next level would include those states such as Britain that desire European inclusion, but with a greater degree of sovereignty. Member countries of the European Free Trade Association, along with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, would merge at the third level of the community. And nations of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as the United States and the Soviet Union, would join the outer circle. This system, says McNeill, embraces European security while allowing individual states to plug into their particular preferences at various levels of political commitment and economic strength.
If Europe is to become a new world power, the EC must help build the new order along with the United States and Japan. Specifically, writes Christian Watrin, director of the Institute for Economic Policy at the University of Cologne, the EC should take the
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