European Economy

Résumé du document

The 2004 enlargement of the European Union not only increased its number of member states, but looking at the economic, political and cultural situation of the new member countries, most of them under communist rule until recently, with the opening of the iron curtain and the disappearance of the USSR, one can easily discover major differences with EU-15 nations. It seems necessary to rethink the allocation of competences between the supranational and federal bodies of the European Union and national governments when faced with this new diversity of preferences.

Extraits

[...] A very concrete example relative to the last two enlargements is European external trade policy. The new members from central and Eastern Europe have had their economies tightly coordinated with former USSR and Warsaw pact countries. It seems natural that many business relations still go eastwards. Furthermore, it seems clear that it is in the interest of these countries to facilitate trade with the old “brother” countries in order not to lose precious trading partners, such as Russia as an important natural resources and energy supplier. [...]

[...] In an enlarged European Union, it seems therefore more important than ever before to centralize decisions. Note that in this case, enforcing severe pollution restriction can even prove to become an advantage for European companies. Collaborating to meet the requirements, they may develop new abilities, putting them at the head of the race. Again, the car industry can serve us as example. European carmakers proved to be very resistant to anti-pollution policies, investing heavily in developing new fuel saving technologies reducing emissions. [...]

[...] The differences inside the European Union are huge. Imposing a uniform minimum wage would have nearly everyone worse off. Let's start with the new members, whose economies would have to sacrifice lots of their actual competitiveness that is at least partly due to low labour cost, and necessary for their development, because of a unnaturally high minimum wage. On the other side, countries whose economies are able to support a high minimum wage and offer their workers comparably excellent living standards (such as Luxembourg) would see these high standards deteriorated. [...]

[...] European Economy 1. Introduction The 2004 enlargement of the European Union not only increased its number of member states, but looking at the economic, political and cultural situation of the new member countries, most of them under communist rule until recently with the opening of the iron curtain and the disappearance of the USSR, one can easily discover major differences with EU15 nations. It seems necessary to rethink the allocation of competences between the supranational and federal bodies of the European Union and national governments when faced with this new diversity of preferences. [...]

[...] Scale economies increase when applied to 27 nations instead of 15 and the internal market can be made more integrated, externalities being eliminated for a larger number of countries. Nevertheless, preferences are likely to be more diversified now than they were with the EU15, or even with Six”. Therefore the consequences of centralizing decisions in areas where the preferences are very diversified must also be taken into account and it must be taken care of not over-centralizing. A tribute to this danger is the EU principle of subsidiarity. [...]