The EU and its importance
By Ocean in Articles, Featured
For those who live in the EU, there is a nagging question that always seems not far in the back of everyone’s mind, and that is its relevance. People will get defensive or angry (or possibly happy) about it, but few people have no opinion. Having the United States grow into a superpower was ok, because Europe always acted as a sort of counterweight. The EU brought (or was supposed to bring) cohesiveness, so that Europe could be seen as a united bloc. But then came other entities, from Japan, to BRIC countries, to Asia in general, to less developed countries’ rapid development. From all these, China has emerged as a big player, and the EU sees itself as leapfrogged in the world arena. Of course, the ultimate test of the EU’s importance is not what people think of it within the EU, but outside of it.
It is therefore interesting to read about how a british writer in China has been convinced of the EU’s importance. It will be informative to see what others, from the US to Brazil to China to Thailand to Ghana, think of the EU and its place in the world economic system. It is still a big player, but in which direction is it headed?
Loading ...
The EU cannot claim to be a World Power except as an aggregate statistic. It has successfully united the continent in terms of trade, both by reducing internal barriers and by creating tremendous synthetic barriers to trade with the rest of the world (i.e. internal subsidies, external quotas).
But it has no common foreign policy, no common defense structure worth mentioning, and still cannot claim to be a single monolithic economy. As for a common culture, let’s be grateful that Italy remains Italian, Sweden is Swedish, and that only the French are French.
Senectus | Jan 10, 2010 | Reply
That’s true. And it will never be a sovereign country (at least in the next decade or two), so it will never be a superpower in the sense of China or the US. But it is still a trading partner in itself, due to its relaxing of internal trade barriers and, unfortunately, its fortification of external barriers.
Since the EU’s raison d’etre is almost entirely due to trade, it would be interesting to see if and how the relaxation of internal barriers has helped the EU, while the imposition of external barriers has created ill-will and trade spats with trading partners. Not that the politicians would pay much attention..
Ocean | Jan 11, 2010 | Reply