[lbo-talk] Crisis in the EU: From the Periphery to the Center

[Angelus Novus]

"The building of a supranational political European Community, 
resulting in the European Union in 1993, only highlighted the imbalance 
between core countries like France, Germany and Great Britain and their 
eastern and southern peripheries. The EU’s architecture, now faced with a serious crisis, was not a preconceived “project” with a clear-cut 
political consistency among its founding members. 
French and German choices were key to the political and institutional changes. France’s social-liberal turn in 1982/1983 radicalized free 
market competition and introduced the suppression of control on capital 
flows. The “economic and monetary Union” was aimed at building a 
“competitive Europe.” German unification was not foreseen in such a 
project; various governments had differing views.
The European Community’s expansion to the poorer, more rural southern and eastern European countries increased its socio-economic and 
political heterogeneity. In fact, the core countries’ vote in favor of 
enlargement had more geopolitical than economic purpose.
The imposition of market relationships of domination alone would have 
been easier to implement than the complex constraints of institutional 
enlargement. Many actors had argued in favor of first clarifying and 
“deepening” the mechanism of decision-making before broadening the 
heterogeneity of the Union. Therefore, the integration of the southern 
European peripheral countries had to be made an attractive 
socio-economic and political (even if capitalist) alternative: equal 
status for members and political democracy against dictatorships were 
stressed. The obvious fact that “pure market competition” between uneven regions and countries simply increases the gaps between them — and 
therefore produces less cohesion — was clearly recognized."

Full article: http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/3436