Transcript THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: OPPORTUNIIES AND

Neill Nugent
Professor of Politics and Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
The EU:
accounts for one eighth of the world’s states
has a population, and therefore also an
internal market, of 450 million
has a GDP almost as large as the US (EU-9
trillion USD, US-10 trillion)
‘Europe’ and ‘the EU’ are becoming
increasingly co-terminus
Creating a more dynamic internal market: but there is no
consensus what this entails
Getting the Lisbon Process on track: but what are the
priorities, and can OMC be made to work?
Creating a zone of peace and prosperity across Europe: but
where are the EU’s ‘final’ boundaries?
Increasing the EU’s roles and influence in the world: but can
the CFSP/ESDP be effective without majoritarian
government?
There are three options:
Drop it and operate on the basis of the Nice
Treaty: but note, the Treaty has to be changed
when membership exceeds 27 members.
Try to ratify it.
Try to rescue parts of it.
1 EU Enlargement: Where will it end?
Beyond Bulgaria ad Romania, there are four
groups of potential EU members/applicants:
Turkey
The Western Balkan states
Western states of the former Soviet Union
The non EU Western European states
1 EU Enlargement: Broad issues
Is it inevitable that as the EU continues to expand beyond
its former Western European base enlargements will become
ever more ‘difficult’?
Does the EU have an ultimate ‘absorption capacity’?
Is there a geographical limit?
Can the European Neighbourhood Policy ‘stem the tide’ of
applications?
2 Managing greater diversity
The EU has always had to manage diversity.
Traditionally it has done so by a mixture of:
suppressing it
diminishing it
buying it off
accommodating it
Is the EU now becoming so diverse that ‘flexible
cooperation’ will become much more common, and
the nature of the EU will change fundamentally?
3
A need for more – or different – leadership?
Leadership in the EU has traditionally been
dispersed.
Recent events suggest there is an increasing
dispersal of leadership.
That there is a leadership problem is recognised
but, as the CT IGC demonstrated, it is very difficult
to reach agreement on what should be done.
4 What is the ‘final stage’?
There has never been, and still is not, any consensus on
what is the ‘ideal’ final nature of the EU. Preferences amongst
governments still range widely.
The Constitutional Convention was unable to provide ‘a
Philadelphia moment’.
The ‘federal option’ now seems to be quite unrealisable: the
EU is likely to remain a cross between a confederal and
consociational system.