In a widely commented article entitled “Can Europe Survive the Rise of the Rest?” published recently in the New York Times, the British academic Timothy Garton Ash argues that size matters, especially for Europe. His claim is that now that the original arguments for establishing a European Union have become less relevant, the new argument for European unification should be the need for scale. He maintains that in a future likely to be dominated by new and old giants, “the need for scale is the key to our shared future.”
Garton Ash’s argument reminded me of the now obsolete debates we had in the past about the deepening versus the widening of the EU. The euro crisis has certainly skewed the debate very much towards the deepening end. The policy proposals to overcome the crisis have mostly incorporated suggestions to strengthen the competence of the Community level institutions in the fiscal, monetary, and banking areas. But somewhat counter intuitively, Garton Ash seems to argue that the real long term solution for Europe is to be found in widening (at least in market terms).
Can widening be the solution to Europe’s ills ? The euro crisis has accentuated a global trend which was already visible before the crisis. Economic power is shifting from the West to the East. This shift has significant ramifications for the global geostrategic and economic order. One of the least analyzed consequences of this shift has been the loss of influence of the West—read US and the EU—in the setup of global norms. Gone are the days of Bretton Woods, the NPT, or even the Uruguay Round where the priorities of the West were almost fully reflected in the institutions of global governance and the multilateral rules that underpinned these institutions. A case in point is the Doha Round. This “development” round of trade talks remains bottlenecked as the West and the rest of the world cannot agree on a vital set of tradeoffs. In the old days, such a situation was inconceivable. Developing countries had little to add to the agenda and they certainly refrained from spoiling the negotiations. Today we are witnessing a much more assertive set of emerging global or regional actors intent on influencing the norm-making machinery.
For the EU that means that the days of relying on multilateral rules and institutions to ensure its economic well-being are over. If the EU can no longer rely on the multinational framework to extend its economic influence, it needs a new approach to make up for the loss of this dynamic. That is why “widening” is of relevance and even a necessity.
But “widening”, in this respect, is not necessarily synonymous with enlargement. Certainly enlargement to big countries and large markets would help, although there are not too many of those left besides Turkey and Ukraine. But widening should also entail the establishment of neighboring areas of free trade, integrated with the EU market. The challenge for EU policymakers will be to push for this future at a time when national proclivities tend to nurture protectionism. But that is what leadership is about.
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