Title: Remarks on the Future of the European Union: Domestic and Global Challenges Ahead
Abstract: Abstract: This paper** highlights the main consequences that the crisis has put on the Union, regarding four major areas: financial, macroeconomic, social and mental-ideological. Also, it aims to tackle some key challenges for the Union: the revival of international trade; the prevention of the rise of protectionism on the global scale; the need to find a solution to the dilemma between continued stimulus and financial consolidation in general, and between the ambitious goals of the Europe 2020 project and the current fiscal restrictions; the growth of public support across Europe for a financial consolidation strategy based on cutting spending; the impact of the financial and macroeconomic crisis on several sectors; and the deficiencies of the European construction indicated by the global crisis. Furthermore, it proposes four main questions for which EU has to provide clear answers in order to become a real global player. The questions concern the European identity, the European values, the EU strategy paper establishing its mission for the next period and the importance of a strong leadership implementing the strategy. In the end, the most important challenge seems to be how the EU can remain a global economic actor and become a more influential political player in the network of rapidly changing international power relations. Keywords: Union, crisis, challenges, sustainable growth, strategy, G-20, integration. Although the Union (EU) was not the main source of the global financial and economic crisis, as one of the leading economic players, it was fundamentally affected by the immediate and longer-term consequences of the crisis. Similarly, it is expected that it would play an important role in how to get out of the crisis (not yet clear, whether a passive or an active one). The crisis consisted and still keeps on consisting of four major stages that are interacting but following each other with a certain time lag: financial, macroeconomic, social and mental-ideological. While the banking leg of the financial crisis seems to be under control at the end of 2010, there remain several open issues whether international financial markets can be stabilized or at least calmed down, and whether macroeconomic decline bottomed out or it may return in some form as the consequence of managing the costs of crisis management. Adverse social developments focusing on unemployment, rising poverty, income differentiation, welfare loss, etc. just started to manifest themselves, when, at least in some parts of the OECD, including the EU, first but still unconvincing signs of recovery can be identified. The likely challenges of the ideological and leadership crisis related to the deep-rooted (protracted, still hidden) consequences of the crisis and to the future of shaping socio-economic strategies and returning to a renewed balance between economic, political, social, cultural and environmental issues on the one hand, and between national, EU-level and global governance, on the other, are mostly still ahead of us. The fundaments of a sustainable growth that, at the same time would be able to successfully manage the costs of crisis management, remain weak and unpredictable, both in Europe and in the USA. In a positive case, a double-dip can be avoided but it would not automatically lead to sustainable and higher growth but, particularly and most probably in Europe, to a sluggish growth with continuing signs of stagnation (or even deterioration) in selected areas of the economy and the labour market. In the next paragraphs some of the key challenges will be shortly dealt with. First: to be sure, an encouraging sign is the revival of international trade. Following a deep decline in 2009, international trade measured on figures submitted by the C-20 group recovered by 1 0 per cent that does not yet fully compensate the size of decline in 2009, but can be considered as a strong support to overall rebound. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['doaj']
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Cited By Count: 1
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