Can Europe Survive Maastricht?
Authored by Dr. Douglas Stuart.
February 4, 1994
49 Pages
Brief Synopsis
Professor Douglas Stuart, with the generous support of the Ford Foundation, presents a much needed analysis of the Maastricht Treaty and its effects on Europe. He maintains that the Western European leaders have lost sight of the true meaning and potential value of European integration in recent years. This, he explains, accounts for the European Union's seeming inability to respond effectively to international crises, such as the one in former Yugoslavia. Professor Stuart concludes that unless the European Union reassesses its priorities and policies, the fundamental aspiration of maintaining European unity may be lost.
Summary
With the end of the cold war, virtually all of the institutions and assumptions associated with that era have come under scrutiny except the West European experiment in regional integration. Left unanswered, or even seriously discussed, when the Berlin Wall came down, were two questions raised by Alastair Buchan in 1974: "If West European union was a product of the cold war, will the one survive the demise of the other?" and "What role should the European Community play on a wider stage. . .?"
The nations of Western Europe chose to disregard these difficult questions because they had invested too much time and too many resources in European Community (EC) integration to risk derailing the whole experiment with an identity crisis. EC "completion" would provide its own answers over time. Furthermore, by 1990 it would have required considerable statesmanship to stop the EC train which had acquired an institutional life of its own (with over 19,000 EC employees).
There was, however, another reason why the nations of Western Europe continued to focus their attention and their energies on regional integration at the end of the cold war. It made it easier for them to defer consideration of unpleasant and controversial issues on the periphery of "little Europe." For the end of the cold war had created more problems than it had solved for the nations of Western Europe, and there was a natural enough inclination to wish them away.
The Treaty on European Union, which was negotiated at an EC summit in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht during the period December 9-11, 1991, became the focal point of the post-cold war campaign of EC completion. The Maastricht Treaty has been widely heralded as the most important development in EC history since the Treaty of Rome, even though few European citizens outside of Brussels have even a vague sense of its contents. But if the specifics of the Maastricht Treaty are obscure, its purpose, as reflected in its priorities, is clear. Maastricht is first and foremost an economic document, designed to consolidate and expand upon the progress which had been made during the cold war toward the creation of a fully integrated West European economic system.
This monograph argues that the post-cold war campaign for EC completion has diverted Western attention from two more important and immediate concerns: the eastward and southward extension of the West European "zone of peace" and the articulation and defense of common West European values and interests in the world community. Specifically, it will be argued that the Maastricht Treaty has actually made it harder for the nations of Western Europe to develop programs of economic and cultural reconciliation with the governments of Central Europe and the southern Mediterranean at a strategic moment in European history. This monograph will also argue that the "civilian" values which have become an integral part of the EC's identify have undermined the efforts of West European governments to play a positive role during the Persian Gulf conflict and the crisis in Yugoslavia. The report will close with some recommendations for developing a more cooperative relationship between Washington and the governments of Western Europe, as a basis for both pan-European and trans-Mediterranean security.
Access Full Report [PDF]: Can Europe Survive Maastricht?
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
