EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, through the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties, is the central political project of the European Union today. It is the biggest single issue in Europe and continues to dominate the political terrain in all the member states.
The implications of the Europe of the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties are clear enough. It will be a neo-liberal, monetarist, Thatcherite Europe, designed to increase profitability for the employers, maximum job flexibility, and run down the welfare state. It will be a Europe controlled by unelected bankers and by the so-called Stability Pact, which will keep government borrowing permanently below the 3% of GDP ceiling set by the convergence criteria.
So why is integration so important to the ruling classes of Europe?
Today the EU, with 15 member states, represents the largest single unit in the world economy. It has a GNP of about six trillion US dollars against five trillion for the USA and three trillion for Japan.
The EU has a total population of about that of the USA and Japan combined. However, as a trading block, in a highly competitive world, it remains inadequate against its main rivals North America and Japan.
It is unable, for political reasons, to punch its economic weight. The US and Japanese ruling classes have advantages which the multiple ruling classes allied within the EU cannot match: they have a single leadership, totally dominant currencies, lower social spending, and multinationals on average bigger and more competitive than Europe.
Tokyo and Washington dominate and politically lead their power blocks – even a unified Germany and its powerful currency cannot do this in the EU.
The EU at its present stage of development, prior to the full implementation of the logic of Maastricht and Amsterdam, is a common market with many (and increasing) features of a nation state. For these reasons the deepening competition between the power blocs within the global economy is not a battle of equals at the present time.
It is the need to resolve these problems which lie behind the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties and the drive for a European superstate. The successful introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU) – the single European currency – is a prerequisite for that.