European Integration as an Answer to Technoglobalism

Parallel to the process of economic integration, as it has taken place over the last twenty years and particularly within the framework of the creation of the large European “Single Market”, European economies have been confronted by a significant increase in the degree of structural change at the world level. The last ten years can indeed be described as a period of historic, major structural change at the world level: the collapse of the former socialist countries and their rapid opening up to market-led economic incentives; the shift in world market growth from the North Atlantic OECD area to the Pacific basin area with an increasing number of Asian economies outperforming the developed countries’ growth performance; the creation of new regional trading blocks in North and South America, in Asia, in the Middle East and in Southern Africa, with more rapid growth in trade within than between such integrating trade areas; the surge in foreign direct investment in these trade blocks with large global firms aiming at presence in each of these markets; and last but not least the dramatic reduction in the costs of information and communication processing, opening up an increasing number of sectors to international trade and giving at least the impression of a dramatic reduction in physical distances — the world as a village.