7 - Constraints — Risks — Challenge

Summary

A number of issues have arisen over the years indicating constraints, risks, challenges, and opportunities. Conflicts or positive interactions between various policy goals may arise. The integration can produce a backlash or question marks and, in some cases, unexpected results, or itineraries pop up that shape the integration in unexpected ways.

CLASH BETWEEN GROWTH AND IDENTITIES

Economic integration and many of the rules set are geared to the following items: economics, transport, logistics, and technology. The whole idea is to produce growth and distribute the advantages in a more or less equitable way.

Not surprisingly the ordinary citizen perceives the integration as predominantly about economics and economic growth. That may be fine when living standard through growth is the overriding priority, as it undoubtedly was for Continental Europe in the 1950s, but as living standards increase people put new objectives on the political agenda.

In the European Union that has produced two waves.

The first one switched interests from high growth to the quality and sustainability of growth. That was accommodated by incorporating efforts to combat pollution and turn the European Union into one of the leading, maybe the leading, international force to improve the global environment, as has been seen, for example, in the European Union's stance concerning global warming and the Kyoto Protocol.

The second wave has proved to be much more difficult as it has brought people's identity into the picture. After the end of World War II, many Europeans felt that being European was nothing to be particularly proud of. Having initiated two World Wars, killed six million Jews in the Holocaust, and produced Nazism, Fascism, and Communism did not exactly place you at the pinnacle of civilization.

But as the feeling of guilt subsided, while the standard of living has risen steadily for several decades, many Europeans have started to feel conscious of being “European” once again. That has placed a number of sensitive issues on the agenda of the European Union: whether or not to have multicultural societies, given the wave of immigration, the role of Islam, and the uncertainty of the identity of the citizen associated with the region, the nation state, or Europe as a somewhat vague concept.