IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sec/cnstan/0293.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Has Europe Lost its Heart?

Author

Listed:
  • Charles Wyplosz

Abstract

The fifth enlargement of the EU has now brought together twenty five countries, a massive success. But success has its price: twenty-five countries do not cooperate as six used to. The result is a general impression that the undertaking is being diluted and that national interests prevail over the common good, which means less willingness to take the next integrative step. This paper argues that this perception is largely misguided. The EU-25 group is considerably more integrated than the EU-6 ever was. Dilution is not a necessary consequence of enlargement, rather enlargement is bringing to the fore a number of institutional failures that were present all along. This paper takes a politico-economic view of the link between enlargement and deepening. After a broad review of the task allocation principles, it concludes that enlargement and deepening are not substitutes but complements. It produces evidence that enlargement is not increasing preference heterogeneities within the union, but that it leads national governments to preserve more forcefully their own powers, often against the wishes of their own citizens. The result is an inability to reform the decisionmaking process that has become unwieldy as the result of enlargement. The issue, then, is how to restore the EU's ability to run its affairs. The European Constitutional Convention has made little headway. Other solutions that go beyond current debates are examined. "Pioneer clubs" raise many unresolved issues. More promising, maybe, is the idea that the acquis communautaires should be once and for all decisions. By lowering the stakes of both sovereignty transfers and qualified majority voting, allowing changes in both directions between shared and national competencies could encourage governments to accept more daring reforms. Strengthening the legitimacy of union-specific institutions (the European Parliament or the Commission Presidency) would create a counter-power to deal with national governments' natural tendency to defend their own prerogatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles Wyplosz, 2005. "Has Europe Lost its Heart?," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 0293, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:sec:cnstan:0293
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://case-research.eu/upload/publikacja_plik/4870830_sa293final%20version.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Robert J. Barro, 2002. "Currency Unions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 409-436.
    2. Jeffrey Frankel & Andrew Rose, 2002. "An Estimate of the Effect of Common Currencies on Trade and Income," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 437-466.
    3. Massimo Bordignon & Luca Colombo & Umberto Galmarini, 2003. "Fiscal Federalism and Endogenous Lobbies' Formation," CESifo Working Paper Series 1017, CESifo.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marek Dabrowski & Artur Radziwill, 2007. "Regional vs. Global Public Goods: The Case of Post-Communist Transition," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 0336, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ms. Giorgia Albertin, 2008. "Trade Effects of Currency Unions: Do Economic Dissimilarities Matter?," IMF Working Papers 2008/249, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Jong-Wha Lee & Kwanho Shin, 2010. "Exchange Rate Regimes and Economic Linkages," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 1-23.
    3. Arellano, Cristina & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2010. "Dollarization and financial integration," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 944-973, May.
    4. Robert Barro & Silvana Tenreyro, 2007. "Economic Effects Of Currency Unions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(1), pages 1-23, January.
    5. Christoph Fischer, 2011. "Currency blocs in the 21st century," Globalization Institute Working Papers 87, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    6. Arturo Bris & Yrjö Koskinen & Mattias Nilsson, 2009. "The Euro and Corporate Valuations," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(8), pages 3171-3209, August.
    7. David Parsley Shang-Jin Wei, 2002. "Currency Arrangements And Goods Market Integration: A Price Based Approach," International Finance 0211004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Marc Hofstetter, 2011. "Inflation Targeting in Latin America: Toward a Monetary Union?," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2011), pages 71-118, August.
    9. Jordi Pons-Novell & Daniel Tirado-Fabregat, 2006. "Specialization and asymmetries in macroeconomic fluctuations: Evidence for the European regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(7), pages 695-706.
    10. Jeffrey Frankel & Sergio Schmukler & Luis Serven, 2000. "Verifiability and the Vanishing Intermediate Exchange Rate Regime," NBER Working Papers 7901, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2006. "The Log of Gravity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 641-658, November.
    12. John H. Rogers, 2002. "Monetary union, price level convergence, and inflation: how close is Europe to the United States?," International Finance Discussion Papers 740, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Kobayashi, Teruyoshi, 2005. "A model of monetary unification under asymmetric information," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15.
    14. Klein, Michael W., 2005. "Dollarization and trade," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 935-943, October.
    15. Oluwole Owoye & Olugbenga A. Onafowora, 2014. "The Economic Impact Analysis of the Euro Currency on Twelve Member Countries of the European Union," Journal of Empirical Economics, Research Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 2(4), pages 229-244.
    16. Filippo Cesarano, 2006. "The equilibrium approach to optimum currency areas," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 59(237), pages 193-209.
    17. Dumitru, Ionut, 2009. "Adoptarea euro in Romania [Euro adoption in Romania]," MPRA Paper 18612, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Francis Breedon & Thórarinn G. Pétursson, 2004. "Out in the cold? Iceland’s trade performance outside the EU," Economics wp26_thorarinn, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    19. Tarek A. Hassan, 2013. "Country Size, Currency Unions, and International Asset Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2269-2308, December.
    20. Steven Buigut, 2008. "Determinants of the Public's Preference for a Referendum on Monetary Union," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 6(46), pages 1-7.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sec:cnstan:0293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anna Budzynska (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/caseepl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.