Enlargement of the European Union and the Harmonization of Public Pension Systems

For several years now European policymakers and voters alike have been occupied with the idea of creating a pan-European zone of free trade, free capital movement and free labour mobility. This process has made great progress in some areas while in others there has been next to none. Currently, two main sets of problems have emerged as the principal obstacles to achieving a genuinely integrated market in Europe. First, the European Union itself is to solve internal problems. Examples are numerous: monetary union, the concentration of executive power in the Commission, slowness in the implementation of the subsidiarity principle, inadequate parliamentary control. The most daunting problem of all proves to be political plans for broadening or even deepening of the existent European Union along with the harmonization of economic policies in the member countries. Second, the newly established democracies in central and eastern Europe have requested access to western European political and economic institutions and, perhaps most important of all, to their rich markets.