1 45 Roberto Scaruffi∗∗∗∗ Which EU and what for? Abstract: The EU enlargement is inside the historical tendency of continental Europe to be dominated by a German-Russian axis. The “creation of Europe” has been the German continuation of WW1 and WW2 in other ways. Will the German tradition of State-building by custom unification lead to a simple Great Germany or in- stead to some kind of new State-formation, an original form of a new feudal State? Will this new space be the pure enlargement of the existing EU or should a greater EU inevitably lose western pieces? No easy institutional solutions exist for what is presently happening, while modernization of the EU States and of the EU as a whole is on the agenda for fully valorizing the chances of the unique market space. EU towards the East and South-east The process the EU formally launched in March 1998, and which makes enlargement possible, affects the following thirteen applicant countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Turkey, for a total population of 105 million59. From the one side, the EU stretches to the Russian/CIS60 western and southern borders, while from the other side it in- serts directly into the Middle East and Caucasian area by Turkey. There is also an increasing competition with Russia and USA-UK in the whole Balkans as it is testified from the June 27, 2001 Free Trade Zone treaty (FTZ) signed in Brussels by Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Roma- nia61. The same as in 1939, when different geopolitical spaces removed (or found removed) intermediary “ob- stacles”, a situation of direct confrontation is created. In 1939, the reciprocal removal of intermediary obstacles led Germany and Soviet Union towards the military clash in 1941. Then, Germany hurriedly preceded the Soviet attack of a couple of weeks62, but it is legitimate to suppose that, since irrational triggers are in every historic event, even without the defensive war Germany was obliged to in 1941, it would have attacked Russia the year later. Rationality would have suggested cooperation but, when both sides of an interaction are dominated by irra- tional factors, conflict is inevitable, overall if the external world63 operates and pushes for it. That attitude was anyway a reply from both sides to a real problem: the inevitable attraction and complementarity between the German and the Russian spaces. After the long freezing created by the British and US war policies and games, this German and Russian question ineluctably reemerges. Now the EU, or Great Germany as some might call it, will find itself directly bordering with the Russian field (traditionally subordinate, from WW2, even if conflictually, to the Anglophone world) and with the Anglo- phone interests in the Middle East. If the Russian world would economically integrate with the EU, there would be, from that side, vast access to raw materials and natural resources, and practically unlimited perspectives of colonization and development until the Pacific Ocean and North, Central and South East Asia64. This immense space has long borders with rapidly developing China, a further possibility of synergies. Around the political axis Berlin-Moscow, a United Europe may be built, if other factors and rivalries do not finally obstruct that. Today, the dramatic weakening of a Russia obliged to suffer false liberal policies makes it economically colonizable and in- tegrable, if the way of fully respecting and exalting its identity is found. The UK (from 1973) and the French pres- ence inside the EEC/EC/EU is the presence of interests historically opposed to a European Union centered on Germany and developing and consolidating along the axis Berlin-Moscow. If a German EU really wants to ex- pand from the east side, either Germany subordinates the western powers, either it should free itself from them. These historical determinants and rivalries do not seem to have changed despite two WWs, and some other confrontations and events, created from the usual Anglophone policies of dividing Europe for hampering its development and controlling it. If, until 1989, the French and British presence inside “European” agreements and institutions was indispensable for tutoring Germany and other EEC/EC countries relatively to open obstruction from the Western side, the 1990s evolution seems to have made their presence an obstacle to the EU project de- velopment, although the US policies are not reassuring. The 1990’s US vain attempt to build a mono-polar world, and now the terror line against all differences (but only when the “enemy” countries are sufficiently small and ∗ PhD student by the UCL, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. 59 http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/intro/index_en.htm 60 and Ukraine in certain parts. 61 (Ranchev 2001). 62 (Suvorov 2000). 63 Then, the UK and USA. 64 Russia has land borders with Korea and sea borders with Japan (since the WW2 events, Russia still occupies some islands which are actually Japanese). 46 without atomic weapons), are a continuation of the usual Anglophone option of neutralizing all adversaries. This terror line is a senseless65 option of world intimidation perhaps for trying arresting the perception of the US de- cline, although with the possibility that the senselessness of this course produces its degeneration toward greater catastrophes. Inside, these Anglophone attempts against the consolidation of a pluralist world is rapidly growing, the advantages of the EU continuing to be its apparent weakness. For instance, it is not (apparently) having a military power and it is letting the US free to dissipate energies for reaffirming their impossible world hegemony: this makes the EU difficult to attack from the West. The USA, not perceiving a EU head, perceive just a potential en- emy they do not know where to strike. The financial and monetary maneuvering for hampering and sinking the Euro failed. The USA-UK reaffirmed their [ephemeral] military “world” hegemony, while the Euro became real and it is now worldly competing with the dollar. Fortunately, easy enterprises and targets periodically attract the US-British attention. For instance, Iraq attires considerable US and British military energies for striking there some EU countries (Italy, France, Germany) interests and for intimidating the Arab world. But oil resources are abundant also from the Russian side, and thus stimulates the continental EU direct access to them, while the USA and UK involve in vain military options. Certainly the US and British liberalism is continuing to conserve a systemic superiority over continental European Statehood, although German etatism, and eventually a regeneration of the Russian one, should not be undervalued. They are not abstract models, by themselves necessary and always superior or inferior to other ones66. Even if the German custom-way of State-building is exasperatingly slow and likely less efficient than the revolutionary and military way, not only that it worked for State-building in the case of Germany, but it revealed the only possible way towards European unification under German hegemony after Germany failed to conquer its vital space in two WWs. In a too crowded world, with all vital spaces already occupied, perhaps the German way was the only possible one, although the custom and monetary unification is not yet a united Europe under its rule. The USA were more successful in the containment of Japan, from this point of view, the point of view of a large State-building effort objectively antagonist to the US and Anglophone domination. There, they have been favored from Japan being an island. But differently from Russia, China refused the caricatural liberalism of the interna- tional agencies and now it is successfully developing at accelerated rates and fully exploiting the synergies offered by its geopolitical space. The containment of Japan has produced Popular China. Now, the PRC is becoming the strongest world antagonist of the USA. The present EU eastern enlargement is proceeding with exasperating slowness despite the desire of the new States to be rapidly integrated and despite the same incumbents advantage on various markets, starting from the labor force one. Perhaps this slowness depends on the perception that the real question is, with the intermedi- ate areas nearly removed, the integration of the Russian and para-Russian spaces with the EU, and there are di- verging orientations on how to deal with the problem. On the other side there is the consciousness that for fully exploiting the vast economic space represented by the EU, modernization reforms for improving efficiency would be indispensable. However, not only simple, but also effective improvements of the labor and other markets are avoided or introduced with excessive shyness in the continental EU States. The discussion on liberalism and etatism in the EU countries is based on idealiza- tions and caricatures both of liberalism and etatism. Whatever the reasons, it is a way for not discussing of and for not operating for efficiency for the citizens’ common welfare. Stability is evidently preferred to development and to growing welfare. Where a development line is followed, as in Ireland, wealth grows rapidly. From common market to “super-State”? From a technical point of view, the EU building (“Europeanization”67), reduced to “a more or less accen- tuated process of supra-nationalization at the EU level of the decision-making process which manifests itself in the emergence of new institutions of supranational government, in the redefinition of the competencies of national and/or sub-national government institutions”68, as in reality this already partially happened, it seems to me a poor and inconvenient thing, decidedly worse than a simple monetary and free trade space and not necessarily having a future. In fact, super- or supra-State69 governments are generally inefficient as real State entities, differently from well built forms of federalism or, eventually, confederalism. In addition, ruling classes at Union level are not magic consequences of the new space, what makes the States’ ruling classes (where there are ruling classes70) in- evitably not disposable to cede powers to indeterminate levels and centers of sovereignty. A level of sovereignty is never a pure act of will. Not casually, too many unsolved and perhaps unsolvable problems are obstructing the 65 Senseless, because too many antagonist poles are growing, without any possibility the USA can contrast all them. 66 Generally, discussions are on caricatures of models. As caricatures of Statism have traditionally perpetuated the Ital- ian State inferiority, a caricature of liberalism has destroyed, in the 1990s and over, the economy of a large part of East- ern Europe. 67 (Graziano, 5-6 April 2002, p. 5). 68 (Graziano, 5-6 April 2002, p. 5). 69 In supra there is more of the concept of transcendence, while super is more positional. 70 In Italy there are no ruling classes at Italian State level, so with visions and projects at the level of the Italian State and for it. Italy is a EU State where in front of all problems the political representatives of monopolistic capitalism, speculative finance and backward bureaucracies limit to invoke metaphysical “European interventions”. 47 “natural” passage from a common space to a unique State: traditional approaches to reality do not work in front of historical novelties. It is certainly true that a currency, a partially common currency in this case71, should be solidly founded on State-kind entities at the same level of the space it covers, although nothing is so mechanical as it may seem. A currency implies a level of monetary management, consequently of economic policy management in the same way, covering the same space covered by it. This is a level of central or common governance guarantying the common currency. Today, in practice, the meetings of the different governments (represented by the Prime and other Ministers) define this and other common governance frames. The common management of trade and monetary policies is not the only possible solution for a unique trade and monetary space, although the EU historically was born and lived in this way. Among the possibilities, there are also possible forms of monetary colonization, which de facto take shape when certain States or similar spaces adopt a foreign currency. In this case, there is, from the side of the adopter, a form of delegation of the monetary policy without possibility of any formal control on it. In this case, although the adopter has not the con- trol on “its” currency, there are no particular constraints on internal economic policies apart from the subjection to the trust of savers and what happens to the adopted currency. It is what Balkan areas did in the 1990s, adopting the DM, and later the Euro, as accepted currency in contexts of uncertainty and State dissolution. In the EU case, inside certain very general parameters and rules for guarantying the currency stability (and fair competition, but this is conceptually different from the question of the common currency), each State does what it wants. Taxation and its repartition are generally free. The States’ complaints for the EU budget con- straints are frequently internal propaganda, which would be more usefully replaced by pursuing State efficiency instead of complaints. Even without EU constraints the State debt could not infinitely grow, in relative terms, and, even if inflation is the easiest way of social restructuring, it is the most unfair and undemocratic (because it’s out- side any formal democratic control) way of realizing it. Governments’ claims discharge frequently on the EU, actually on what they have contributed to decide, their ineptitude. From this point of view, the EU has a useful deception function for governments, which decide unpopular but necessary policies at EU level and later present them as ineluctable EU constraints72. So, in practice, the common currency implies only very general parameters to conform to, and agile insti- tutions managing this super- and supra-State level. Different and well more complicated aspects are [1] the free trade, and [2] the relatively fair-trade and competition. These two aspects are different, as they are different ques- tions relatively to the common currency. If a common currency clearly facilitates mercantile and personal ex- changes, and it is generally created for this reason, relatively fair competition is a further aspect that may exist or may not in a frame of common currency. In the EU case, it exists, while it is the common currency that doesn’t exist for the whole EU. However, a monetary space, with consequent general economic policy frame, and even a fair mercantile space, are not necessarily for a State. If one abandoned the mystification, and sometimes useful equivocation, that the Commission is a kind of EU government instead of a Secretary service at the States’ governments’ orders, it would be evident that this is roughly the present condition of the EU: a non-State guarantying relatively fair trade and competition, and, for part of the associates, a common currency. The expansion to new areas is not certainly obstructed by this condition, as well as it (the EU enlarge- ment) does not imply the transformation of the EU in a State or super/supra-State. The tendency of the super- or supra-State is to obey to intra- bureaucratic logics of the EU bureaucracy and of those who eventually think to have the possibility to control it or really can or could control it. Perhaps to this kind of logics and intentions [some hetero-direction of the EU] obey attempts, otherwise extravagant, as that of imposing the European arrest warrant without any common criminal and criminal procedure law, any Justice and Interior Ministries at EU level, no common guarantees’ and Constitutional frame. In the literature on this type of questions [super- or supra-State], one prefers to call the present EU condi- tion as scarce institutionalization73. It is a frame in reality well defined but perceived as inefficient or unsatisfying and with environmental pressures towards something implying devolution of power from States to superior enti- ties. A well centralized State with wide federalism, alias with large delegation to the different local levels of all the masses of unessential questions for a well managed central State, is certainly more efficient than a badly as- sorted kaleidoscope of States. However things are not so easy and there is no magic model, neither any magic so- lution. Unifying EU markets with subsides and without adequate surface communications? Already in the 1987 Single European Act (SEA), which fostered the integration process of the European Community (EC), there were illusions which unfortunately did not remain simple empty claims, specifically the Economic and Social Cohesion principle. For (Faíña 2001): “The objective of strengthening Economic and Social Cohesion [ESC] implies to promote the overall harmonious development of the EU by reducing regional dispari- 71 Part of the EU remains outside the monetary space. 72 In post-WW2 Italy, this kind of practices (the foreign constraint) was adopted from institutional levels already when Italy was still occupied from the opposing powers between 1943 and 1945. The foreign constraints permitted to avoid that economically incompatible policies expressed by Catholic and Stalinist common anti-capitalist visions could ex- press all their devastating pulses and lead to the State’s collapse. 73 (Graziano, 5-6 April 2002, p. 7). 48 ties and, in particular, the backwardness of least-favored regions. The ERDF74 and the other structural funds in a coordination framework are intended to help redress the main regional imbalances in the EU by participating in the development and structural adjustment of less developed regions and in the conversion of declining industrial regions and other areas with structural and/or employment problems.”75 This general orientation, here referred by the words of the quoted authors well synthesized this EC/EU orientation, is certainly very sounding. Its intentions are apparently noble. Actually, good intentions are not neces- sarily, in this case not at all for me, the wished results. An equalizing frame is necessarily opposite to a develop- ment frame. Development is disequilibrium. That the extension of a market union produces adjustments among countries, according to the interactions between the competitiveness of incumbents and newcomers, is not an unexpected event. For instance, the 1986 EC enlargement saw the entry of Spain, Portugal and other countries, produce market share losses overall for France and the UK, while Italy did not and Germany only in lesser degree76. The enlargement from the German, Austrian and Italian side will inevitably produce greater shocks for the market shares of the States from this side. Common advantages, even for the temporarily apparent “losers”, are the other face of market shares restructuring from EU enlargement. “Development” policies, more precisely “equalizing” policies, of the EU, actually subsidies not infre- quently intercepted by frauds, are de facto revenue distribution. If, from the one side, market and, later, currency unification has inevitably, apart from diffusive effects, some spontaneous equalizing effect, from the other side “investments” in subsides instead of in great communication works and other infrastructures is a waste against development, privileging illusory forms of equalitarianism against development. Certainly, infrastructures favoring developments may be also at micro level, from the water management to services for enterprises and entrepreneurship, although “investments” from a distant entity are without possibil- ity of real controls on their destination. However, a macro political and economic policy entity could more use- fully manage great works for unifying markets and creating conditions for fair competition. Competition creates development benefiting everybody77, while subsidies to underdevelopment are surely popular for their profiteers, but ineffective and eventually damaging wastes. This kind of logic is more easily ob- servable inside single States, where massive subsidies as in South Italy have not created development but de- pressed it both in the North and in the South78. In case of sudden creation of common markets or their enlarge- ment, there are spontaneous adjustment that may be easily presented as an effect of the EC subsidies policies al- though it is not so. Development is generally triggered suddenly, eventually since interaction with the environments, follow- ing some mysterious logic more understandable from ex-post historical reconstructions than by the illusion one could find some inexistent sure and ineluctable cause. However, apart from specific situations of colonization, no external intervention triggers development where self-propelling forces are not already acting. Instead, subsidies policies may more probably have the consequence of further depressing entrepreneurial propensities. If pauperism can stimulate reactions and where an adequate infra-structural frame is created, revenue subsidies favor adapta- tions to underdevelopment. In Italy for instance, the less developed area myth is, after decades of massive but use- less State interventions, a job in the inefficient and corrupted civil service. This, despite in the Southerner areas there is no absence of entrepreneurial skills: they are canalized towards intercepting public subsides. People fol- low adaptive logics, what in these cases means adaptation to the subsidies’ and Statist logics, which inevitably kill entrepreneurship where inefficiency and clientelism already predominate. Areas where development logics already triggered can well profit from EU subsidies, although they are perhaps useless there in terms of development. A reliable quantitative testing of the influx of the same subsidies seems very improbable because it would be necessary to discriminate between their positive or negative influence and what would have verified without them since simple effects of market and monetary integration. Neither, sub- sidies polices may be justified by asymmetric advantages deriving from integration, for instance favoring larger and stronger countries, because this results need not to be verified79. Different aspect is the negotiation of dilations of full market competition for backward productive sectors should be temporarily preserved for social reasons and for having time for finding adjustments to market rules. The discourses and practices on ESC are just covers for EU assistance policies temporarily surrogating single States ones, while care for the creation of development preconditions seems absent, apart from custom uni- fication certainly. It is the case of development-self-generating great infrastructures, as high-speed inter-State mo- torways and railroads, which seem outside the EU intervention. It would have been a greater incentive to self- propelling development of Spanish, Greek, South-Italian area their easiness of access even from abroad or local subsides? On the contrary, it seems that for what concerns motorways and railroads, without which also some sea and other communications are impossible or uneconomical, single States’ egoisms, obstructions or simply inepti- tude are continuing to dominate. With difficulty of access, markets are less efficient. For instance, certain Greek, 74 European Regional Development Fund. 75 (Faíña 2001, p. 2). 76 (Casella, November 1995). 77 (Ranchev 2001). 78 Very roughly: fiscal pressure has depressed Northerner entrepreneurship, while subsides have favoured Southerner fatalism. 79 (Casella, November 1995) 49 Spanish or South-Italian areas of even millions of people use the Euro but they remain in another world as the difficulty to physically reach them still exists. These non-policies are actually policy choices defining areas of under- or obstructed and dependent de- velopment. For instance, for Italy as a whole, some kind of choice of this type has been somewhere made, as it is evident from its 1990s’ and following years’ politico-institutional destabilization and its economic policy reflexes. No surface communication works had been realized in the 1990s Italy, despite a condition of growing insuffi- ciency and decaying of the existing ones, and even now, in 2002, they have not yet restarted. Despite different projects in the field from the very early 1990s, the political and managerial personnel could have realized them if they wouldn’t have been judicially removed, with unanimous international approval, from their positions. In the communications field, the European Commission seems to limit its efforts to listing State and inter- State projects, which will be realized according single States conveniences, decisions and times.80 Actually, Prodi, sent to preside the European Commission for avoiding his interfering with Italian politics after the same Scalfaro- Lefts block removed him from office, was guarantor in Italy of the internal and international interests and thus wanted to block of infrastructure works and a line of Italy’s further soft and silent decreasing81. Prodi had been DC82-backward-left-designed President, from 1982 to 1989, of the clientelist IRI83. He became again IRI Presi- dent from 1993 to 1994 (in a key moment for some relevant privatizations), thanks to the judicial liquidation of the then IRI President Nobili, a skilful manager coming from the private sector arrested without any evidence by the usual partisan prosecutors and magistrates of Milan and for IRI “crimes” of the 1982-1989 Prodi Presidency.84 Prodi was not perhaps the right Commission President if the EU had wanted to follow a line of European unifica- tion from the point of view of rapid transports, outside the “egoism” of single States and of other interests. He was on the contrary perfect for not-stimulating the EU States over this key point of fair market competition and effi- ciency: transports. In practice, the different geopolitical visions and egoism of the different EU powers condition the full deployment and access to development of all the EU areas, privileging some communication corridors and sabotaging other ones85. Irreconcilable rivalries among States dominate also other levels. In foreign and military policies, rivalries emerge both at strategic level and whenever there are crisis affecting a single EU country. At strategic level, while claiming future intentions of currency integration, the UK is aligned with the US military course for imposing its world hegemony. It is a line objectively opposed to the construction of a EU power, whomsoever concretely leads this power. For what concerns occasional conflicts, for instance, in occasion of the July 2002 affair of the Leila Island, France and Portugal immediately obeyed to their anti-Spanish conditioned reflex, deriving from their com- peting interests in Africa, and de facto immediately aligned with Morocco against Spain. It was the usual logic of geopolitical competition openly re-proposed, while perhaps a cooperative attitude of States inside a common space would have suggested a different way of dealing with the conflict opened by Morocco on the residual pres- ence of the old Spanish colonialism in its area. At least for what concerns the main EU States, the moment of con- flict seems to dominate over the one of real co-operation. There are even EU States using now slanders on their magistrates for political operations against other EU States86. EU as State building Actually, in all State or supra-State formations, not only in contemporary ones87, efficiency is achieved if there is the right trade off, a perfect balance, between the dimensions of the State entity and the spectrum of gov- ernance matters it can efficiently centralize. Increasing distance, perfect vision [manageability/governance] is di- rectly proportional to the dimensions of the watched objects. In other words, each one of the State levels’88 cen- tralization is efficient if that State level realizes perfect penetration89 and operativeness. If a governance level in- vades superior and inferior levels relatively to these it can efficiently manage, this inevitably negatively affects 80 (EC-DGET 2001). 81 For what concerns Italy even the existent works of communication with Europe are obstructed for what concerns commercial transports. It is the case of the Mont Blanc gallery, for instance. It meets continuous obstructions to the commercial traffic from the French side. Perhaps, for some EU power, Italy would be just a tourist space. 82 Christian Democracy. 83 The holding of relevant part of the State economy. 84 http://scaruffi.homestead.com 85 As reality wanted to add mockery to damage, all the Italian Statesmen and entrepreneurs had supported the 1990 jus- ticialist subversion and have obstructed also directly communication and transportation works and, perhaps not casu- ally, were therefore regularly awarded by the French with the Légion d’Honneur or Laurea Honoris Causa from fran- cophone universities. While the political personnel pursued and pursues modernisation it is slandered and obstructed in all possible ways. 86 See the case of the magistrate Baltasar Garzón and others used not only for the judicial intimidation of the Spanish socialists, of Spanish independentism and of some extra-EU States, but also for the intimidation of the Italian politics in coordination with the Italian monopolistic and parasitic interests. 87 (Alesina, December 2001). 88 I prefer not to say “national level” since existing equivoques in the use of “national” and “national State”. What is called “national State” or “nation-State” is actually multi-national if one follows the etymology of the world nation, which is an ethnic concept more than a vaguely settling/spatial and legal one. 89 (Hobson 1997). 50 results. A region (with only regional powers, naturally) cannot efficiently build roads at State level. A State cannot efficiently manage local details. When and where accountabilities are not clearly defined and attributable90, effi- ciency is impossible. Accountabilities and their attribution certainly imply levels of management/governance (formal-democratic or administrative) with the power to reward and to penalize behaviors and results. For in- stance, foreign and military policies at State level cannot be efficiently managed by local governments, while cen- tral governments cannot efficiently manage the details of local life. In a Custom Union of States, where all or only a part of them have veto power, everything complicates further. In the EU, there are fully self-sufficient States but with the partial91 devolutions of the powers necessary for realizing common markets and currency. Trade Union foreign and military policies, simply combing with the self-sufficient ones at State level, create a Union based on feudal-kind relations. On the other side, the creation of a Union with the characteristics of a self-sufficient central State is im- probable without some common ethnic identity as a common language diffused at this State level. The common currency (not differently from markets’ unification) seems to me only sufficient to the creation of a mercantile identity and nothing more. Individuals and local entities perceive themselves simply as inside a unique monetary and market space, as in fact it is. Foreign and military policies of a State-Union or of an Empire92, not differently from a central level of judiciary and police, could not be founded on the negotiation with States with veto power, if these central functions were really functions of a modern central State. Everything is different if they were func- tions of the coordinating center of a feudal-kind State formation. I do not want to say that a modern feudal State would necessarily be less efficient than a modern central- ized or federal-centralized State. Evaluations and comparisons should be made with concretely well-defined and stabilized State entities. The present EU is the evolution of a group of State towards something else. It is even possible that finally everything limits to the monetary and market aspects, and/or that an aggregation different from the pure extension of the original EEC/EC is defined. For instance, a German Central and Central-East Europe seems more possible than a German France or a French Germany. It seems equally improbable a Germanized Russia or a Russified Germany. It is certainly easier to manage one bilingual-space or a couple of bilingual spaces than a multilingual Union. English and American as the new Latin of the EU may not reveal so easy when one passes from a language nowadays generally universally known and used in an important part of the intellectual world, to the first or second language of a State building effort driven by Germany, in part also by France, and with Russia-CIS objectively gravitating (as colonized or as colonizer, or both) towards Central Europe and towards the vast South of the same Russia-CIS. It is probably im- possible to know the same destiny of English and American as new Latin with the USA running towards a Span- ish language prevalence, Chinese people and language having already invaded the world and on the way of rap- idly becoming the most diffused and used language even on the Internet, and so on for the other linguistic and cultural poles of the world. Over language and common discourses (religions, traditions, behaviors, sense of belonging, self- perceptions), State entities are built more solidly than over common markets and currencies. Common markets and currencies can be rapidly given up, as different cases of State dissolution have shown. Common discourses (identity, a marked and permanent sense of belonging) are even stronger than common languages. Common dis- courses have permanencies through centuries and centuries even when formally overcome and forgotten, as, for instance, recent and less recent Balkan evolutions show. Stable coexistence, eventually inside the same State formation, of different common discourse entities is possible only if forms of non-conflictual co-operation are realized. That further forms of internationalizations have de facto been created, in a kind of counterbalancing, the affirmation of orderly inferior93 identities, so stronger nationalisms and micro-nationalisms, may not be simply resolved in the improbable affirmation on the [supposed] existence of a “post-sovereign order”94. If, generally imaginary “nations”, with relative voluntarist nationalism at the State level, have been progressively replaced by stronger nationalisms along communitarian- ethnic lines, stronger sovereignty levels have evidently emerged. It is not even sufficient to specify, in an attempt of some more realistic approximation, that this “post- sovereignty does not mean the end of sovereignty, but rather the end of its traditional meaning as a state monop- oly.” Sovereignty has always existed at different levels combined among them. Perfect sovereignty existed and exists nowhere. In the real world, there are instead relations of domination, subordination and interdependence. Forms of restructuring of traditional sovereignty levels were verified the moment the US-UK world cops (with Soviet sub-cop) had been weakened by the collapse of the apparently US-Soviet world order. Energies be- fore repressed had finally restarted to operate relatively freely. It is not really a question of supposed “globaliza- tion”. Economic historians had evidenced that there is a media overvaluation of the current trends. For instance, the economic and trade revolution of the late 19th century did not certainly produce less globalization than the claimed ‘globalization’ of the late 20th century and following years. The 19th century trans- ports and communications revolution had then a great impact on the international capital, labor and commodities 90 For instance, where nobody is responsible of anything, in a limit case not infrequent in part of continental Europe. 91 Partial because single States conserve the real power to intervene (with more power than an elected entity as the European Parliament) on the EU institutions to which they have formally devolved some powers. The moment of the permanent negotiation de facto prevails over that of the devolution of powers. 92 (Böröcz 2001). 93 In the sense of more basic, nearer to micro-communitarian levels. 94 (Keating 2002). 51 markets. Finally, the late 19th century capital flows pushed toward divergence instead of convergence: capitals moved to the richest countries.95 That is what was actually verified in concrete worlds with concrete power rela- tions. Is the present “globalization” something else than the Anglophone vain attempts to “globalize” the world to the Anglophone powers’ domination? The claims on “globalization” and its supposed needs had actually covered the caricatured liberalism which has actually further collapsed in the large majority of eastern European economies. Despite the US- promoted claims on globalization, the USA seem to practically be, if one judges concrete actions, the real anti- globalizing power while pursuing an adventurist line of impossible military world supremacy. It is the “globaliza- tion” of the US world military power while economic protectionism is well preserved when it is judged that US interests are threatened. Some open questions Real steps forward in spatial integration could be well more useful than formal institutions, which today would only be forms of war regulations among the different EU powers wanting to impose or preserve their “na- tional” hegemony over the EU. For what concerns the institutions already existing, is a European Parliament elected on State basis the best solution for representing a confederation of local interests (which are more at regional than at State level) and for overcoming the single States’ threats? For understanding the background forces pushing and obstructing the EU extension, as well as for under- standing the other international trends, it would be necessary to individuate and analyze how the different material forces interact and intertwine: for instance, the different financial, industrial and financial-industrial96 interests. References Alesina, A., I. Angeloni, and F. Etro, The Political Economy of International Unions, NBER Working Paper No.w8645, December 2001. Bayoumi T. and B. Eichengreen, Is There a Conflict Between EC Enlargement and European Monetary Unification?, NBER Working Paper No.w3950, January 1992. 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Rodríguez, The regional policy of the European Union and the enlargement proc- ess to central and eastern countries, University of Exeter, Department of Economics, Discussion paper in eco- nomics, 01/07, Exeter, UK, 2001. http://web.uvic.ca/ecsac/toronto/papers/on/line/pdf/4A-jfaina-jrodriguez.pdf Graziano P., Europeanization or globalization? A framework for empirical research, Paper prepared for the COST A15 Research Network, Second Conference – Welfare Reforms for the 21st Century, Oslo, 5-6 April 2002. 95 (O’Rourke 1999) 96 Where there are, as in Germany, institutional and operational frames as the mixed-bank one. http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol1/v1_n5.htm http://www.suz.unizh.ch/bornschier/pdfs/european_processes.pdf http://cermember.mirhouse.com/ http://www.mirhouse.com/ce-review/Empire.pdf http://www.ce-review.org/ http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/index.htm http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/pas/twinning http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/en/lb_en.html http://web.uvic.ca/ecsac/toronto/papers/on/line/pdf/4A-jfaina-jrodriguez.pdf 52 http://www.isaf.no/nova/nyheter/kalender/COSTa15/Papers/Graziano.pdf Hobson, J. M., The wealth of states. A comparative sociology of international economic and political change, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Keating, M., Plurinational Democracy in a Post-Sovereign Order, Queen's Papers on Europeanization, No. 1/2002, Belfast, UK, 2002. http://www.qub.ac.uk/ies/onlinepapers/poe1-02.pdf O’Rourke, K. H., and J. G. Williamson, Globalization and history. The evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy, The MIT Press, 1999. Ranchev, G., Free Trade Zone in Southeast Europe? The Harmonization of Tax and Customs Legislation, Research Paper, Center for Policy Studies Budapest, International Policy Fellowships 2001, Budapest, Hungary, 2001. Suvorov, Viktor, Stalin, Hitler. La rivoluzione bolscevica mondiale, Spirali, Milan, Italy, 2000. http://www.isaf.no/nova/nyheter/kalender/COSTa15/Papers/Graziano.pdf http://www.qub.ac.uk/ies/onlinepapers/poe1-02.pdf Claudiu CRACIUN( Political Science and the European Construction Ö Özden U. Akbas( Potential Challenges of European Enlargement to the European Structure 1. Introduction: Background of the Enlargement Process 2. Institutional Challenges 3. Economic Problems 4. External Security 5. Justice and Home Affairs 6. Europe's Responses to Challenges of Enlargement; what has been done so far? 7. Conclusion References Malte Brosig* Three Roads to Europe or the Social Construction of European Affairs ”Seizing the middle ground” Social Learning Argumentative Action Rhetorical Action Three Roads, one direction? A Critical Analysis Conclusion References Raúl José Feliciano-Ortiz* Re-Defining sovereignty: How the EU has expanded the possibilities for Puerto Rico* Sovereignty: past and present Present Progressive: The European re-definition of the concept The lack of Puerto Rican Sovereignty: past and present Future: Applying this new concept to a scared colony So in conclusion... References Qerim QERIMI( The European Union’s Southeast Enlargement: Prospects and Challenges Introduction The Enlargement Process Challenges towards South - Eastern Enlargement The EU Role and Contribution in South - Eastern Europe Inter-ethnic Reconciliation as a means for European Integration The Advantages of European Enlargement Conclusion References Salomeea Romanescu( Roma: A Challenge and Opportunity for a New EU Paradigm of Enlargement Introduction The question Raising awareness on the Roma issue Promotion of Minority Rights Conclusions References Roberto Scaruffi( Which EU and what for? EU towards the East and South-east From common market to “super-State”? Unifying EU markets with subsides and without adequate surface communications? EU as State building Some open questions References