Author: Loukas Tsoukalis

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2003-05-29

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0191532908

As the European Union gets ready to take it's new members, What Kind of Europe? pinpoints the crucial issues which will shape its future as a regional, economic, and political entity.Loukas Tsoukalis is one of the world's leading scholars on European integration; in this book he writes for any reader interested in the key democratic choices facing facing Europe's citizens. European integration is not a politically neutral process. There are key democratic choices to be made about trade-offs between efficiency, equity, and stability; productivity and a cleaner environment; integration and diversity; rule by experts and elected representatives in the management of the single market and the Euro; the degree and kind of solidarity across boundaries; the geographical limits of Europe's fledgling common identity; the export of peace and stability to the near abroad and beyond; and the defence of common values and interests in a world where the ascendancy of markets and the highly unequal distribution of political power increasingly challenge those features that still make Europe distinct from other regions of the world. There is certain to be disagreement on these issues, by the very nature of democracy. But Europeans need to become more aware of the issues and the choices they imply. Europeans have long pretended that inter-country divisions are the only ones that really count, and that the choice is essentially between more or less Europe. But the agenda must now be to build a politically mature Europe. What kind of Europe becomes the key question.