The EU and European Goverments Essay

How has the relationship between the economy and European governments changed in the past 20 years? Has Eastern Europe become more like the western part of the Continent?

Overall, thanks to the European Union (EU), greater cohesion has been achieved over the past 20 years between the major European powers. There has been a facilitation of the flood of both human and monetary capital between the member nations, as well as trade, and a number of its members have fought long and hard to ensure their general stability within the EU and continue their membership within the union. The European Union has also had some notable economic successes as a collective unit, such as a recent trade deal with Japan, and enacting anti-trust and privacy regulation of the American technology industry (including Google) that America has refused to enact (Belin & Reinert, 2019). The ability to engage in collective measures is testimony to the European Union’s power, but, on the other hand, there have also been notable populist anti-EU movements in many member countries, as well as the withdrawal of the UK, thanks to skepticism about the EU’s ability to bring benefits to member nations in regards to trade and migration (Belin & Reinert, 2019).

According to Lehne (2019), given it has been many decades since the death of communism, it might be expected that the divide between Western and Eastern Europe is at an end. But this is far from the case, given “there are disputes about the financing of structural funds and agriculture, the mobility of workers, environmental standards, and food quality” which are also characteristic of the North-South European divide coupled with severe concerns about the extent to which democracy has failed to have been enacted in a fundamental way in many former Warsaw Pact nations (Lehne, 2019, par.4). But the concept of the continued existence of the Eastern Bloc must be questioned, given that there are substantial rifts between former members, in terms of integration with Europe, relations with Russia, and embrace of the EU (Lehne, 2019). Lower wages and a generally lower standard of living may unite Eastern European nations superficially, but much also divides them.

References

Belin, C. & Reinert, T. (2019). The eclipse of the European Union’s global influence. The Brookings Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/04/08/the-eclipse-of-the- european-unions-global-influence/

Lehne, S. (2019). Europe’s East-West divide: Myth or reality? Carnegie Europe. Retrieved from: https://carnegieeurope.eu/2019/04/11/europe-s-east-west-divide-myth-or-reality-pub-78847