Future Prospects for Europe

Extract

BEFORE WE CAN BEGIN TO EXAMINE THE PROSPECTS FOR Europe's future, we must acknowledge that, for three years now, the European Community (or rather, the European Union) has been in a state of latent, but nonetheless profound, crisis. The problems surrounding the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty revealed this crisis but its roots go much deeper. We have all experienced its manifestations: 1) an economic and social crisis, in the form of the currency upheavals of 1992–93 and the rise in unemployment; 2) a political crisis, following the failures of the European Union in the former Yugoslavia and its complete absence from the scene in Rwanda; 3) an institutional crisis, given the uncertainties posed by the prospect of an enlarged (‘wider’) Europe for the present effective working of the Community, and even for its future in the absence of a clear political will.