José Magone - The New World Architecture: The Role of the European Union in the Making of Global Governance

The Role of the European Union in the Making of Global Governance

Jos M. Magone

First published 2006 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2004063651

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Magone, Jos M. (Jos Mara), 1962
The new world architecture: the role of the European Union in the
making of global governance /Jos M. Magone
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7658-0279-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. European Union countriesForeign relations. 2. European Union
countriesPolitics and government. I. Title.

JZ1570.M24 2005
341.242dc22 2004063651

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0279-8 (hbk)

Dedicated to my brother Alejandro Jorge

World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.

The contribution which an organised and living Europe can bring to civilisation is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. A united Europe was not achieved and we had war.

Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.

Robert Schuman, Declaration of 9 May 1950

Country Abbreviations

The past two decades have been most important for the European Union. The voluntaristic thrust of former president of the European Commission Jacques Delors from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s allowed for an enormous incrementalism of supranational policies, which are now leading to a self-sustaining integration of the EU member-states into a political system. The Constitutional Treaty drafted in the European Convention between 2002 and 2003 contributed to a better definition of this new political system sui generis . For decades, the main way of pushing European integration forward was the establishment of more comprehensive treaties. This so-called treatyism led to an impasse in the negotiations of the Nice Treaty in December 2000. The European Convention was designed to reduce the powers of elites in the decision-making process. It wanted to overcome the growing difficulties of intergovernmental decision making by involving different representatives coming from the governments, national parliaments, and the European parliament. Moreover, the European Convention allowed for some involvement of European civil society, or better-organized interest groups at the European level. While the European Convention can be assessed as being successful, the follow-up intergovernmental conference under the Italian presidency was not able to bring the whole process to a conclusion. The main reason was the resistance of Spain and Poland to change the vote allocation system agreed upon in the Nice Treaty to one that would reflect better the populations of the two countries. Finally, both Spain and Poland were able to agree on a compromise during the first half of 2004.

In spite of this delay in agreeing on the Constitutional Treaty, the European Union continues to move towards an end point either in this or the next decade. This volume wants to assess the growing importance of the European Union in the world. The main thrust of the argument of the book is that the European Union is becoming a new kind of political system more adjusted to the growing pressures of globalization. Indeed, the European Union can be regarded as the most developed system of multilevel governance based on the highest level of decentralization and acceptance of the diversity of its members. Although still in transition, the main structures, principles, and strategic thinking are already visible. They all are structuring both the internal space towards a single European market and a European political sphere/space as well as the external space of global politics. This double process of structuration is feeding one upon the other and contributing both to a definition of the new political system sui generis and the role of the European Union in the outside world. One crucial element of this structuring process is the fact that the European Union is united in supporting the principles of the United Nations even if it is sometimes divided in the manner in which this should be upheld. The recent Iraq War has shown that the United Nations is a central institution for any argumentation related to any event.

This strong emphasis on the United Nations and other international institutions is related to the fact that the European Union considers itself as part of a new global governance paradigm. The making of global governance began already with the League of Nations in the 1920s, but particularly after 1945 with the foundation of the United Nations. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a vacuum in the system of international relations, which was promptly occupied by the European Union. The 1990s were a decade where several decisions had to be taken in order to stabilize the European continent. Indeed, the strong commitment of the European Union to the central and eastern European democracies made it possible for the first time to consider the possibility of a pan-European integration of the European Union. This process started with the Copenhagen Council in 1993. The majority of members joined in May 2004 and it is expected that Bulgaria and Romania will accede to the EU in 2007. In spite of all the dangers related to an enlargement, the crucial fact is that for the first time Europe is joining forces in the hope that in the long run it will be able to play an important role in world politics.