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BusinessWeek: January 11, 1993 |
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Editorials
ONE EUROPEAN MARKET, ONE STEP AT A TIME The Jan. 1 ritual of ringing out the old and ringing in the new was supposed to have had more than the usual significance in Europe this holiday season. Europeans expected to unveil a unified economic and political superpower to rival the U.S. and Japan. Instead, 1992 turned into a year of fragmentation. That has cast a pall over the cork-popping, but Europe is probably better off building its dream one step at a time. The EC's leaders have only themselves to blame for 1992's shocks to Europe's exchange-rate system and pretensions of economic union. As the cold war's global struggle gave way to a voter focus on bread-and-butter issues, Europe's leaders stuck to abstract notions of pan-European homogeneity. And as recession bit, Brussels insisted that divergent economies could be made to conform to a model of German monetary conservatism that itself came under strain after the Berlin Wall fell three years ago. Europe still has some historical ghosts to exorcise before it can devote itself to building an economic union. Its leaders have yet to act as one against the tragic nationalism raging in the former Yugoslavia. And they have yet to decide which historical model they'll follow for coping with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Will it be the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II? Or the disengagement that produced chaos, hyperinflation, and fascism after World War I? Europe's shining accomplishment this New Year is the nearly completed work on its single market. Over time and despite economic cycles, the free flow of goods, services, and labor to a potential market of 375 million people in 19 countries will steadily deliver benefits to consumers and modernize tradition-bound economies. As consumers gain, the logic of a single currency--and even greater political union--will prevail. A longer timetable may not satisfy some of Europe's older leaders. But it will pave the way for democratic, grass-roots support for closer integration that will sound the biggest change between old and new. | |
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