The European Union: A Model Under Pressure

Abstract

Following its establishment in 1952, both the European Coal and Steel Community and its successor, the European Union, have served as models for other regional organisations. Yet, recent crises of the European Union - including of migration, the common currency, and of Brexit - call into question the continued viability of this status. While these crises have tainted the European Union's success, predictions of its irrelevance and demise are nevertheless premature. European Union-type institutions are becoming more widespread in other parts of the world, including authoritative dispute settlement mechanisms, general secretariats with agenda-setting power, and parliamentary assemblies. These developments are due, in part, to the European Union's success as well as to its active promotion of regional integration in other parts of the world. The European Union actively promotes regionalism through financial and technical assistance as well as via the negotiation of interregional agreements. Nevertheless, European Union-type institutions seldom generate comparably positive outcomes to those in Europe itself because of other regions' greater concerns about national sovereignty, as well as different economic, political, and social contexts. Recent crises in the European Union have tainted outsiders' perceptions of it as a model of specific policy regimes; yet, the most fundamental problem has crystallised in Brexit, which expresses principled opposition to the very idea of regional cooperation. Nevertheless, the notion that regional cooperation can help nation states to secure peace and enhance economic prosperity continues to be most prominently embodied by the European Union - remaining an attractive one in a world in which conflict and poverty are still pervasive. Policymakers in Europe should realise that the attractiveness of the European Union model of regional economic integration is an important form of soft power, one that they should be ready to harness. At the same time, this appeal's endurance depends primarily on the European Union's ability to continue solving internal problems and coping with crises - where the largest threats to its positive image now come from.