How Many Europes?

Eastward enlargement of the European Union (EU) is rarely discussed in terms of the organizational and ideological condition of the existing Union. In this paper the debate over eastern enlargement is related directly to a shift within the EU from a dual focus on global economic competitiveness and the compensation of lagging regions to an increasingly singular focus on European competitiveness. Seen in this light, the goal of a single Europe with relatively similar levels of development everywhere is being replaced by an emerging threefold division of the continent into a ‘core’ Europe (itself increasingly differentiated across policy areas), a ‘peripheral’ Europe of potential eastern members perpetually on the road to full membership, and an ‘external’ Europe excluded from membership but open to use by businesses from the core. This geographical taxonomy rests on the growing reliance of the EU on a neo-liberal economic ideology that sees uneven development within Europe as helping the global competitiveness of the EU as a whole, using the model of the United States as its inspiration.