Globalization: can Europe make a difference?

Since the mid-1970s sales, finance and production and the concentration and centralization of capital have been internationalized to an extent that has never been seen before in history. This unprecedented economic globalization has been accompanied by the strengthening of international organizations and regulation to facilitate the internationalization of the three circuits of capital, but attempts to globalize social rights, the provision of public goods, democracy, and environmental norms are weak or hardly existent (Went 2002). Although it recognizes that globalization has come at a cost (trends in global income distribution, increased volatility), and that major policy challenges leverage of national governments, the provision of global public goods) remain to be tackled, the European Commission (2002) argues that economic globalization is a benign process that should be extended. Serious criticisms from international organizations, social movements and less-developed countries of the dynamics and effects of globalization are thereby ignored. The Commission wants the EU, which in international affairs has 'consistently acted as a regional subordinate of the US' (Gowan 2001), to continue its pro-globalization course. An argument often used to support this approach is that the EU is economically (much) weaker than the US, and therefore has no other choice but to follow the leader. However, it will be argued in this paper that this claim is erroneous. Due to its weight in the global economy the EU is in no way forced to stay within the straitjacket of neoliberal globalization.