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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

22

gional relations sparked by trade along the Silk

Road, the era of discovery and European em-

pires and the dawn of railways and steamboats,

to cite only a few of its previous vectors. Europe

was a protagonist in this process from the very

beginning, promoting and benefitting from it at

every turn, even though the profits it supposed

were reserved for a privileged few. Since the

1990s, with the disappearance of the blocks

that defined the Cold War era, the expansion of

multinational corporations and the rise of China

and other emerging nations, the pace of glo-

balisation has accelerated exponentially, driven

by advances in telecommunications and trans-

port technology that have diminished the im-

portance of geographic distances. Nevertheless,

Europe has been neither a prime mover nor a

principal beneficiary of this latest phase.

It is clear that globalisation has its advan-

tages and disadvantages. The formers have in-

cluded the possibility for millions of people in

emerging countries to escape abject poverty,

international cultural and scientific exchange,

the specialisation and mobility of highly quali-

fied workers and, most particularly, a progres-

sive confluence of values and interests that can

reduce the incidence and relative scale of inter-

national conflicts. No sector has reaped as many

benefits of globalisation as the financial sector,

which buoyed by deregulation measures intro-

duced during the 1980s by the Reagan admin-

istration in the United States and the British

government under Margaret Thatcher has in-

dulged in a sustained and highly lucrative spree

of speculation that has imperilled the develop-

ment and stability of certain countries and re-

gions as well as a number of currencies.

Those worse hit by globalism have been low-

skilled workers in developed countries suddenly

confronted by the unfair competition of companies

operating in countries in which even the most

basic labour rights are not respected. Neoliberal

globalisation has triggered a race to the bottom

in which the labour, environmental and health

regulations and social services achieved in de-

veloped countries are being progressively deval-

ued and dismantled. The desire to maximise

corporate profits has translated into industrial

relocations that provoke unemployment and at-

tempts to boost competiveness that undermine

wages and working conditions. Globalisation

has also heightened the risk of the loss of cul-

tural diversity in a world caught up in a drift

towards greater uniformity. Nevertheless, the

worst threat we collectively face today is the

loss of democratic control over economic activ-

ity, a clear possibility given that globalisation has

not been accompanied by the creation of supra-

national entities with the authority to curb its

excesses.

It is

this

unregulated and unbridled globali-

sation that works mainly to the benefit of fi-

nance capitalists and large multinational corpo-

rations that left-leaning political parties and

social movements seek to reject. Capitalism is

not anti-globalist but it is anti-regulationist; it

only takes refuge in protectionism when it con-

siders international regulations or treaties to be

detrimental to its interests. Globalism is unstop-

pable, but it can, when regulated properly, be

beneficial if it promotes the extension of labour

and social rights throughout the globe and puts

competition back on a reasonable footing.

Protectionist reactions and the closing of bor-

ders do nothing but create tensions and aggra-

vate the problem. The protectionism that arose

in the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression

not only deepened the effects of that financial

crisis but also contributed to the conditions

leading to the Second World War. In the long