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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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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