Models of Capitalism and the Future of the European Integration

Abstract

The diversity of the institutional systems, as revealed in the previous chapters, presents a major challenge for European economic integration. This chapter describes this challenge and its consequences. Obviously, this diversity is not the only challenge European integration must face. There are several challenges from outside the economy (environmental issues, climate change, the energy supply, migratory pressure, demographic problems, and so on) and from the globalised world economy (the non-decreasing backwardness in competitiveness compared to the USA and increasingly intense competition with the emerging countries), which all jeopardise the maintenance of the welfare model,1 which model is generally known as the European social market economy. Nevertheless, the discussion of all these details is well outside the scope of this book. This chapter is dedicated to those aspects that result from the main topic of this book, that is, the study of the various models of European market economies and their coexistence.