New Zealand, Australia and 1992

Abstract

By announcing the commitment to the realisation of the four freedoms of movement of goods, persons, services and capital by 1 January 1993 through the establishment of the Single European Market, the EC gave the international community notice of its intention to become internally competitive after years of economic stagnation and relative economic decline in the international political economy. This and the related decision to strengthen its external frontier while removing internal barriers to the four freedoms provoked acute anxiety among its competitors. The EC was accused of setting out to create a Fortress Europe. Yet not only was this not the EC’s objective, but it masked the very real consequences of greater European economic (and inevitably political) integration that this implied. The political consequences, in particular, were hardly recognised until late 1990. Even then, there were many, notably in the UK, prepared to dismiss them as pie-in-the sky federalism. The easy clichés — a federal United States of Europe, a Fortress Europe — were unhelpful for they obfuscated the need to address the changing requirements of the international economy and the changing interactions of its key members.