序論 新しいヨーロッパ-拡大EUの諸相-研究動向と課題-

新しいヨーロッパ-拡大EUの諸相

抄録

What is the “New Europe”?
In one year before the 60^th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the EU enlarged from 15 to 25 countries, and the New United Europe, with the exception of the Balkan countries, was realized on 1 May 2004.
Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission at that time, commented on the “New Europe” on the eve of the EU Enlargement on 30 April 2004. He declared that Europe was united at last from the western coast of Ireland to the eastern border of Poland, and from Valetta in Malta in south to the tip of Finland in the north, and Europe would not be divided any more by ideological borders. The new Enlarging Europe parallels the Roman Empire and has been united without war. It extends beyond the artificial borders of nation-states and is an aggregation of regions, citizens, and diverse cultures.
The background of the New Europe is the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall as well as the reunification of both East and West Germany and Eastern and Western Europe. It is the result of the end of the Socialist system and ideological conflict, the trend toward democracy, and regional cooperation in the global era.
Problems of the Enlarged EU: a “two-speed and different-level Europe”
Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, however, the catchwords of One Germany and One Europe are incompatible with reality. There is an economic gap between East and West, and there are differences of political and cultural consciousness in both the former East and West Germany and Eastern and Western Europe. Citizens have either become critical of the enlargement or have begun to despair of, or be reconciled to, the status quo.
After the first anniversary of the EU Enlargement, the Treaty for establishing a Constitution for Europe was rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands, two of the very countries which had originally lead the Treaty.
The people's rejection of the Treaty demonstrated that the citizens of Western Europe are now against, or at least skeptical of, the EU Enlargement towards the East, and the so-called “two-speed and different-level Europe” emerged in many phases. In the Iraq War, the EU was divided into groups that were for or againstt the US policy, and in immigration and agricultural problems it was divided into East and West. About the European Treaty or the policy on border questions, it has been difficult to find a compromise between the EU policy of each country and the opinions of the citizens.
The question is how do EU diversity and unification work together as a regional system and in the relations between each interest group of the EU, the nations, and citizens, how does it solve European border and domestic questions concerning immigrants, security, economic and regional differences, minorities, identity, social-policy, and so on, and how does the cooperation policy continue with neighbor countries like Russia, CIS, the Middle East, and North Africa with respect to their mutual interests.
However, from such agony and struggle for “New European” experiments, we can learn many lessons historically or pragmatically that can be applied to the Asian case of regional cooperation or international relations with the US.