“New” Regionalism as an Anti-crisis Strategy for the European Union

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze possible strategies for the development of the EU, as a key institutional driver of integration that plays a visible role both at the regional and global levels. In recent decades the EU pursued a policy of dynamic expansion, which nowadays meets with resistance from both the “external environment” and within the EU. In this regard, there is a need to determine the limits of the development of regional integration, this is especially important in the context of modern global crisis. This issue is considered from the point of view of balancing between widening and deepening of integration processes. Enlargement (considered more as an expansion) and deepening may put the EU before a choice of priorities; however, they are not mutually exclusive processes. The main challenge is the choice of a strategy that is subordinated to the political will and interests of decision-makers. In order to analytically address the issue, the concept of regionalism and its modern version of “open” regionalism is used as a theoretical approach. It is outlined the extra-regional (global) nature of the EU development strategy. The author concludes that the current anti-crisis strategy of the EU is the construction of a global trading system with elements of regulatory mechanisms that ensures the sustainable competitiveness of the EU, even at the expense of internal centralization.