The European Union, Mercosul and the New World Order

Abstract

The European Union, Mercosul and the New World Order Editors: Helio Jaguaribe & Alvaro de Vasconcelos Frank Cass, London, 2003 This volume is edited by two academics, one from Rio de Janeiro and the other from Lisbon. It comprises papers by six South American and five European scholars which focus on trends in the recent history of the European Union and Mercosul. The authors discuss the problems of regional integration, the way in which these two multinational organizations interrelate with other supra-national organizations and what this may portend for the future of the "World Order." In particular they discuss the problems of regional integration, and some touch upon the disparate experiences of these two organizations. The European Union and Mercosul both represent attempts at regional integration that work with raw material that is very different. In South America, Brazil is a giant compared with other member countries. Geographically, Brazil covers more than 8 million square kilometers, and has a population of 172 million (almost as large as the total population of Germany, France and Britain combined), thereby dwarfing the other member states of Mercusol in both territorial size and population. Sao Paulo, with a population of over 18 million, is the third largest city in the world. The next largest member state of Mercosul is Argentina, which has 2.7 million square kilometers, but only 37 million population. Historically, Portuguese-speaking Brazil has an ethnically very diverse population, with the bulk of the lower echelons being descended from African slaves and, to a less extent, American Indians, but with an upper economic strata of primarily white origin. By contrast, Spanish-speaking Argentina lays claim to a more European-oriented origin and culture. Brazil's economy (at $500 billion) is twice that of Argentina, although its GDP per head is much smaller. Both have problems with inflation. While there are only two languages spoken in the Mercosul countries (Spanish and Portuguese), the European Union is made up of countries speaking many different languages, but dominated by the relatively healthy economies of Germany, France and Britain. It hopes to eventually eliminate poverty in the more backward member countries. Slovakia, for example, has a smaller GDP than Malaysia, and has largely eliminated barriers to the movement of capital and people. In short, it is more advanced along the road to economic and political union than the Mercosul countries, which have presently no real plan to unite as a single entity - something that has strong advocates, for better or for worse, in the European Union. With 82 million inhabitants, Germany, although the largest of the European Union member countries, still has less than half the population of Brazil, but its economy is three and a half times that of Brazil, despite the fact that it has few natural resources and a land area of only 357 thousand square kilometers. From an overview of the above, we would have hoped from the title of this book that the authors would have made more specific comparisons between the two systems, but unfortunately that is not the case. In general, the contributors focus on the Mercosul countries, and it is in the discussion of these that the merits of this publication are to be found. …