Post-NAFTA Deepening and Widening Trends: Towards the Continentalization of Energy Markets and the Enlargement of the Southern Periphery

Abstract

For years, Europeans have debated about the virtues of strengthening communitarian institutions and inter-state political cooperation for ensuring the consolidation of a single economic and social space. The ‘deepening’ of integration has generally been translated into a further pooling of states’ sovereignty to communitarian institutions, such as the European Commission, the European Court or the Parliament. The debate has split opinions about the virtues of deepening commitments with only a few members — say, the original six founding members — or enlarging the ‘acquis communautaire’ to new ones, but without extending the commitments agreed by an ‘inner circle’. Europeans have in fact shown that they can do both without putting too much pressure on the communitarian architecture.