Inequality between Countries: An Ever More Heterogeneous Union?

Abstract

Determination, anxiety, resolution: the ambitions were high, and were made quite clear in both treaties. The Treaty on European Union (Maastricht), that laid the foundations of the European Monetary Union, made the objectives even more explicit: “strengthening” and “convergence” of the member states’ economies. In almost six decades, the European Community — now EU — has attracted most countries on the continent, enlarging membership from the six founding countries to 28; and in this long time span, there have indeed been major improvements in average standards of living throughout the EU. In particular, those countries that had not, for various reasons, benefited much from the three decades of fast economic growth that followed World War II in Western Europe, did catch up after adhesion: it has been so for Greece, Spain, Portugal and even more for Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s, and more recently for most new members from Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean islands (Malta and Cyprus), at least up to onset of the Great Recession.

…to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it.

Treaty of Rome , 1957

Resolved to achieve the strengthening and the convergence of their economies and to establish an economic and monetary union including, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, a single and stable currency.

Treaty of Maastricht , 1992

Determined to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe.

Anxious to strengthen the unity of their economies and to ensure their harmonious development by reducing the differences existing between the various regions and the backwardness of the less favoured regions.

Article 2