Past Failure, New Future: An Analysis of the European Union Development Strategies – From Lisbon to Europe 2020

Globalization and the EU Relations in the 21^st Century

In terms of the EU, the globalization can be defined as a process of “The combination of technological progress, lower transport costs and policy liberalization in the European Union and elsewhere has led to increasing trade and financial flows between countries” (European Commission, 2015). In addition to that globalization can be named in the term of the EU as a “managed”. In fact, the Pascal Lamy had firstly used the term of the “managed globalization”, whereas Lamy was a trade Commissioner of the EU. Generally, the term refers to the attempts of EU leaders “there is something European leaders can do” or European leaders can handle the threatening influence of the globalization while taking advances of the globalization (Jacoby, Meunier, 2010, p.301). In addition to that the authors suggested that the EU have five mechanism to control the globalization including “expanding policy scope, exercising regulatory influence, empowering international institutions, enlarging the territorial sphere of EU influence, redistributing the cost of globalization” (Jacoby, Meunier, 2010, pp.305-309).

In the light of this information, it can be claimed that the EU has been a shaper of the globalization. In fact, the EU has been accepted as a shield against the negative effect of the globalization, while it absorbs the positive effect. It can be considered as good evidence that the EU’s globalization shaping capacity has provided a protection to its own trade interests by setting the global production standards and influence of its existence in international organizations which are related to trade. Another evidence of the EU’s globalization shaping role is to control the mergers and acquisitions. In fact, the EU has restricted competence over its member states. Besides, the EU Commission is the only institution which has used the supranational competence over the member states. The EU Commission uses this mandate transferred from member states to the EU and the Commission uses this competence on the behalf of the member states. The Competition Policy including the anti-trust control and approval is the one of them (Heisenberg, 2006, p.30-31).