ABSTRACT
In order to accommodate the accession of new member states in Eastern Europe and meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU) has embarked upon major reforms of its basic constitution, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Structural Funds. These reforms are embodied in the Treaty of Amsterdam and the ‘Agenda 2000’ reform process, which, amongst many other changes, formalise the EU’s adoption of the goal of ‘sustainable development’. This chapter, however, argues that despite promoting the rhetoric of ‘sustainable development’, the EU is premised on a fundamentally misguided driving force or ethos of economic growth and competitiveness. The EU is a key player in the global phase of capitalist industrialism, with a new form of state organisation and institutional development, a version of what McMichael (1998) has termed the ‘global’ state. Thus academic excitement about new forms of governance based on ‘partnership’ and ‘subsidiarity’ within the EU may well be misplaced, particularly if that excitement leads to a failure to remember or recognise the fundamental ethos of the Union.
