ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the European Community's (EC) internal menace, state-sponsored non-tariff barriers (NTBs) that mock the Treaty's spirit and letter, stifle growth, and demarcate the EC from the outside world. It focuses on the EC's other primary occupation: the external challenge posed by the US, Japan, and the newly industrialized countries (NICs) who dominate the EC market for many high-tech products. The internal menace is a political problem that will change in piecemeal rather than radical fashion. The chapter also attempts to show that by the mid-1980s two developments came together that changed the direction of European integration: political acceptance of failed internal trade policies and the political commitment to reverse them; and global pressures on the EC to act as a unified actor to meet the demands of international competition and to meet international needs for access to European resources and to the European market.
