ABSTRACT
Since World War II, the integration of western Europe has been strongly influenced by the United States, and the United States in turn has posed some of the most challenging policy problems for the European Community and now the EU. The EU and the United States between them account for a large proportion of world trade and investment; they play central roles in the operation of international economic institutions; they are at the core of the development of new technologies; and they are also at the core of the western security system, which has in many ways provided an “umbrella” under which the industrial countries of the North Atlantic area have prospered since the late 1940s.
