“EU-FUNCTION”: EUROPEAN INTEGRATION CENTER OF GRAVITY
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"Storms bear new worlds."
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
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The historically significant events of today’s Europe are the collapse of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, German reunification and the subsequent democratization along with the consolidation of dynamic integration and disintegration processes. In the early 1990s, disintegration attempts appeared to be far more intensive and cathartic. The latter half of the decade was more integration-oriented and became a serious issue in Eastern and Western Europe and in the US. Partially accepting the concept “integration is not only a process but is also an end state”, this chapter asserts while we review the changes in European security, we should view integration to be more of a process not an end state. This is true not only in the case of international organizations but also for some nations. The sources urging European integration are the European Union and NATO integration strategies and the dialectics of the aspirant nation’s interests.
Today’s European disintegration processes occur in a Europe free from artificial borders with the EU and NATO as the basic dimensions. Considering the former is a Europe-specific economic, social, political and security union and the latter is more of a political, security and military organization encompassing the Northern hemisphere, the nucleus of the two – based on their nature – cannot be united. Naturally, since political, economic and social areas dominate over security and defense, in the European integration process, EU membership is the primary goal. The Union’s primacy is also supported by the way its development processes, the supra- and super-national advancement phase’s implementation not only changes EU-member’s legal status in NATO but simultaneously establishes new value systems and security circumstances on the continent. In other words, the Alliance’s future depends more on the EU than vice versa. From the Union’s standpoint, NATO remains important but is degraded to a subordinate role while it confronts the Union on numerous functional areas. In the midst of these circumstances, “EU-function” is a fundamental concept.
Today’s European disintegration processes occur in a Europe free from artificial borders with the EU and NATO as the basic dimensions. Considering the former is a Europe-specific economic, social, political and security union and the latter is more of a political, security and military organization encompassing the Northern hemisphere, the nucleus of the two – based on their nature – cannot be united. Naturally, since political, economic and social areas dominate over security and defense, in the European integration process, EU membership is the primary goal. The Union’s primacy is also supported by the way its development processes, the supra- and super-national advancement phase’s implementation not only changes EU-member’s legal status in NATO but simultaneously establishes new value systems and security circumstances on the continent. In other words, the Alliance’s future depends more on the EU than vice versa. From the Union’s standpoint, NATO remains important but is degraded to a subordinate role while it confronts the Union on numerous functional areas. In the midst of these circumstances, “EU-function” is a fundamental concept.
The fifth chapter addresses the center of European integration and its requirements. As its thesis, it identifies integration as the most defining process of European security with the EU and NATO as the two central organizations. Examining the waves of expansion, effects of the integration, interests of current and projected members and the integration-induced exigency, this chapter proves that integration is more a process than an end state.
