Taking the effect of the agricultural liberalization promoted by the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiation on European integration as an example, this paper investigates whether globalization process promotes or undermines regional integration. This paper...
Taking the effect of the agricultural liberalization promoted by the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiation on European integration as an example, this paper investigates whether globalization process promotes or undermines regional integration. This paper suggests that the UR had a positive effect on further European integration by triggering the reform of EC's common agricultural policy, which had been the source of repeated budgetary crisis of the EC. Consequently, the UR made EC money available for more integrative project, i.e., redistributional policy in the form of structural funds. The assumption of redistributional function by EC menas that EC is expanding its supranational policy competency into the area that in the past belonged exclusively in state prerogatives. In this sense, the CAP reform contributed to the deepening of European integration by making the resources available for EC level redistributive policy. Therefore, as long as the UR was in part responsible for the CAP reform, it can also be said that the UR contributed to the deepening of European integration. This is a case where globalism moves regionalism forward.