European Integration and Economic Models for Emerging Economies

This chapter elaborates on how first the perspective, then later accession, and finally actual membership in the European Union (EU) has contributed to shaping the economic order. This issue is broader than that of quantitative growth performance in the formerly socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter posits that though the process of becoming an EU member has been helpful, the value of actual membership has proven to be more ambiguous in terms of achieving the developmental objectives of growth, freedom, and prosperity. At the same time, the chapter finds that nonmembership, whatever its causes might be, has invariably proven inferior across many measures, including growth, quality of life, attainment of political and economic freedoms, and life satisfaction, as recorded in opinion surveys. Therefore, delaying full membership in the EU, or aiming for an in-between solution, as is proposed in a considerable portion of the contemporary literature, is a dead end. By the same token, the very real difficulties of and from EU membership cannot be remedied by an exit option modeled on the UK experience.