How successful is the EU in providing a regional response to the Essay

How successful is the EU in providing a regional response to the problems arising from globalisation - Essay Example e the United States, Canada and Mexico share NAFTA, the North American Free-Trade Agreement, much of Western, Central, and now Eastern Europe subscribes to the tenants of economic and political integration through what is arguably one of the most potent transnational organizations in the world, the European Union. The EU today has more than two dozen members and is in the process of further expansion. Will Turkey one day join the European nation of families? Will Serbia, the largest state of the former Yugoslavia, regain the favor of Western Europe and one day become a full-fledged member of the European Union? To what extent has the European Union been successful in providing a regional response to the problems arising from globalization? Globalisation has provided increased political pressures for the EU to expand and this arguably is the major challenge that it has faced over the past 20 years (Fierke & Wiener, 1999, 44-46). Seeking to analyse the EU’s pressures to expand i n a globalised world, the following aims to address how the EU has responded in a holistic fashion to expansion in an era globalisation. Created following the tumultuous events of the Second World War, the European Economic Community was an important precursor for the establishment of the European Union. Accordingly, the European Union is an international organization which is estimated to generate 30% of the worlds total Gross Domestic Product (Almond et al, 2002, 100). As an economic powerhouse with significant stature on the global stage, the European Union is presently in the process of increasing its membership and aims for near total European integration in the political, judicial, economic and social spheres (Almond et al, 2002, 101). The evolution of the European Union has occurred in tandem with the globalisation of the world community and the EU has fundamentally changed in composition since its inception. Accordingly, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the EU has