European Union Development Trends: Some Aspects of Economic Integration

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the European Union development as an integration association. The economic aspects of integration within the EU as a whole as well as developing sub-integration processes are highlighted. Existing estimates show fluctuation in the level of the EU integration and its significant reduction in certain areas during some periods. The internationalization of the world economy and the increasing involvement of the EU in these processes couldn’t but have an impact on the intra-European situation. The assessment of the economic integration is made on the basis of the dynamics of the trade-investment cooperation and migration processes also. The analysis showed that different economic ties are not equally involved in the integration within the EU. If at the beginning of the XXI century the merchandise trade and FDI were comparable in terms of the level of involvement in the intra-European flows, then at present investment ties are considerably inferior to trade ones, having refocused on countries outside the EU. There is a steady trend in increasing of the share of citizens of non-EU countries living in the EU as well as EU citizens born in non-EU countries. The complexity of the European integration is traced by the example of sub-integration processes in the Visegrad Group. It is shown that accession to the EU has stimulated trade-investment cooperation within the “fourth”, but strong contrasts between members continue to persist. One of the main factors of the participation level in sub-integration is the economy size. Due to national features investment ties in terms of outstock are involved in subintegration processes more than trade ones. Sub-integration will continue to develop in the EU due to long-term factors, “complicating” pan-European integration processes, the non-linearity of which will remain.