1. With a population exceeding 1.8 billion, they export about $700 billion a year, or less than half the dollar value of exports sent abroad by 347 million Europeans, according to a recent estimate. Strategic Assessment 1995 (Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1995), 198.
2. Clifford P. Hackett, Cautious Revolution: The European Community Arrives, Praeger, 1990, 121.
3. For example, mere application of technology in U.S. defense production has resulted in rising, not falling, prices over time. Also, the application of technology has not been associated with reduced costs of production in less trade-exposed sectors of the economy, including services, medical care in particular.
4. Industrial Research and Deveolopment Advisory Committee of the Commission of the European Communities, Skill Shortages in Europe--IRDAC Opinion (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, undated), 34.
5. For Greece, the transition between an association agreement with and membership in the EU in l981 lasted 20 years. Portugal's association with the EU began in l959, through Portugal's membership in the European Free Trade Area; EU membership materialized in l986. During the same year, Spain also joined the EU, following years of isolation from Europe (Franco's regime ended with his death in l975).
6. A recent assessment concludes: "The Maastricht negotiations were initiated by a desire to have a less German-dominated, more equal currency system than the EMS. In other words, the initial catalyst for change was internal. But as time went on . . . a wider vision was raised in many minds of how a monetary union might change Europe's place in the world. This vision is set early in the twenty-first century. It conjures up the prospect that every central banker around the world might have to keep Ecus (rather than dollars) in his foreign exchange reserves, that every trader with the world's largest commercial bloc might have to invoice his goods in Ecus, that every broker of oil and basic commodities might have to mark his prices in Ecus, and that every prudent investor might never want to be without substantial Ecu assets in his portfolio." David Buchan, Europe: The Strange Superpower (Dartmouth, 1993), 25-26.
7. Steven F. Overturf, "The Economics of the Renewed Integration Movement," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, (Jan. 1994): 85.
8. See, for example, Murray Weidenbaum "Why Maastricht Will Fail," The National Interest, Summer l993.
9. Until then, regulation and control of the American banking system was in the hands of state banks. In the absence of a central authority to monitor the quality of state bank assets and liabilities, currency in circulation consisted of bank notes often issued without regard to financial strength. High failure rates among banks resulted in substantial losses by depositors, leading to financial, economic and social turmoil.
10. The sheer incovenience of changing currencies at each border crossing (exacerbated now that there are none) within the EU can be approximated if one imagines U.S. citizens having to do the same when crossing state lines.
11. In the summer of l994, European media reported on deliberations and proposals concerning the proliferation of official languages in the EU.
12. European Union: Europe on the Move (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities 1994), 40.
13. Ibid., 39. The Maastricht Treaty actually calls for a European System of Central Banks rather than a single bank.
14. By analogy, the post World War II international financial system was a natural outcome of prevailing economic and political power balances. The United States was the world's strongest economy and this prowess served as the backbone of the international financial system based on the gold standard. For a long time, this system could meet the needs of the United States and its partners. When it no longer did, it was undone (by U.S. unilateral action, announced in the summer of l971).
15. The convergence criteria for EMU have been and remain controversial, particularly as to their relevance on technical grounds: "These criteria . . . taken at face value . . . made no sense whatsoever. The first criterion was that a country maintain a stable exchange rate for two years before joining . . . a country that showed that it was very good at living with an independent currency would be allowed to abolish it. The second criterion was . . . circular: a country would be allowed to join EMU if the markets thought it would. The third criterion required inflation to be close to that of the EC's best performance . [But] under fixed exchange rates...there was really nothing a country could do about [inflation] without violating the first criterion]. Finally, two criteria set limits on budget deficits and the size of government debt. These are reasonable things, but what do they have to do with monetary union? The Federal Reserve does not need to police the budgets of New York and California, because they cannot print money to cover their deficits. The same would be true of national governments after EMU." Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity, Norton, l994, 191.