Definition von Europas Weltbild

Europa solle sich zu einem Global-Player entwickeln, indem es der Welt mit eine Strategie und einer Prise politischen Scharfsinns gegenübertrete, schreibt Wolfgang Gerhardt, Vorsitzender der Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNSF), in der Frühjahrsausgabe 2009 der Europe’s World.

Gerhardt believes that an EU „driven by technocrats and elite groups is inadequate,“ and that the time has come for the bloc to „improve itself“. 

Europe must take more advantage of globalisation, the author believes, arguing that rather than holding on to „old welfare states [that] are no longer able to cope with the international pressure to drive down costs,“ Europe should be aiming to drive competition and freedom. 

EU enlargement is another crucial part of Europe’s worldview, representing the „most successful instrument yet in spreading stability and prosperity and consolidating young democracies,“ Gerhardt argues. 

Nevertheless, he believes the time is not yet right to grant Turkey EU membership, aruging that the „EU would not be able to absorb Turkey, and Turkey would not be ready for accession“ at the moment. 

The paper outlines the „need for increasingly variable forms of integration“ in future. Different forms of integration will be required, Gerhardt argues, citing as EU neighbourhood policy among ways the bloc can „reach out to more turbulent regions on the periphery of Europe“. 

The EU should also „devote itself to cooperation with others in tackling, on a basis of a shared responsibility, those tasks on the global agenda that it is able to perform and expected to perform,“ the paper states. 

„Coalition building, cooperation and integration must form the core of the cosmopolitan character of the [EU’s] liberal foreign policy,“ Gerhardt concludes.