THE NEXT EUROPEAN EMPIRE?

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes to use the concept of empire for the analysis the European integration process. From a methodological point of view, this concept is an invitation to reintroduce in EU studies the comparative approach as well as long-term history. This paper also leads to a detailed reflection on the concept of empire itself and proposes a modernized definition of it. The use of this concept enables to shed a new light on the EU and some of its policies. If the EU cannot be considered an empire, it can nonetheless be said that it is undergoing a process of imperialization. This raises the question of the transformation of the European project and to the consequences of this transformation.

Keywords:

• European Union
• empire
• state-building
• European integration

Notes

¹I would like to thank in particular Lars Bo Kaspersen, Karis Muller and Stan Nadel for comments on earlier versions of this text.

²The states which accessed in 2004 represented less than 5 percent of the EU's GDP.

³This leaves out the case of the so-called ‘opt-outs’, which are asked for and not imposed.

⁴It must be reminded here that, historically speaking, imperial territorial expansion has not always taken the form of colonization. In the field of ‘empirology’, colonization mainly refers to a very particular type of territorial expansion characterizing the formation of ‘empires by sea’ (Howe 2002). ‘Empires by land’ have practiced territorial expansion through other means such as conquest, strategic marriage policy (e.g., the Habsburg Empire), voluntary submission against protection (e.g., the Roman Empire). Further, the variety of statutes granted to the territories incorporated in the Byzantine Empire, for instance, reveals that the empire was not only interested in a straightforward domination of its territories but in a much more diversified scope of relations.

⁵There is one major exception: the USA, a federation born out of an empire, has notoriously known a phase of territorial expansion before it stabilized its borders at the end of the nineteenth century.

⁶It should be noted that the notion of ‘post-hegemonial empire’ is very awkward. Indeed, it seems to indicate an evolutionary process leading from the hegemon to the empire. The hegemon would be a sort of political stage prior to the empire. However, in the study of empires – and in particular the structural theory used in this paper – the notions of hegemon and empire designate two distinct phenomena, which do not interfere with one another.

⁹ http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/translation/navigation/faq/faq_language_en.htm

¹⁰ http://europa.eu.int/comm/scic/thescic/mission_en.htm#2

⁷ http://europa.eu.int/comm/publications/booklets/eu_glance/22/en.pdf

⁸ Conference interpreting and enlargement. A strategy for the joint Interpreting and Conference Service in the lead-up to 2004, SEC (2002) 349/2, p. 2.

¹¹ Conference interpreting and enlargement … p. 8.