The EU’s Eastern borders as political obstacles to cooperation, economic integration, and globalization in Europe

Talking about international humanitarian problems and multiculturalism, it is necessary to take into account the “barrier effects” of contemporary boundaries. This is especially the case of the EU’s borders, created and expanded towards the East of Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, they are directly involved in complicated and decisive problems such as the global food crisis - due also to the European customs duties, governmental subsidies, and agricultural protectionism - the permanently difficult cooperation, and the obstacles to the globalization in Europe. Before 1989, the rhetoric of the European Community (EEC) was that the continent suffered from an artificial and politically tragic division. When the Berlin wall was torn down, the right for free movement of people was celebrated everywhere. But after 1993 EU’s Eastern border created automatically a new divide in Europe, related to many problems, contradictions and consequences. The removal of internal borders within the EU and the opening of a common market were accompanied by a continuous strengthening and by an increasing importance of external borders. The internal borders of EU disappeared but an external border was erected instead. As a result, the enlargement automatically produced a new cleavage between two “Europes”: Eastern (former Soviet Western Republics and Caucasus) and the enlarged Western Europe. Cold War ended, but the institutionalized East-West partition of Europe largely reproduced itself. The new EU’s eastern border created not only new boundaries, but also new forms of permanent inclusion and exclusion. In fact, also the EU’s concept of political integration, based on this rigorous division, defined by full membership status and fortified external borders, became an instrument of an old conception of territoriality. The Maastricht Treaty that entered into force in 1993, clearly established an increasing importance of the EU’s territorial basis and of its boundaries.