In order to integrate the “outer” peripheries of the evolving “wider Europe”, the EU must be able to integrate its periphery. And here, world system analysis says, is the EU’s major problem. In order to enlarge, it is clear that Europe must transform and re-form many of its cumbersome institutional arrangements. There is first of all, a positive relationship between net wealth per capita and net receipts from the EU budget per capita, as evidenced by our own compilations from European Commission and UNDP data. The rich are getting richer! Second, there is also a concentric effect of regional development, as evidenced by the regional database that covers 248 regions with complete data provided by the Directorate General for Regional Policy of the European Commission. The high unemployment rates of 1999 were determined to the tune of 60 % by the already existing unemployment in 1990. Weak regions remained weak, and high unemployment regions remained high unemployment regions. There is no redistribution of employment and life chances in Europe! Third, economic growth in Europe did not so systematically benefit the poorer regions. The regional redistribution effect between 1995 and 1999 was only weak, and regional poverty only explained 5 % of the positive convergence in that period. It would be naïve to negate the contradictory process of centers and peripheries in Europe in the first place. This book deals extensively with this process, and it is at the very heart of the problem, how to further integrate the peripheries that surround the European landmass.
