NAFTA and the European Referent: Labor Mobility in European and North American Regional Integration. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 3 No.1, June 2003

Miller, Mark J. and Stefanova, Boyka. (2003) NAFTA and the European Referent: Labor Mobility in European and North American Regional Integration. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 3 No.1, June 2003.

Abstract

The election of Vicente Fox in Mexico and of George W. Bush in the United States led to a short-lived bilateral “honeymoon” in 2001 that waned prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, not after them. One aspect of the honeymoon period involved recurrent allusions to a European referent for NAFTA in US and Mexican press coverage of a possible immigration policy initiative. In several declarations, most notably President Fox’s speech at the Ottawa summit of the NAFTA partners in 2001, he spoke of his vision of a border-free North America where workers enjoyed freedom of movement. The seeming European referent for NAFTA, then, was freedom of movement within the European space guaranteed European citizens under Articles 48 and 49 of the Treaty of Rome. If President Fox and other advocates of a US-Mexico immigration policy initiative actually espouse an Article 48-like freedom of labor mobility within NAFTA, they would appear to be overlooking fundamental differences between regional integration in North America and Europe. We suggest that the Turkish-EU and Moroccan-EU relationships constitute a more appropriate European referent for NAFTA than Article 48. Turkish and Moroccan bids for membership in the EC and EU failed for many reasons, but above all because of the prospect for large-scale emigration by Turks or Moroccans to other member-states long after the end of a transition period.