Will the European Union follow the model of the Free Trade Area of the Americas’ project or the FTAA will ever decide to look like the EU? Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 5 No. 35 November 2005

Granell, Francisco. (2005) Will the European Union follow the model of the Free Trade Area of the Americas’ project or the FTAA will ever decide to look like the EU? Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 5 No. 35 November 2005.

Abstract

[From the introduction]. The FTAA is today only a Project, and the European Union is today the most advanced scheme of regional integration among the seventy regional agreements that have been notified to, and examined by, the GATT from its inception in 1947 to the decision to institute -from 1 January 1995- a World Trade Organization, having lent new lustre to a multilateral system (2). In order to arrive at the present level of integration, the European process is in a permanent process of change as it has been throughout the Community's life. It is not my purpose to analyze, here, the historical process of development of the present European Union but it is necessary to remember the parallel processes of deepening and enlargement that have taken place since the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950. In this sense we can say that European Integration has always moved qualitatively and quantitatively in an interrelated process.