The European Union is far from being marginalized and a huge
majority of Europeans still support European integration, European
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Thursday.
"It is up to European officials to make the case for Europe,"
Mr. Barroso said. He was speaking at the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
He underlined the need for an "active" and "influential" Europe
and said there is a need for a "stronger, democratic Europe"
because disintegration would be costly.
Answering a question about the threats from rising nationalism
in some European countries, Mr. Barroso said the way to counter it
is using political leadership and "more democracy."
Mr. Barroso said more common regulation is needed in Europe
because with 27 different economies, there can be up to 27
different sets of regulation. "We may have to give back to member
states what they can do better," he said. "We need some common
level of regulation. The question is of balance."
When asked about the low level of entrepreneurship in Europe
versus the U.S., Mr. Barroso said there are many reasons, including
cultural factors and the issue of venture capital. There also is
fragmentation of markets in Europe, so where an entrepreneur in the
U.S. thinks of the entire country as his market, in Europe, people
still think of Spain or Portugal as their market. That said, there
are many successful entrepreneurs in Europe, and the situation is
improving.
"There are still barriers," Mr. Barroso said. "We need a
European dimension."
In a speech earlier, Mr. Barroso said the "reality is that
European integration remains the best alternative" and "we need
more Europe."
European integration is a dynamic process, and the current
crisis has "pushed the European Union to move forward more quickly
with reforms that are anyway inevitable," he said, "because we will
not have sustainable growth as long as we have unsustainable
debt."
It will be important to correct "the flaws in the euro
architecture and move towards a genuine economic and monetary union
composed of a banking, fiscal and political union," Mr. Barroso
said.
Write to Anusha Shrivastava at anusha.shrivastava@wsj.com
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