Agents of integration : multinational firms and the European Union
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1467-2227; 1467-2235
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Enterprise & society, 2020, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 886-892
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BALLOR, Grace Ann, Agents of integration : multinational firms and the European Union, Enterprise & society, 2020, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 886-892 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/70009
Abstract
Much of the existing scholarship on the history of the European Union presents twentieth century European integration as a political process. While this narrative rightly acknowledges the immeasurable impact of nation states, European Union institutions and visionary federalists, it is not complete. In response to globalization in the 1970s and 1980s, large European corporations sought to compete with their American and Asian rivals by establishing a pan-European single market without barriers to cross-border business. At times responding to policy changes and at times driving them, these firms adopted a regional strategy and invested broadly across Europe, particularly in the markets of the European peripheries, which offered both cheap, skilled labor and a huge consumer market with pent-up demand, all at close proximity to firm headquarters. By establishing value chain and subsidiary networks across the region, firms from every sector of the economy-including the French investment bank Paribas, German auto manufacturers Volkswagen and BMW, British retailer Tesco and Belgian retailer Delhaize-contributed to the integration of economies and facilitated the practical achievement of a common European market. Thus, motivated by their own profit interests, multinational firms facilitated the achievement of the four freedoms integral to an economically-united Europe: the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor across a single, common market.
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First published online: 23 December 2020