In addition to the costs of the several enlargement waves (particularly, the costs of the East European countries’ integration to the model); the reunification of East and West Germany, the recurring economic crises in some member states resulting from mismanagement, insufficient auditing and monitoring (in countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy), and the rise of the economies in the Far East (such as China, South Korea, and Taiwan) that moved to the industrial production and R&D to those countries; have been negatively influencing the EU economy for quite a long time.
Furthermore, instead of balancing the markets with the welfare state policies, the EU has transformed to a purely right-wing project, where the single market and trade is greatly considered as a sufficient base of integration. However, as a consequence of such a neo-liberal account of economic governance, the belief of the people on the project have also decreased, and thus, this has led to a general legitimacy crisis for the EU institutions. In this context, following the underlining of ‘politics’ for successful economic governance of the EU, this paper will offer an alternative ‘central planning and welfare state based’ supranational economic model.
