Not your Parents' European Community - The Economic Integration of Europe - Prof Richard Pomfret

The EU is Australia's second largest trading partner and second largest source of foreign investment. However, for reasons discussed in this presentation by Emeritus Professor Richard Pomfret Australian governments, media and much of the population typically do not have an accurate understanding of the EU as an institution with a long-established common trade policy; one that is continuing to evolve towards ever deeper economic and political integration.

Australians still tend to view the EU through the agricultural policies of the 1970s and 1980s and British misunderstandings of the European integration project. As a result, Australia's view of the EU needs a comprehensive update for developing constructive relations in the years ahead.

In The Economic Integration of Europe, Professor Pomfret argue that European economic integration has gone through periods of reform and periods of apparent gridlock, but with substantial cumulative change over the last 75 years and today’s Union is very different from the customs union of the 1960s. Despite the euro/Greek financial crisis of the 2010s, refugee crises (2015 & today), and Brexit, the EU is integrating through fiscal policy coordination, a stronger European Central Bank, a better funded frontier service (Frontex), commitment to a Green Europe and other measures.

Australian visions of the European Union are often simplistic and outdated, failing to fully take account of these changes. Brexit was a minor disruption, but in 2020 and 2021 the Morrison government’s lack of enthusiasm on climate policies put Australia at odds with Green Europe. The debacle over the French submarine contract was another blow to relations. The consequences of misunderstanding the EU risks embedding a permanently underperforming Australia-EU relationship.

Please note this is an in-person event.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Emeritus Professor Pomfret was appointed Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide in 1992.  He held the Jean Monnet Chair on the Economics of European Integration 2017-20.

Before moving to Adelaide, he was Professor of International Economics from 1979 to 1991 at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, Bologna, and Nanjing. 

Professor Pomfret has acted as adviser to the Australian government and consultant to international organizations such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the OECD and United Nations Development Programme. 

His recent books include The Age of Equality: The twentieth century in economic perspective (Harvard UP, 2011), The Central Asian Economies in the Twenty-first Century: Paving a new silk road (Princeton UP, 2019), and The Economics of European Integration (Harvard UP, 2021).