The new Europe - G. N Minshull

One of the most significant developments in Western Europe since 1945 has been the growth of integration. This book deals with the emergence of the European Community, formerly known as the EEC or Common Market, as a geographically significant, economically powerful and politically durable unit. The book gives an overview of the origins and evolution of the European Community since 1951, integration policies, the dramatic growth in material wealth during the 1960s, the resource base and patterns of 1979-82, industrial decline, unemployment, and severe regional problems. Nevertheless, the European Community is a very important economic unit and a major trading bloc. Its institutions have become more democratic, and its external relationships, particularly with the Third World, have become much more significant.;The fourth edition of this book deals with all 12 members of the European Community, with particular reference to the four largest member states, West Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, who are all members of the "Group of Seven" most powerful world industrial states. The economic geography of the book stresses the key concept of core and periphery and is organised around a balance between systematic and regional geography. Major revisions to all chapters have been made, with statistics updated to the late 1980s, and there is a new chapter which deals with the Single European Market and its potential for continued progress in the 1990s.