    | ||
  By Jacques Attali Conventional predictions lead us to fear that Europe, like other dominant civilizations from Egypt to the Roman Empire, has entered a period of decline-a decline that, at least from a statistical point of view, seems unstoppable. Europe now has, compared with its main competitors, the lowest birthrate (with the exception of Japan), the highest unemployment rate, the oldest population, the highest social expenditures, the lowest industrial-growth rate, the weakest industrial research in key sectors of information technology, the fewest new patents. |
Even its renowned financial markets are heading toward fragility. And though its share of the worldwide gnp remains high-above 20%-this too will drop rapidly in the future. Thus everything is shaping up for 21st century Europe to become little more than a "Venetian Continent," visited by millions of Asians and Americans, inhabited by tourist guides, museum caretakers and hotelkeepers. In the big global bazaar, the place occupied by European companies, products, ideas, literature, music and cinema will soon be taken over by objects, services, sounds, noises, words and images from elsewhere. This worst-case scenario-which will come true if market forces alone dictate the outcome-can be described in these terms: 20-odd European countries will be assembled into a single European Union, a unified economic space in which a dozen or so of these states will share a new common currency, the euro. This large market, entirely open to outside investment, will have no common budgetary, fiscal or social policy. It will be under the 1 of 5 
| |
