Sociedade, Tecnologia e Inovação Empresarial - Presidente da ...

and liberalised. The resulting growth and variety in telecom servicesbeing offered has been so strong that at least up to now, and againstmost forecast and predictions, no overall job losses in the telecom sectortook place, rather the contrary. And finally, there was of course themacro-economic convergence process leading to a monetary union withthe formal introduction of the Euro on January 1 st 1999 in eleven EUmember countries.Most of these structural transformation processes, such as thosewith respect to financial markets or even the telecom liberalisationprocess have been global in nature. They have, however, involvedmuch more some regions or areas than others. While Europe appearsto have been at the centre of most of the structural transformationslisted above, it seems, as yet, to have benefited least from the growthopportunities behind these structural transformation processes. Thisappears particularly the case for some of the larger European memberstates; some of the smaller European economies have actuallywitnessed in the nineties a remarkable growth and employment performance.It is as if, smaller countries, because of their already muchmore open economy structure were better equiped to respond to thestructural challenges raised both by European integration and worldwidestructural transformations. Their policy makers appeared morerapidly aware of the international implications and limitations of theirpolicy actions. One could even argue that the awareness of the increasinglylimited degrees of freedom of policy actions in these countriesboth with respect to the European union but also with respect to thewider global economy was successfully transmitted to both the citizenat large and the local business community. In the large Europeancountries by contrast, the policy acceptance of such reduced degreesof freedom was probably more difficult to acknowledge and often inconflict with a previous, relatively strong policy emphasis on nationalidentity and importance of the international policy role.At the same time, the broader world wide structural transformationprocesses were also raising fundamental questions withrespect to Europe’s own integration process. This long and carefullyplanned integration process increasingly characterized by eco-Debates2 8 0Sociedade, Tecnologia e Inovação Empresarial