Multinationals in the New Europe and Global Trade

Book excerpt: After a decade of Eurosclerosis the EC is moving with renewed economic growth and increasing multinational investment toward a single European market under the heading "Project 1992". The creation of a single EC market creates dynamic adjustment needs and opens up new opportunities for international business in a period of intensified global competition and dramatic politico-economic changes. Since the mid-1980s Eastern Europe is undergoing a radical shift towards market-based economic systems -a difficult and fragile development so far which is further complicated by economic and political unification of Germany in central Europe. After the era of British and, later, U. S. leadership in multinational investment German and Japanese multinational companies are becoming more influential players worldwide. Firms from Germany playa special role because German unification of 1990 implies a bigger home market, but also the diversion of total investment activities towards the greater German home market. While the political divide of Europe has ceased to exist, the economic division is becoming more apparent, and it could indeed transitorily increase because the EC 1992 project primarily generates growth impulses in Western Europe, while systemic transformations in Eastern Europe reduce output growth in the short term.