Globalization and Regional Integration the Origins, Development and Impact of the Single European Aviation Market

9780415373388

0415373387

Exploring how the EC/EU has responded to the external challenge of globalization and internal pressures for more integration in air transport, this book explains how, why and to what extent a Single European Aviation Market [SEAM] has been created in Europe.Mainly using primary sources, including both documentary and interview material, to reconstruct policy developments it scrutinizes the global and European context from which the SEAM's origins emerged, its detailed policy formulation, its implementation and impact. In doing so, it addresses the question of why airline operations in Europe moved from a cartelised, subsidised, expensive, loss-making, tightly regulated system to the more competitive, economically viable, consumer-friendly, and profitable and more lightly regulated SEAM that exsists today.This examination of an important service industry, which is also highly charged with national politics, provides a fascinating case study of integration in an important economic sector, offering new perspectives and outlining important implications for a range of integration theories and claims about the ineluctable progress of globalisation.