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Chapter I
The Globalization of Free Trade Blocs: TheEuropean Union
, NAFTA, MERCOSUR,
theVisegrad countries
(or CEFTA
,) and TheEconomic Cooperation in the Black Sea
Dr. Olga Lazin
Beginning in the 1980s, processes of creating economic globalizationthrough creation of free-trade blocs based upon the free flow instantlyof information, communication, and funds not only brought pressureto bear on statism but made clear to the world that the failures of excessive central power could no longer be hidden behind the rhetoricthat state ownership was being carried out in the name of the masses. The opening of the world trade has broken down old barriersand boosted development of global civic society to prevent or limitdictatorships although many critics of globalization have argued that itmoves people into poverty. They failed to realize that there is apositive side to it. The break down of trade barriers and the rise of telecommunications has enabled the rise of civil society. They are both against statist power. It is the rise against thestate that stunted civil society in the world.In its expansive phase, the state rose against real nations who wantedto associate against the amorphous system of state domination and1
 
voluntary servitude, trying to create alternative cultures, independentpublic spheres and attempting to change and confront officialstructures. The processes of economic globalization, which haveincluded pressures on countries to end protectionism and to adapt tothe information revolution, had highlighted the increasing crisis incommunity life as the world's systems of state ownership proved to beinefficient, corrupt and bankrupt. Ironically, many observers wronglysee the decline of statism as being the cause of crisis in communitylife, not the result, as I will show here.One Romanian politician, Teodor Melescanu is rightfully arguingthat the globalization process benefits small, underdevelopedcountries, if these countries know how to tune into the globalism’sbenefits and profit from the recent possibilities and developments intelecommunications and networking.
1
 Initially the weapon of Cold War rivalry, technology in its nascentcomputer networking form, has actually propelled the digital industryage and therefore one of the main forces of globalization, theinformation technology. Ironically, the “Seattle Man” protesters werecalled against IMF and World Bank policy, are sending “political
1
 
 Teodor Melescanu, “Noua era a tarilor mici, ”Lumea Magazin, , 28 Jan, 2000http://www.lumeam.ro/nr4_2000/noua_era.html2
 
information” via Internet using the most important major globalizationtool, that is the web, against corporate power.Protesters in Seattle and Washington gave globalization and itsinstrumental enforces – the World Bank, the International MonetaryFund and the World Trade Organization – a bad name.
2
 The impact of globalization, reflected in the numbers shows thateconomic growth achieved through openness to trade is the mosteffective, as reliance on trade grew.New trade blocs have come to define themselves in terms of inter -bloc trading, not intra -bloc as had dominated thinking from the1950s through the 1970s.I will take up here the following free trade blocs: EuropeanUnion, NAFTA, Mercosur, the Visegrad countries, and The EconomicCooperation in the Black Sea. The technology revolution made it possible to break isolation of police states all over the world.Marketization and privatization are preconditions of a maturecivil society.As economic questions have come to dominate political ones,
32
Joseph, Kahn, “Globalization: Unspeakable, Yes, but Is It Really Evil?” The New York Times, May 9, 20003
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