The European Union and regional economic integration: Creating collective public goods – Past, present and future

EPRS invites leading experts and commentators to share their thinking and insights on important features of the European Union as a political and economic system. In this paper, Iain Begg, Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), reflects on the distinctive characteristics of the EU as the world's leading exemplar of regional economic integration, and its unique experience since the 1950s in generating collective public goods for its Member States as a foundation for the continent's collective prosperity.