The pages which follow contain five short articles on the ways in which countries outside the European Community are affected by the rapid pace of closer integration generated by the ideas embodied in the White Paper on ‘Completing the Internal Market’ in 1985 and set to continue well into the 1990s with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and widening to include EFTA and East European countries. These papers were commissioned for a conference on ‘The External Impact of Closer External Integration’, held at the National Institute on 13th September, 1990 and have been revised for publication in the light of the discussion.

The process of effects from integration is evolutionary as the articles explain. Countries threatened by what they see as adverse consequences try to get the offending facets of European integration changed by diplomatic pressure and other lobbying. Firms in those countries also try to alter their pattern of trade, investment and production to optimise their position, rationalising their operations within the Community to evade barriers, reduce costs and benefit as much as they can from the internal market.

Some countries such as EFTA and developing countries which were formerly colonies of the member states have special preferences with the EC. However, these articles deal with the countries round the Pacific Rim, which include the world's most important trading nation, the US, the major competitive threat, Japan, the world's fastest growing economies, among them the members of ASEAN, and the developed countries which suffered most from UK membership of the EC; Australia and New Zealand. The articles by Woolcock, Yannopoulos, Pelkmans and Mayes deal with these four sets of countries in turn but the discussion begins with a further article by Mayes which introduces the forces at work in economic integration in Europe and provides the context for the four regional assessments.