Necessary but not automatic: how Europe learned to integrate

With over 60 years of history behind it, the process of regional integration in Europe has lasted longer, and gone further, than that seen in any other part of the world. The instinct to look to the European example as a case study of integration, from which other regions might derive both positive and negative lessons, is therefore both strong and comprehensible. But any attempt to draw hard and fast lessons from the European story, or to assume any automatic parallels between the pattern of development observed and that likely to occur elsewhere, would be unwise.