Germany's Chancellor
This is the formula insistently put forward not only in
What about going backward rather than forward?
I would argue that nearly every step in the federalist direction has produced unnecessary complication and strain in the EU. The fiasco of an unneeded and unwanted European constitution was the best proof of this. The reason is simple. Nearly every step towards total union has revealed still more of the inherent factors of disunity in
The fundamental motive animating
The fall of
The French (after 1066) occupied
Since then, the Union has added members so as to encompass nearly all of
It has become a complex system of concentric and overlapping circles of action and influence, each providing a function necessary or desirable to the whole. But this was not enough. It decided to create a common currency, without the institutions necessary for such a currency.
The documents will eventually provide historians with the complete story, but my own conviction is that the influence of the American example, very powerful since the war ended in 1945, had a damaging influence on the political perceptions and imagination of Europeans, above all on the increasing number of idealistic, political people and professionals who joined in this great effort to unify
This it cannot do.
Take another example.
The only European countries with substantial military forces today are
For many years after the war,
Why is this so? History.
The point I argue is that all this kind of power and influence can more effectively be exercised by a
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