cicerone imposter wrote:Mapleleaf, The content of your post is laughable: They want to create a United States of Europe to compete with the United States of America? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it will fail long before they establish such a union. What they are trying to do is to have France and Germany dictate the will of this so-called union. It will not work. Let me count the ways. c.i.
c.i., i think you'll really have to go back and read that article he posted again.
yes, the EU already is a political union of sorts - notoriously unable to formulate a common foreign or military policy, but unified internally to such an extent that each country, including the newest member countries, has already adopted a far-reaching, huge collection of commonly formulated laws on everything from crime to economy to agriculture to you name it - laws that override the national ones.
reason enough to suggest a common constitution to underpin the very real political authority already devolved up to the supranational level. in that sense hain is fighting a rearguard action and denying an already established political reality when he claims it's still "governments such as Britain's in charge". on many issues, mostly economic ones, it's not - not inside the EMU (that Britain kept out of), anyway.
and no, the idea is not "to create a United States of Europe", as the article literally points out: "Perhaps as important, at least to the British, was that the document does not use the term "federal" and the European Union will not be renamed "United Europe" or the "United States of Europe."'
as for the why, no, competing with the usa wasnt really a primary motivation, not until very recently in any case, though economic prowess obviously was, and why not.
there's a lot of talk (on a2k etc) on "What they are trying to do is to have France and Germany dictate the will of this so-called union", but its underpinned by precious few examples of actual measures, laws or newly proposed european measures that would represent such an effort. a reference to chirac's public gaffe when he reprimanded the cee countries for supporting bush, thats about it in terms of proposed proof. otherwise mostly 'an image' or 'an idea' people have or, 'you know thats what they really want'.
in fact, what germany, for one, has 'really wanted' more than anything else after two lost world wars is peace in the continent, even should it come at the cost of its own ability to assert its interests - if anything, german interests have been underrepresented in eu policy these past decades. even in the european parliament germany is underrepresented compared to population ratio.
and peace in the continent is what we've seen, indeed, west of the iron curtain in any case, and the eu has played almost as important a role in that as the iron curtain in question. how often before have the rival european powers germany, france and england coexisted in peaceful co-operation for so long? why do you think eu-membership is such a highly valued prize in eastern europe? two reasons: wealth, and peace - thats the promise the union is offering. and its got a reasonable record to show for itself on both counts, which is the background the current, unprecedented, voluntary delegation of authority to common institutions sprongs forth from, with all the two-steps-forward one-step-back it implies.
c.i.
