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In his state of the Union speech to the European Parliament, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, called for new thinking on the way forward that will overcome forces hostile to political union. He identified the opposition as “nationalists” and “populists” – words that certainly apply to European rejectionists such as Wilders, France's Marie Le Pen or Timo Soini and his True Finns party. But they do not describe supporters of the status quo shaped by the Lisbon treaty who also have serious reservations about how national democracies could be undermined by more transfers of powers to the Union. And what about those significant forces on the left that are hostile to the Union not because they oppose political integration but because they detest the liberal market principles upon which it is based?
Barroso's speech wants us to believe that contrasting views of the Europe we need can be reconciled by common interests requiring common efforts and shared sovereignties to deal with the consequences of globalisation. He points us in the direction of a distant political union that he calls a federation of nation states anchored in strong democratic institutions – ideas espoused long ago by the blessed Jacques Delors. This earned a furious rejoinder from the Schuman Project, whose author, David Price, said that Schuman argued that a federation would need to set aside the Commission and the Community method because it cannot operate on supranational principles. Schuman placed the supra-nationalism that he advocated as midway between the “international individualism of states” jealously protecting their sovereignty, and “federalism of states” that submit themselves to a super-state with its own territorial sovereignty.
Sadly, Schuman's vision of supra-nationalism is severely undermined these days by widespread distrust of the Commission as an interfering, unelected bureaucracy.
The people will have to validate the new treaty on the next stage of political union whatever it is. By no means all of the present 27 members will want, or be able, to join the new Union. How many do so may well depend on whether an embryonic European polis is in prospect, able to accept the fundamental principle that national debts can be the mutual responsibility of all members. As the debate approaches, ‘pro-European' does not begin to describe such a political community. What could?
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