Is ‘United Europe Project’ decomposing?

[FarCenter]

Everybody is aware that the final target of the Common Market when established in 1957 was to reach a political union through an economic cooperation among the member countries. There were many reasons for that desire such as to convert Europe from a historical battle ground to a land of peace and to create a third world power against the dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, after the Second World War.

This desire was of course rational but may be unintentionally to take the United States as a model was illogical. Although most of the intellectual elite and prominent politicians reject it today, it is widely accepted that this was the intention of the fathers of the project and the impression created by every step taken from the beginning was that the final target was to establish a ”United States of Europe.”

Why this idea was illogical is not difficult to discuss. Historical facts, geostrategic positions, traditions, culture and human factors were so different from each other to create a similar political entity in Europe looked like the unproductive efforts of the alchemists to obtain gold from different materials.

In addition when the leaders of the union began in haste to accept new countries that have different structural problems as full members and again tried in haste to establish a monetary union among the old and the new members that had different monetary and fiscal policies, these attempts increased the differences between the EU and the U.S. Today as these two regions face different kinds of crises justifies that it is almost impossible to establish a political union in Europe when even economic unity is on the verge of collapse because of the contradicting national interests and different political agendas of the leaders.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=is-8216united-europe-project8217-decomposing-2011-10-02

[Demeter]

1. Let's Just Say that It Is Falling through the Gaping holes in the Design

and splattering on the Reality below...

[lovuian]

2. it was designed to fail

and fail it shall
Germany knows what is going on

[johnd83]

3. Confederate systems don't work

We had one originally, it failed, and we got our current constitution.

[pampango]

4. You're right. Their "confederate system" probably lasted longer than most, but

it has probably run its course. The question, of course, is "What comes next?"

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/20/the-future-of-europes-radical-right

After 1945, as liberal Europeans worked together to create a new, and peaceful, supranational European entity, European rightists gathered in Rome and Malmö to develop their own version. ... If Europe was to be reborn, they believed, it should be fascistic, corporatist, and organic. In sum, this would have not been a liberal, free-market, and class-based Europe, led by the countries that had won the war and backed by the United States. This order would guarantee the proper functioning of the European continent (and its common market). It would also have been white-only.

The fascist version of the union lost out to the liberal one, of course, but rightest pan-European ideology never fully vanished. ... Today's European right wing identifies Europe as a white bastion of civilization. For it, globalization, immigration, and Islam anywhere in Europe threaten the whole of it. Globalization destroys tradition, African immigrants assault European borders, and Muslims promote terrorism and hate. In sum, they are all enemies because they challenge the "pure" identity and culture of the old continent. (We want our continent back?)

Those who believe that the contemporary extreme right is novel and comparatively unproblematic are wrong. And those who call the phenomenon populism are incorrect, too. The use of such a generic label indirectly, and perhaps unintended, legitimizes a manifestly undemocratic and racist ideology.

Europe is now struggling with the integration of immigrants and the survival of its common currency. The EU was founded on the basis of promoting fraternity among its populations after the brutality of World War II - integrating previously warring countries within a boundless and peaceful ideal. A European culture cannot exclude "others"; this would contradict the EU's very goal. The hope is that the continent will be ready to look, again, at itself and its inner values, and tackle this "pan-European" rightism once more.

You are right that "Confederate systems don't work" at least not in the long run. The EU has been successful for decades at bringing peace and prosperity to a continent with a history of warfare, but the loose "confederation" has probably outlived its ability to continue achieving these.

Europe needs to decide whether the successor to the loose "confederation" will be a more integrated association (as happened in the US) or a dissolution that brings back nationalism as the basis for governing Europe.