Anytime you want to persuade the nation states to reconstitute the EU with the citizens of those nation states as the members, feel free: as it stands the states are the members.
I don't hold with the belief that the EU has to become a state to be successful: it seems that it might be able to do something else.
But I will not harp on that any further in this thread, since legitimacy and federalisation was the subject of this thread, and I don't want to threadjack this one by turning it into a discussion of where the Union should go from here. My own views on that matter are summed up in this comment. I am, of course, open to other suggestions as to how to achieve transparency and accountability, but in my thinking those two objectives are of paramount importance. Virtually any other subject is secondary, where the Union is concerned.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
In the end, it may be history that writes the Constitution of a federal Europe, by imposing upon Europe threats that it cannot face as a confederation of states ... but a future history in which a confederal Europe is good enough seems like a more pleasant future for most people to live through. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
