Because there are things which tin-pot little countries like France or Germany cannot possibly hope to manage on their own. Let alone polities the size of Ireland or Belgium, whose gross national product is on the same order of magnitude as CocaCola's advertising budget alone.

And if you create a network of European states that coordinate policy for all the major drainage areas on the subcontinent; coordinate their policies vis-a-vis transnats to withstand divide-and-conquer tactics; reduce the hassle of crossing internal European borders; streamline our rail net; build integrated rail and electricity corridors; and coordinate policy when dealing with other major powers like Russia, China and NATO...

... then it's going to look a whole lot like a "superstate."

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.