Among the discouraging quandaries that the European Union has had to face in recent years, no one could have imagined that the United Kingdom and the United States, our historical, crucial allies, would turn their back on the EU, thus leaving it exposed to the global influence to Russia, Turkey, and Iran, not exactly friends of our open societies and polity. It would have been equally impossible to predict that so many supposedly enlightened, tolerant, and democratic European citizens would rally around xenophobic and anti-Semitic political parties while reviving the most obtuse and primitive ethnocentrism. All these ills, and most of all of Brexit and its aftermath, were interpreted by many as a fatal blow to the EU, in combination with other indicators that seemed to point to a general design failure of its unifying project. Nevertheless, many reliable commentators[1] have expressed faith that the EU, at long last, would react to this long-standing issue.
In light of the above, the entente between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel on France and Germany’s commitment to renovate the EU came as a surprise for many. Among a number of necessary reforms, they underlined a crucial point by relaunching the idea of a brand new military defense structure, the so-called PESCO (Permanent Structure Cooperation). It seems that a number of member states, after due negotiations, might rally around this initiative, which would show the world a renovated and more authoritative EU flag. Such a move could improve the geopolitical balance of a global world where political stability and social progress are constantly threatened by international tensions, wars, violence, and other evils. If the successors of Henry Kissinger were to look for the EU’s telephone number, they might actually find one.
The framers of the treaties that have made the EU what it is today were wholeheartedly convinced that in order to end the endemic conflicts between the European nations all borders should have to be removed, whether ethnic, religious, economic, monetary, or social, leading to the integration and interdependency of member states. Members would waive part of their (doubtful) sovereignty, thereby allowing the newly instituted European Union, through binding treaties and a duly elected Parliament, to represent them, thus becoming global players in the world economic and political scene. The efforts to make this happen have been immense, and there is no doubt that the EU’s tenacity in pursuing its goals has encouraged reforms in various member states that would have been otherwise politically impossible. A remarkable and widespread legal information system has been set up, allowing anyone to examine the interrelated framework of common goals, norms that summarize the best practices developed within the Union.
On the other hand, in the face of serious problems of integration, solidarity, public spending, and banking, as well as the growing drama of uncontrollable immigration, a few member states have deviated from the above course, making the EU’s coordination and guidance difficult if not impossible and leading to the emergence of new political barriers between member states. In response, a number of high-minded eurocrats and imaginative political scientists are investigating the possibility of developing a so-called “different speed Europe,” allowing groups of states to proceed on their own on various issues. This is certainly not an integrating or unifying perspective, and it fails to clarify how single issues, common to the many, could be addressed only by the few. In any case the very idea of different speeds is evidence that the grand design outlined by the treaties does not reflect the complex reality of the EU and the general disaffection toward the EU that has surfaced in the recent years.
Unification Problems
The massive diplomatic and political advances in regard to the EU are an unquestionable success. The idea of a unified Europe made federalists enthusiastic and puzzled legal philosophers. Since the times of Wilson and Roosevelt, many have hoped that whatever the initial political form, the EU might grow into something like the United States of Europe, acting in combination with the United States as a Western safeguard of the “sacred trust of civilization.”[2] In spite of Europe’s belligerent internal history and two recent political suicides by ex-members, people in Europe now enjoy relatively high incomes, a formidable economic, industrial, and technological potential, and the most advanced welfare system in the world—not to mention an unsurpassed two millennia tradition in the arts and sciences. Europe has a chance to become a crucial actor in world affairs and a primary exporter of political civility, social polity, and sustainable development.
On the other hand, after the founding of the EEC by the six founding members states in 1957, the 25-member EC, the establishing of the EU with the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), and the failed constitutional effort, the new Lisbon Treaty (2007), Europe has become a 28 state giant and a partly supranational intrusive-friendly entity. Giants are not very agile, and the new EU integration quickly became unexpectedly bumpy, with the emergence of controversy over the balance between independence and mutual obligations. Laws, resolutions, expenditures—all have different impacts on different member states, and some members suffer more from being part of the EU than others.
During the 1990s, while the widely shared enthusiasm for the admission to the union of seven former communist states began to fade away, a host of new intricate problems emerged, foremost among them the Middle East mess that developed in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other countries under the lackadaisical name of “Arab springs,” and the associated human and social tragedy, including the resulting biblical wave of emigration from the southern Mediterranean. The series of U.S. blunders in its peacekeeping mission worsened an already bleak picture. Last but not least came the Brexit, with its highly complex symbolic, political, and economic implications.
In the following, I would like to focus on three preliminary problems:
1. The weakness of the EU’s foreign policy and the nonexistence of a defense system
2. The unsolved problem of the EU’s integration
3. Brexit and its lesson
The First Problem
Given the instability of the present international situation, the weakness, if not the nonexistence, of a proper European foreign policy is becoming increasingly dangerous, in spite of the efficiency of our PESC representative, Ms. Federica Mogherini. Given Europe’s diplomatic clout on the global scene and its colossal economic and political potential, the world continues to marvel at the absence of a proper bold and coherent European foreign policy that would balance those of the other ever-growing and ever-grasping world giants. This absence stops the EU, and each individual member state, from taking its destiny into its own hands in a disquieting world occupied by too many enemies of our liberal democracies, whose policies would require a firmer political action different than the cautious diplomacy afforded by the honorable Ms. Mogherini. Moreover, immediate action is required in dealing with the Middle East and North Africa, and to manage the drama of a massive immigration from the Mediterranean as well as its internal consequences: local discontent and social conflict, as well as the blunt refusal to accept immigrants by a few recalcitrant xenophobic member states. Further preoccupation is also growing around the possible collapse of some of the major Euro-Atlantic organizations, such as NATO, OECD, TTIP, and others, all of them forged in different times, which after Brexit and the new American foreign policy seem bound to undergo unpredictable changes. For these reasons a growing number of respected political commentators[3] fear that a significant number of the 27 EU members may view the Union as an obstacle to their policies and national priorities, and therefore oppose a coherent and straightforward EU foreign policy. It is quite clear, according to these commentators, that whatever integration might prove possible within the EU, the newly arrived eastern EU members will always make things difficult when it comes to immigration, borders, or defense. For these reasons some ex-euro enthusiasts have now become pushing for a different speed Union. This expedient would allow a number of member states to proceed on their own on common projects. For this reason, France and Germany are discussing the possibility of creating a so-called “reinforced cooperation” (as provided by Art. 44 of the Maastricht Treaty) with the willing and the able, for creating a European defense system. This would be open and binding only for member states participating in the cooperation, but operate within the EU’s bosom. However as things stand, considering the dependence on this policy on the combined action of the EU Council, the PESC foreign ministry, and the various participants in the reinforced cooperation, in case of a serious a crisis, there would still be a risk of a stalemate. World conflicts are always complicated multilateral affairs and more often than not turn into a proper nightmare. In the words of an American political philosopher, “World conflicts are a not game of chess.”[4] Chess is a gentleman’s game, but the real world out there is a wild Machiavellian affair with players who in order to win move kings, queens, bishops, and knights freely around the world chessboard, change the rules cheat, lie, blackmail, and menace. Lately they have become more sophisticated in their moves: they use commercial, financial, cyber software, and information technologies, and even human dumping and trickery in order to win a game; but forget that, like in the real game, overlooking a stupid invisible pawn can become the reason for checkmate.
For this reason, expedient and quick action is essential to respond to a crisis. To ensure this, a reduced number of EU member states, for example the six founding states signers of the 1957 Rome Treaty plus Spain, could establish a European Foreign and Defense Council (EFDC) duly authorized by the EU to handle, under its own responsibility, matters pertaining to European interests, an entity that would be responsible for the creation and the maintaining of a multilateral army. Such an organism would not only greatly increase the EU’s forcible impact on the world, but it could also function as a permanent strictly European Foreign Council (perhaps on the model of the 1919 League of Nations Charter[5]).
The first problem would be dealing with the EU’s internal opposition to this scheme, though adequate negotiations might solve it. The second would concern the Defense Council’s recognized authority, its diplomatic status, its intelligence, its empowerment. It is generally admitted by scholars and constitutional lawyers that though the EU does not rest on its own original sovereignty, it still has a limited one duly received by the original sovereign member states.[6] In this framework, the Union could not transmit to the EFDC more sovereignty than she actually has, but within its limits it could authorize the EFDC’s fully sovereign members to deploy all the activity necessary for implementing their mission under their own responsibility in the interest of the Union.
On this subject matter, it should be remembered that the battle for the creation of a European Defense system has always generated a stalemate. The general public, and even the best part of European politicians continue to ignore the fundamental pillar instituted with the signing of the EDC (European Defence Community) treaty in 1954, in full compliance with the 1949 Atlantic Charter (NATO). The treaty is still valid as it was signed by all of the six founders of the EC (before 1957) and ratified by all except by France.[7] NATO today is the only military organization within Europe that can manage complex armament systems and sophisticated military technologies, and that has a fully operative commanding hierarchy.
Following World War II, thanks to peace and the umbrella of the NATO, Europeans and individual governments have gradually lost military culture and capabilities, as well as the ability to properly respond to a military emergency, as evidence by cases such as that of Bosnia in 1995, when the EU and its members were cowardly passive. “While Europe Sleeps,” many changes are taking place around us: Egypt’s army is receiving massive training from Russian experts; Russia is deploying new missiles at its borders; China and Japan are patrolling the China Sea and the Pacific, parading their new aircraft carriers while Erdoğan, the dictator of a highly militarized Turkey, is fighting the Kurds instead of the Islamic fanatics. European commentators may note the gravity of the situation, but EU member governments seem to be able to focus exclusively on business issues.
At end of August 2017, in the intergovernmental summit between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, the two openly discussed, among other things, the problem of the EU’s foreign policy and defense. Macron attached paramount importance to the meeting for which he deployed his two star advisors, Alexis Kohler and Ismael Emelien, and his head of government Edouard Philippe. Macron and Merkel discussed a series of major EU issues, such as the quest for a stronger integration, the profile of a possible common minister for financial affairs, the stability of the euro-zone, and possible cures for the EU’s many growing pains. But by far the most surprising element was what seemed the revival of the 1954 EDC (European Defence Community).[8] The implications of this new initiative has led many so called euro-skeptics to convert and recant. Realizing that only a few member states could participate in a military option, the idea has been floated of letting member states join separately. A second surprise came at the end of November 2017. Under the French and German patronage, 23 member state’s foreign ministers signed a Memorandum of Understanding, under the guidance of PESC representative Mogherini, for the creation of the PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation), designed to become a European military and defense organization under the Maastricht Treaty (1992). In the days following, most European newspapers published the photo of the 23 smiling foreign ministers encircling the smiling Mogherini in the EU conference room presenting to the camera the solemn chart duly signed. There have been many past agreements that had failed to meet the original expectations: Maastricht, the Lisbon constitutional treaty, the Shengen agreement on the freedom of movement inside the EU, the Dublin treaty on immigration. However the PESCO project, in spite of the devastating criticism that the EU as an institution has received over the last two decades by most authoritative commentators,[9] has the potential for changing the future of Europe and reinvigorating the Western hemisphere’s foreign policy. Though PESCO may in some way resemble the aborted ECD, its political and strategic nature is totally different. In PESCO, the Franco-German alliance, with the support of a few other partners, could very well constitute a new strategic independent actor. PESCO is likely to have a different strategic mission compared to NATO: NATO was oriented toward the East, while the PESCO would give more attention to the South. PESCO can be interpreted as a response to four major setbacks suffered by the EU in recent years:
1. The new anti-EU trend in American foreign policy
2. The dramatic political situation in the Mediterranean and North Africa, and its huge implications for the European community in terms of legal and illegal immigration, solidarity, and respect for human rights. Urgent yet intricate affairs that require the EU to provide financial and professional response; measures that are costly and unpopular and that induce controversies among EU member states.
3. The growing intellectual’s disenchantment and the anti-EU campaign orchestrated by the many right- and left-wing political parties and by recalcitrant EU governments. The difficulty of the EU in fighting the growing illegal financial practices: giant free-riding cyber robber barons, global multinational giants who seem accountable to nobody, ubiquitous tax safe-havens not limited to exotic locations but extending within the EU itself, with tax-evasion tolerant member states like Luxemburg, Malta, and Cyprus.
In the present circumstances The hope that anything constructive in the EU might happen seems very much in the hands of Emmanuel Macron, whose slogan is often quoted in the media: “France does not reform itself,” he said, “France transforms itself. France is revolutionary and if it finds itself on the edge of a precipice it reacts.” If this spirit captures the hearts and minds of EU leaders, PESCO might become the angular stone of a different construction of the Union, not by simple reforms but, in Macron’s words, by transforming it.
The Second Problem
In spite of their various historical backgrounds and cultural diversities, the EU members’ legal systems are basically similar. All of its citizens enjoy freedom and civil rights, have access to information and culture, sustainable welfare, and are part of a common liberal and democratic society, as well as, last but not least, to a Christianized civilization, the only thing that ties a Lithuanian to a Greek or a Swede to a Portuguese. Moreover the EU cannot but be praised for its sixty-year track record in matters such as culture and education, environment, energy, good market practices, agriculture, foreign aid. However, the strong identity of a global player in the present world is only a prerequisite of authority, not authority itself. Authority is measured by a subject’s capacity to assume global responsibility and leadership, to influence other global subjects geopolitical policies, to help the implementation of civil and human rights worldwide, and to maintain peace. In order to display such authority the EU would need a far more cohesive integration of its members. In this respect, any reader of the huge EU literature, whether official or media-oriented, will have noticed the recurrence of the words integration, integration, integration.
However, integration is commonly understood as integration in the acquis communautaire: abiding by the Parliament’s prescriptions, implementing the commission’s resolutions. The quest for integration among member states themselves is never mentioned. This approach disregards in particular three crucial factors: (1) All of the member states in integrating with the EU in the above sense must automatically enforce its legislation, which prevails on it own causing the problem of conflicting legislations. (2) European citizens know almost nothing about the personal cvs of members of the European Parliament (EP) voted in the general election and nothing about hundreds of legitimate lobbies that pursue transversal, albeit legitimate interests in Brussels. (3) The EP, about 800 elected members, are often commuters with their own country and hardly know each other; furthermore, they often belong to EU political groups asymmetrical to their own national electorate. Though they are generally efficient and their output may be excellent, the general feeling is that they do not exclusively belong either to the EP or to their home constituency. Until these issues are addressed, any plea for an “ever closer” Europe is chimerical.
It should be remembered that the old 1957 Rome Treaty had created an intergovernmental political and economic association between six member states that was basically horizontal. After the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, as the number of members grew to 28, it necessarily became vertical. The framers of those treaties have taken for granted that, thanks to peace, affluence, Eastern Europe’s liberation, further barriers removal, a brand new currency, and a shimmering brand new quasi-constitutional treaty, integration would naturally follow and, albeit gradually, would lead to a new model of political unity. But the political model adopted in due course took the political form of the classic modern national state (legislative, executive, and a judiciary) cherished by European nations for three centuries. As things stand the upshot is that it is difficult to determine the measure of authority that member states can maintain within a binding association with a partly supranational entity that legally interferes, though limitedly, with individual policies. This explains the charge of sovereign-ism often launched by the Commission, as well as by the many pro-EU commentators, against recalcitrant governments and their supporters. “Member states with their continuous appeal to their sovereignty,” Martin Schultz more than once stigmatized in the EP, “are retarding European integration.”[10] Schultz was candidly assuming that the EU had already absorbed enough sovereign and state-overriding prerogatives. Member states that since the 1990s have resisted certain EU resolutions (on public deficit limits, immigration, open borders, euro- zone, etc.) are not necessarily anti-EU: while the giant Union pressures for greater integration, member states are solely responsible to their electorate for their home affairs and foreign policies. “The EU reasons in term of Euro-space,” Kalypso Nicolaidis writes, “the nation thinks in terms of Euro-place.”[11] At present, the Union is a sui generis confederation of sovereign states with limited power over its members. If it were a federation, its parliament would be made of the stuff that national parliaments are made of and it would be fully equipped for maintaining the necessary normative balance between EU and member states. A federal state parliament would also benefit from of a far more reliable parliamentary opposition, which incidentally happens to be the greatest invention of liberal democracy. But at present all that seems to matter is enforcement and conformance with Brussels. Treaties never even mention possible new forms of neo-federalism or even partial political unification.
A further explanation for the lack of integration is that all bureaucracies everywhere are famously resistant to change: EU as well as national bureaucracies are no exception. Experience shows that many laws and regulations imposed over national systems often do not mix well with existing national doctrine and jurisprudence. As Hans Kelsen once noted, “Law is the only social science possible,” and it grows and improves as it is enriched by relevant legal events nurtured in open civil societies. Ortega y Gasset wrote that law “grows by adding from alluvion like the coral reef, and continuously incorporates new objects forming an entire social reality.”[12] In short, it is one thing for a law to be imposed by the Strasbourg parliamentary hemicycle, it is another for laws to develop where things actually happen and the people whose lives are affected by it actually live. Fruit from a farmer’s garden is better that the one from the greenhouse.
In light of the above, European MPs elected by a harlequin community of 27 states to look after about 440 million demanding citizens should not be common MPs but women and men distinguished for experience, competence, and personal integrity. Their mission could be quite different from the current one. A revised system, could be as follows:
1. At every EP election, member states could select a number of candidates (at least 26) who, once elected, would become itinerant MPs and, in a rotating system, be assigned to each Parliament with equal rank but with no voting rights. The itinerants would be expected to be fluent in at least two EU languages and have adequate education and experience. Their entry into the EP could be preceded by a period of a top-level apprenticeship while they work alongside the hosting Parliament, after which they could become effective EP MPs.
2. Each national Parliament could host 26 itinerants chosen from the Union’s special order, where the itinerants are listed and their CVs are made available. But no indication as to their affiliations with either national or European parties and other political groups should be mentioned.
3. The choice of itinerants made by the hosting country should be confirmed by the government of that State for two reasons: first, because it is the governments that usually influences the Parliaments’ agenda; second, because such choice should be protected by the influence of political and business lobbies, both national and EU.
A system such as the above could bring about many improvements to the existing EP:
1. The itinerant MPs would represent an open minded European elite of political professionals at the disposal of all of the EU and national NPs, capable of providing advice on the problems arising of the EU and its 440 million citizens.
2. A greater public awareness of the EU legislative output would follow as the role of the EU acquires greater visibility.
3. Internal litigation and EU judiciary pleas and appeals would be greatly reduced.
4. The level of social legal and political knowledge and competence would be greatly simplified and improved.
5. The EP would become a House of Representatives more than a classic Parliament.
The above scheme would certainly be elitist, and it would be criticized by many. However it is justified, first, by the strong horizontal integration it would produce in the EU; second, by the forging of a system better suited to the complexity of the political, economic and social issues arising daily in European societies; third, by the necessity of disposing in Europe of a knowledgeable, respected and even-minded Aristotelian aristocracy. Such an elitist character, would have pleased ancient liberals like Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, or Alexis de Tocqueville, and would probably not displease more recent political philosophers such as Ronald Dworkin, Raymond Aron, Nicola Matteucci, Norberto Bobbio, and probably even Jürgen Habermas, all of whom, from a different angle, have warned us that incompetence, ignorance, and demagoguery are a constant threat to democracy.
The EU’s Institutions and the Brexit Lessons
Associating many states has always been a complex affair. It implies establishing the international, national, and internal standing of the association, the laws and regulations applicable, and evaluating their impact on different Members. “The basis of American constitutionalism,” Nicola Matteucci wrote, for example “was that of a commonwealth of free nations each with its own Assemblies . . . while the European reasons in terms of sovereign states.”[13] “The trouble with a Confederation,” Alexander Hamilton wrote, “is that the central legislation affects the single state but not the people.”[14] Thomas Jefferson said that “if our vast country were not already divided into states, it would be a good thing to operate anyway such a division.”[15] All three quotations accept that in any association of nation-states, while pursuing their own national interest, states can come into conflict with a central government. This is why it took the Americans two centuries to create the National Conference of State Legislators, an idea inspired by Louis Brandeis,[16] who considered state legislation as the real political laboratory that held the United States together.
In the devastated Europe of post–World War II, something like that might indeed have happened. The dream of a non-Westfalian politically unified Europe was in the air, wholeheartedly supported by a huge number of federalists, eminent writers, and political leaders. In 1943, Altiero Spinelli had published a Federalist Movement manifesto from his Fascist prison on the Italian isle of Ventotene. It was a liberal-radical manifesto that, in 1948, became the inspiration of a wide-ranging European movement enjoying immediate success among the intellectuals and youngsters. It did not become a political party due to the opposition of the Italian and French communist parties, who had other ideas in mind, as well as of Catholic-oriented parties everywhere (in spite of Pius XII’s federalist convictions). It could have linked with the strong English federalist movement initiated in the twenties by Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) and supported by figures like John Manyard Keynes and liberal economists like Lionel Robbins. But federalism was not to be. No political scientist in the last 6o years has thought of Europe in terms different from those actually engineered by European political leaders. As a consequence, the old national modern state model has suffered some changes. Member states now have also other institutions, including an active duly voted Parliament, which not only restrains their sovereignty but has a preemptive right on matters concerning general polity. As mentioned above, this seriously poses the problem of the foreignness of citizens of member states who feel tied to a foreign system of political obligations. This could be precisely what the British Brexiteers had in mind. The Brexit vote has highlighted the EU paradox of a non-sovereign but authoritative entity ruling over a number of fully sovereign entities. The Brits have clearly expressed themselves, and, though the 2019 deadline might not be the end of the Brexit story, in the meantime its implications pose many questions: What triggered Brexit in the British mind and heart? What lesson can the remaining Europeans should draw from this setback?
On the first question, one can discuss what sort of political machinery for unifying Europe the Brits would have accepted in order to remain. For centuries they have always underlined their own uniqueness, as opposed to the otherness of a continent “inhabited by excitable foreigners who live under bizarre constitutions.”[17] They have never failed to assert that uniqueness since they entered the EU in1973: they stayed out of the euro, out of Schengen, they have repealed some of EU budget restrictions, often vindicated UK’s jurisdictional independence, including the 2016 Cameron/Tusk conditions for the UK to remain.[18] In many ways the UK was the most privileged member state in the Union and could have continued to be so. Therefore, most probably what triggered the success of Brexit was not the Brexiteers’ campaign based on the legend of Brussels’ blind bureaucracy and the Franco-German dirigisme. The real reason could be the defense of the sovereign prerogatives of the English Parliament. The British citizens are aware and proud of their three and half centuries of glorious Parliamentary tradition, they are Parliamentary minded and jealous of its prerogatives, and in no other country has the charge of anti-EU sovereign-ism been more ill received. Another issue in the Brexit campaign was interdependence. While interdependence is a hard fact to which all nations are subjected in the worldly anarchical turmoil, if it becomes part of a multilateral covenant, as in the EU, it entails forms of mutual solidarity. This could become a problem in the case of a failing state (as with Greece in 2006–7). The Brexit campaigners did not feel protected by the treaties’ prohibition of state aid, on account of the danger, in case of a serious financial crisis, of the British taxpayer becoming partly responsible for other people’s public debt.
If the EU were a flexible commonwealth organization of European states participating in something like a European legislative Council promoting new legislative initiatives to submit to the member states’ parliaments in a circular fashion, or something of the kind, the Brits would almost certainly still be a key member of that commonwealth and they would actively cooperate in creating the conditions for the same ever closer unifying process which the EU’ s endeavors are apparently failing to obtain.
As to the second question, in spite of the success of its supporters, Brexit is neither a victory for the UK nor a victory for the EU. On the side of the UK, the Scots, the Irish, and all view things differently from the general British public and more dire consequences than the ones already occurred, might be seen before March 2019. While some Brexiteers hoped that the economic damage from Brexit might be slowly absorbed, the damage produced by the British exclusion from the significant changes to EU structure that will necessarily take place in the near future might be greater both for the UK as well as for the Union. On EU side, many European leaders who seemed only too pleased to get rid of the quarrelsome British may have afterthoughts. British criticism of the EU was not always self-interested or trivial, and it touched some points that the EU leadership should have taken much more seriously and could have been the occasion for a positive reform of the institutional structure of the Union. Now that Brexit is on its way, the UK is being forced to re-examine its long-standing constitutional arrangements with Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Surprisingly, given the circumstances, they might even consider a federal solution, an hypothesis recently suggested by Stephen Tierney, [19], which is another proof of the British otherness in relation to the Continent.
The Union’s leadership should be ready for change. Much of the criticism that led to Brexit and the other problematic issues touched upon in this paper may resurface again with other member states in different circumstances. Ancient European wisdom seriously suggests we do something about it. The successes of the European Union since the Treaty of Rome greatly outweigh its failures, and the EU is too important for European citizens, with its potential for enlightened leadership in international affairs, too involved in the progress of humanity, too interested in the defense of our culture and our environment—too big to fail.
This essay will be published in Italian in Nuova Storia Contemporanea (April–May, 2018). The English translation appears here by permission.
Notes
1. Catherine E. de Vries and Isabell Hoffman, Washington Post, November 21, 2016; and Mark Leonard, “Brave New Europe,” New York Review of Books, November 9, 2017.
2. Article 22 of the 1919 League of Nation Charter, drawn by President Woodrow Wilson.
3. Maurizio Melani, “Si va finalmente verso una Difesa Europea,” diplomatic letter, May 25, 2017; Marta Dassù, “L’Europa teme i costi della nostra fragilità,” La Stampa, January 17, 2018; Marc Lazard, Corriere della Sera, November 28, 2017.
4. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999), pp. 27–29.
5. Susan Pedersen, “Back to the League of Nations,” American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007): 1091–1117.
6. Vincenzo Caianiello, “Costituzione Europea e Principio di Sovranità,” in L’Europa e il futuro della politica (Milan: Società libera, 2002). pp. 32–37; and Giuseppe Tesauro, Diritto dell’ Unione Europea (Padua: Cedam, 1999), p. 9.
7. France signed the treaty but suspended ratification due to the present dramatic events in Algeria and Indocina.
8. The EDC was strongly promoted by Alcide De Gasperi, Altiero Spinelli, Jean Monnet, and René Pleven, and was encouraged by the U.S President Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, and Dean Acheson.
9. George Soros, The Tragedy of the European Union (New York, Public Affairs, 2014); Vàclav Klaus, Integrazione Europea Senza Illusioni (Milan: Università Bocconi Editore, 2011); Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, 33 False verità sull’ Europa (Bologna: il Mulino, 2014); Giorgio La Malfa, L’Europa Legata (Milan: Rizzoli, 2000); Laurent Wauquiez, Europe: Il faut Tout Changer (Parigi: Odile Jacob, 2014); Eric Zemmour, Le Suicide Français (Parigi: Albin Michel, 2015); Jürgen Habermas, L’Occidente Diviso (Bari: Laterza, 2005); Giuseppe Guarino, Ratificare Lisbona? (Florence: Passigli, 2008); Guarino, Cittadini europei e crisi dell’euro (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2014); Benjamin Coriat et al., Cosa Salverà l’ Europa (Rome: Minimum Fax, 2013); Paolo Savona, L’Esprit d’ Europe (Rubbettino, 2007).
10. The Commission’s president J. Barroso stated that “a state has no right to bloc the others . . . also other states have their own national sovereignty!”
11. Kalypso Nicolaidis, “The Mantra: Taking Back Control,” in Federico Fabbrini, ed., The Law & the Politics of Brexit (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2017), p. 42.
12. José Ortega y Gasset, Meditazioni sull’Europa (Formello: Seam, 2000), p. 82
13. Nicola Matteucci, Storia delle Idee Politiche e Sociali (Turin: UTET, 1975), p. 56.
14. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, essay no. 15.
15. Thomas Jefferson, Federalismo e Democrazia (Milan: Biblioteca di Libero, 2005), p. 71.
16. It is a major political event that lists about 1600 specially selected state legislators who meet every year at Denver; Louis Brandeis was a Princeton law professor called to the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson.
17. Thomas B. Macaulay, Essays (London: Dutton, 1905).
18. The Cameron/Tusk agreement of February 2016 secured, among other issues, the UK prerogatives on immigration, freedom from the euro, and reservation on the EU Security and Justice.
19. Stephen Tierney, “Brexit and the English Question,” in Fabbrini, The Law & Politics of Brexit, p. 96.
