Examine the opening words of the Treaty of Rome and compare it with the words of your own article – can you not see the common link? Who are the “High Contracting Parties”? Couldn’t be anything to do with the same “Berlin and Paris governments” or the Sweden “not agreeing to the pasarelle clause” or the “Poland blocking European efforts” by any chance?

The grand European ideal has been proceeding down a constitutional blind alley for the last fifty years and with each added member state its underlying faults become more obvious. One hopes we will (as Europeans) not spend the next fifty years discovering this sad fact.

Unless and until we develop democratically accountable structures of governance functioning on a European scale (that means politicisation of the European arena) and move away from the Europe of Nations model embedded within the founding treaty and every successive intergovernmental agreement (that’s what treaties are!) we will never truly realise the vast potential of this continent.

There is (in the longer term) no space upon the global stage for competing geo-political actors in the form of established old style European Nation States: Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Poland et al, to mutually co-exist with an emergent European entity; ultimately one must cede to the other – such a leap of faith will be the real “moment of truth”

To those who cry “European Super-State – Never!” I say “What Super-State!” Federalism is a two way street and for each field of policy ceded upwards to a open and accountable tier of European governance there is an equally vital one capable of devolution downwards to closer to more immediate and tangible geo-political entities. It is this constitutional counterbalancing act that can deliver the kind of open and flexible Europe we all yearn for.

One can be simultaneously “Andalusian and European, Bavarian and European, Scottish and European, Breton and European, Silesian and European, Tuscan and European, Scanian and European because such concepts of affinity are mutually exclusive. Allow German, French, Spanish, British, Swedish, Polish etc. to enter this complex equation and it is any nascent European sense of identity that suffers.

A credible alternative future lies in a Europe of Regions template where larger member states wither and die over a protracted period of time. What prevents this possibility of this strategy gaining popular credence? The vested interests of a relatively small (but very powerful) political élites resolutely resisting the wider circulation of its advantages amongst an increasingly frustrated and disenfranchised European electorate.

We (Europeans) have the power but ignorance and fear seemingly prevents mutually beneficial action.

Peter Davidson
Alderley Edge
NW.England