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Your thoughts are on point imo. One must never forget the context of how the EU and it’s main political objective came to be: the culmination of centuries of sm
by thenaturalist 8y ago
Your thoughts are on point imo. One must never forget the context of how the EU and it’s main political objective came to be: the culmination of centuries of small scale wars and two world wars within 30 years of each other.
Juncker - who is the only European politician who signed the Maastricht treaty in ‘92 still active today - reiterated at a 20 year commemoration mid January this year that for him, the European Fiscal Union remains an unconventional measure of politics for common peace.
- stordoff 8y agoCloser political union has been on the cards for a long time. Churchill post-WW2 (1948) said "Mutual aid in the economic field and joint military defence must inevitably be accompanied step by step with a parallel policy of closer political unity", and referred to a United States of Europe ("I was anxious at first lest the United States of America should view with hostility the idea of a United States of Europe"), with it being presented as a force for peace ("the German problem is to restore the economic life of Germany and revive the ancient fame of the German race without thereby exposing their neighbours and ourselves to any rebuilding or reassertion of their military power of which we still bear the scars. United Europe provides the only solution to this two-sided problem"). It's pre-EU, but clearly the ideas come from a similar place. http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/WSCHague.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/WSCHague.html
- int_19h 8y agoAnd the phrase "United States of Europe", in turn, was coined a hundred years before Churchill. And the idea is older still. Then again, it's also just a logical extension of the same process through which the most powerful European states today have formed themselves.