Maçães, Β. (2014) “An ever closer union?“, VoxEU Organisation, 09 July.
The debate on the future of the European Union is in full swing. In this column, Bruno Macaes – the Portuguese Minister for Europe – stresses the importance of policy coordination in achieving better integration. One way to do so is via a fiscal union, but this creates unity at the expense of diversity. A second way involves formal contracts and partnerships. But to make this approach less rigid, the political dialogue does not need to be formalised in actual contracts.
The debate on the future of the European Union is now in full swing. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this debate is the way it harks back to a short clause in the EU’s founding document. In the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the signatories pledged to work towards “an ever closer union”. It was never entirely clear what this meant, but that has not stopped many in the UK, the Netherlands, and other countries from arguing that this original ambition is also what is fundamentally wrong with the EU. A review by the Dutch government concluded that the “time for an ever closer union is up”. Last year, Prime Minister Cameron said in an interview that the phrase “is not what the British people want and not what I want”.
In a way, it is not what I want either. The European Union cannot be about the creation of a new nationality and a new superstate to replace existing nations. It aims to be a communication vehicle between different ways of thinking and living, a combination of these differences. What inspires it is the very European fear of becoming a prisoner of nationality, so it cannot aspire to recreate the structures of the national state at the European level.
Relevant posts:
- Hobolt, S. B. (2014) “Ever closer or ever wider? Public attitudes towards further enlargement and integration in the European Union“, Routledge Publications, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 664-680, 28 April.
- Mody, A. (2013) “A Schuman compact for the euro area“, Bruegel, Bruegel Essay and Lecture Series, November.
- Spolaore, En. (2013) “What Is European Integration Really About? A Political Guide for Economists“, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 27, N.3, pp. 125-44.