How green could make Europe a tech power

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EU Integration

It's funny that you think that a federal Europe is the same as a "single set of rules". American (and German, and Spanish) experience suggests the exact opposite - federal systems are designed to accommodate wide differences of culture and rules within a single nation state.

The American states have a very wide variety of laws and rules. They have these for good reason - it's the only way to hold together such a large and diverse country without unless you do it by force.

And yet, I doubt that the EU will ever see even the same degree of integration as the U.S., because it is made up of so many nations with different histories and different languages. The states of the U.S. never had quite so much history or cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, and yet they still had a civil war about state rights. Plus, our "federal government" (the Commission in Brussels) is not even democratic in any recognisable way. As the factors that have made EU members tolerate Brussels for so long - German war guilt, French fear of Germany, Eastern European fear of Russia and Mediterranean fear of backwardness - all decline, and membership grows, I suspect it will become harder to impose binding diktats.

Posted by: LordLiverpool   Posted on: 03/25/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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