A United States of Europe? Good Luck
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Most successful large systems grow organically and with time or are forced into a unified whole by a huge effort at control. And the effort needed seems to me to grow at exponentially as the total system size increases.
Trade agreements can govern the interaction between autonomous bodies - they affect the policies but are more of a service interface and a set of constraints than a complete operating system.
Culturally these parts were quite different, most often dominated by Prussia vs. the rest [1]. But Prussia has been forgotten by now, which makes me hopeful that you can have a large country with people who are thought to be "culturally incompatible". Some German-speaking areas that were included in the first German Bund aren't German speaking anymore since the Second World War. Sudeten-Germans and other German minorities were kicked out after Hitler lost.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanism
[1] My favorite book about this is "Diary of a Man in Despair", it's written by a Prussian who pretended to be a Bavarian who keeps on criticizing Prussians
Dreckspreissen.
The funny thing is that this rivalry with Prussia still exists, except over the centuries the term "Prussia" has become a generic name for all of Germany north of Bavaria.
The Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, Byzantine Empire, British Empire and the USA spring to mind. All large states/empires are a patchwork of previously autonomous bodies, in fact most nation states are also formed in the same way, though of course they later usually manufacture tradition/history in an attempt to seem unique and indivisible.
Mind you, empires are driven by a dominant culture and group. The question then becomes: who would play (or is playing) that role in the EU? When you answer that question, the politics of the EU begin to present themselves in a different light.
All empires fall. National identity is an invention of the 19C, hardly an ever-enduring truth. I'd prefer to think the above comment was succinct, not superficial :)
Re upending national identity, if you investigate the list of empires given, you'll see that in fact it is quite possible to meld separate states/cultures into one political state given enough time - for example India in the British empire was a mass of competing principates prior to British rule, and is now a functioning democracy encompassing a huge variety of cultures, languages, religions and on the scale of Europe what you might call nations. The German empire was a similar patchwork prior to unification in 1871. The Ottoman or Roman empires are also good examples of this.
Your hostility to the EU project seems to make you want to declare it impossible, and perhaps it is flawed, but it's clearly not impossible, or even very unusual, to subsume existing states into something bigger.
The morality or desirability of it is an entirely separate question.
I had quite an acidic comment originally about this first but then realized up-to-date political debate is out of context for HN. But yes, to me in light of history this is a huge thing - and is mostly ignored in daily discussion.
China figured their system out when the pyramids were built and has basically been ruled using the same principles ever since.
The thing is, these things take time because they require a cultural context where the motivations and the dynamic of the people can be understood and made to cooperate.
These time and culture aspects make the concept of the united states of europe feel quite fantastical.
At least Germany, Spain, Italy, France have evolved from a myriad of city states, duchy, great fief, that have been unified, conquered, inherited, etc to form a bigger central power.
European separatist movement are usually basing their claims on these previous historical divisions (Catalonia, Brittany, Scotland...)
- This historical countries have different languages. (Euskera, Galician, Catalonian) - This countries are different than other "Autonomous communities" in terms of primary sectors.
Sometimes the Spain government not accept some particular things that happens in this historic countries, plus we come from 39 years of dictatorial state where our languages were banned. Nowadays this historical countries are promoting these languages + spanish, but Spain government didn't accept that.
One of my grandfather got shot for speaking in Galician, another got political asylum in Netherlands after cross the Portuguese border, my family fight for our culture, I want to keep that. I'm spanish but I'm speaking different language, I have different habits, I don't want to be independent but I want that Spanish government try to understand that we are a bit different, only that..
Meanwhile Spain government keeps shot old historic regions and try to kill their culture, Spain will have a problem. Nowadays Catalunya problem it's huge for Spain, and Spain government didn't do anything about and this is too sad :-(
They spoke the same language, it was basically happening in the context of feudal system which was from the point of view of the operations of government modular - basically the whole political system supported pretty well constant shifting of the ruling body - I kneel to you, they kneel to me, and I give you some grain and provide men in time of war. And ruling was pretty simple back then.
Before 1600:s the function of government was basically the king. After they figured out there must be a better way to rule than riding ones bottom sore ruling and taxing about modern state functions began to emerge. I believe this was at the time of Gustavus Adolphus II in sweden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Adolphus_of_Sweden).
Some of goals - trade zone, free movement of people etc., may make sense but a European wide army?
Europe is a region of huge diversity, it doesn't need to be a single political entity.
There is one other thing. Identity is hard to impose. Most Americans of my acquaintance hold the US constitution to be a centrally important document. Otherwise they wouldn't argue so much about its exact meaning. There has been an attempt at a European constitution. It seems to have been a dismal failure. All the other arguments about border controls, the euro, farm subsidies and so on pale when compared to this. If you can't win hearts and minds, you can't win.
Though sometimes it appears you can achieve the appearance of winning through bureaucratic confusion.
In my mind this is obvious a pan European answer is needed. You can not ask Italy and Greece to solve the crisis by themselves, when most refugee want to actually go other countries.
If the refugees are persecuted so badly in their own countries (which is a condition for getting asylum), they should be happy for any sufficiently safe country that is willing to give them asylum.
We are talking medical care, language courses, and working permit. I would expect all of that if I were ever to ask my (global) neighbors for asylum - so I am willing to provide it to those that are in need.
I agree here. This is why it surely is not a bad idea to distribute the refugees over the EU countries. But I don't agree to the mentality "want to go to other countries". The refugees should be happy to get temporary asylum in a country that is much safer than the country they flee from.
> We are talking medical care, language courses, and working permit.
For language courses: Since lots of refugees have at least a smartphone, they could simply use the resources that the internet provides to learn the language themselves up to some decent level.
In the space of two weeks, many of us have gone from lifelong EU supporters to anti-Schengen. I'm upset.
So it is not that hard to imagine a Florida army going to war in Afghanistan, while Texas invaded Mexico and California remained neutral. If they had not been annexed by the US, they would likely either ally the US or have animosity with their southern neighbors due to strained relations from their independence wars.
Also, theoretically a governor can refuse to deploy the state's National Guard. I could find one instance where in California, Governor Schwarzenegger declined the President's request to send National Guard troops to the border with Mexico. So California does have precedent of remaining neutral (said tongue-in-cheek)!
I'm German. The stated purpose of the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) is to defend Germany. Historically this has been interpreted as "defend Germany within German borders", lately it has been extended to "defend German interests in remote places like Afghanistan".
The vast majority of deployments the German public is aware of happens either as part of or along side NATO and UN missions. I can't think of any situations where Germany sent troops without any support from other European countries. Nearly every news piece about German military responses to e.g. the Arab Spring goes out of its way to mention the attitude of other countries, especially in Europe but also NATO and the UN.
Yes, a United States of Europe is unlikely to include England (though I can see Scotland being a part of it if they eventually do secede -- unlike England, Scotland has very strong historical ties with Europe and France in particular). But it's a mistake to look at England as representative of general European sentiments.
It's not at all unheard of for political entities within a union not to maintain their own army. Germany was initially created as federation of independent states with their own armies, as was the USA. Even England (not to mention the UK) began as a loose collection of independent states.
Oh, and here's another thing about the German military: throughout the post-WW2 history of Germany there has been a recurring theme of politicians and political interest groups seeking to abolish our military permanently (after all, if it's purely for our defence, we're surrounded by allies these days and don't have any reason to fear invasions). The most frequent counter-argument is simply that we need the military to assist our allies -- note how this has nothing to do with self-defense.
I'm writing from Bath in the UK where Edgar, the first king of England, was crowned in 973. This united the ancient kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia etc.
Thankfully we've become more democratic since then, but until the EU was founded in 1993, Europe was an anarchy of nations. The countries themselves were democratic, but the group of nations was an anarchy. Europe suffered the problems of anarchy (the rule of the strong rather than the rule of law) and had been at war in some form or other for a large part of its history. Now that we've got the EU, which is a democracy of nations, the threat of war has receded somewhat. In the future I hope that we'll see a democracy of the entire world, a world government.
Britain is pretty swell, after a thousand years of dominating cultural hegemony. Although some scots may disagree. And some Irish perhaps. Not too many people speak the old tongues.
A typical dynamic in a large polity such as a nation or a corporation is that there will be a single culturally distinguishable leading elite class, and a) this elite will favor it's own (not maliciously, but because they are human and favor familiarity) and b) the people who do not actively recent the ruling elite will try to emulate them. So, in time, if the dominion can remain civil, it will develop an understanding and a common cultural framework.
Talking of civility - historically, britain has been unable to hold to lands that it could not hold under the force of violence. American colonies. India. South Africa.
People love their sovereignty (or, people yearn for political power and use sovereignty as their rallying cry). Anyhow - if the cultural hegemony cannot overwhelm a territory there will be a constant pressure to cede. I think this understanding of history is what drove many of the genocides of the past century - political will to rule, at any cost.
With this view of history uniting the earth under a single government would require either a single monoculture, or a dictatorial rule forcing a cultural homogenization over generations until the dissenting voices have diminished to insignificance.
Perhaps our beloved internet will function as a vehicle of such homogenization - it's not completely impossible.
Note: There was no large war in europe between the napoleonic wars and the first world war. Historically, europe has been quite pieceful in the past without a huge bureaucracy attempting to to formulate everything under it's legalistic framework.
I believe in western concept of human rights, and I do not believe in cultural relativism - oppression is oppression. But, a world government is a concept that is very problematic in our current state in history. I have no idea if this will change.
New World Order and all that bullshit.
Of course, they ignore the ongoing massive globalization and how it has improved their lives...
I'm not quite sure it improved the life of the 13 year old indian sweatshop worker though...
If you count being annexed as "patching together" - all states were created that way at some point. Then they might have been annexed by bigger entities, and separated from them again, but originally there were no states - just tribes.
If you want political and not military patching - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth worked pretty well for 2 centuries, but of course Poland and Lithuania were also created by annexing and fighting in the first place.
W.r.t. the Commonwealth, even then the Commonwealth fell apart for three major reasons, viz., the so-called Swedish Deluge, the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the abuse of the liberal political system by the nobility with foreign meddling playing a major role. The second was ethno-religious in nature and the third driven in part by conflicting interests. (Indeed, the Polish Enlightenment differed from the Enlightenment in the West precisely because it dealt with the problem of too much or misallocated freedom.) The dispersion of military might among private armies (in some cases the sizes of private armies of wealthy magnates rivaled the royal armies in size) coupled with conflicting interests prevented the Commonwealth from being able to mount a coherent and unified defense against Russian, Prussian and Austrian dismemberment, and ultimately destruction, of the state. And while it lasted, even though the Commonwealth was a vastly freer place that permitted the peaceful coexistence of many different ethnic groups and religions, it nonetheless was held together by a dominant group with a dominant ethos, viz., the Polish nobility.
In other words, empires suffer from tension when they impose their will on the constituting nations, but they also suffer from a lack of coherent and unified interests among its members. The EU suffers from both.
On the one hand, you have the federalist impulse wishing to beat member states into submission by asserting a "soft" German dominance over the continent against the wishes of its members. On the other hand, you have the same politicians possessed by this impulse maintaining that they respect the individuality and alleged sovereignty of each state. We respect cultural differences, but we completely ignore them when gerrymandering policies. All members are equally important, but our policies favor the interests of certain members over others and have in place a voting system that privileges might over collaboration. The migrant crisis undermines the Schengen Zone. The Greek crisis undermines the euro zone. Nord Stream undermines the idea of common energy policy. The Ukrainian crisis undermines the idea of common foreign policy. It's easy to wallow in shallow sentiments in the absence of crises, but it is precisely during crises that the substance of such unions is revealed. The truth is that the EU is creeping dangerously toward a point of no return. Instead of serving as a platform for nations to find common ground and collaborate for mutual benefit, it has contributed to the opposite through its incompetence, its arrogance and its Brummagem unity concealing the real political interests at play.
We have four components with varying levels of autonomy - Scotland arguably being the most "independent" as we have our legal system, education system and parliament here in Edinburgh.
As other poster note - Scotland and England are themselves the result of joining together once independent parts into units that last pretty well - Scotland goes back to the bit 9th century and some of the component parts of Scotland go back to the 6th century (though things get a bit vague by then).
So that is 1/5th the population of a near continental sized country. The UK may not be big but it is dense (Admittedly not as dense as some Asian countries).
Spain
What the heck?
The Catalonians also had one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Lliure
And Terra Lliure would have been a joke if not for the only innocent death they provoked. It is perhaps the only terrorist group that has more deaths by accident than actions they tried to do
The UK.
France.
Germany.
The USA.
The list of "[countries] patched together from previously autonomous bodies" happens to be an incredibly huge subset of countries that exist today.
I can't think of any country that has remained exactly the same throughout history. Nearly every country out there is either an agglomeration of formerly independent entities or used to be part of a bigger entity at some point.
Your categories are useless. Unless you're trying to define categories for countries which don't exist.
The USA is no remant, they earned their independence. I don't quite get the "composed of one" part.
Properly done, a reformed EU where these hacks were undone and the requisite sovereignty ceded to the EU parliament to allow for a restructured EU would not need to leave the EU with more power, and could move much of what power the EU holds to the elected parliament and actually make the EU far more accountable to people, even if it involves ceding some sovereignty.
There has been a slow and steady move towards this, but there's only so much the member state governments can do via treaties without seeking explicit consent from their electorates, and there's very little public appetite for voting for anything that smells of a unified state, not least because the current EU bureaucracy rightfully is not very trust-inspiring. It's quite the Catch-22.
The alternative is the return of walls, nationalisms and wars, which has been the natural state of affairs in Europe for 99.9% of its history (100 years ago the Ministry of Defense was called Ministry of War for a reason).
The iteration we have at the moment is far from efficient, far from perfect, far from fair, but it's better than anything that has come before.
No it's not. You can have an EU-lite, where we agree on some things, like free trade, joint projects (like EuroPol). Not having the United States of Europe won't result in war any more than the EU imposing a rule on an non-volunteer country will.
If anything the EU has shown that it doesn't work. We can't even agree on helping people fleeing a war zone. Nor are the Eurozone countries in agreement on how to handle financial policies.
It's not that the European countries should work together, or strive to have similar laws and rules, but it should be limited to issues like trade and the environment. Things that is beyond the scope of single nations.
I think the only viable EU is a United States of Europe, in which the current countries disappear, and you only have a Federal state and what is currently regions in the current countries.
Whether a EU is desirable for the UK is another debate. The UK is one of the rare capitalist countries in Europe while pretty much all the other countries are social-democrat if not outright socialist countries, with the high unemployment and low growth associated.
The legislative and executive powers of the union are held by the council of Europe which isn't an elected body.
The European Parliament elects the European Commission and can force its resignation through a vote of no confidence (the latter happened to the Santer Commission).
Jean-Claude Juncker technically has more democratic legitimacy than David Cameron; he was elected by a number of representatives standing for a majority of the electorate.
Practically all EU legislation requires a majority in the European Parliament and a qualified majority in the Council of the European Union (the upper house of the EU legislature, which represents the democratically elected governments of the member states).
The problem is that democratic legitimacy alone does not functioning institutions make.
> The legislative and executive powers of the union are held by the council of Europe which isn't an elected body.
The Council of Europe [1] is an intergovernmental body that has nothing to do with the EU. If you mean the Council of the European Union, that is (as mentioned above) the upper house of the legislature, but has no executive powers (those lie with the Commission and the member states) and all its members represent the democratically elected governments of the member states.
You can say that the EU as a whole is actually non-democratic all of the power de-jure and de-facto lies within the council, the council represents the executive branches of the EU members, you can even make an argument that the EU actually undermines the democratic process in other countries as it gives their executive branch a possible legislative power which they do not have directly in their own country.
The executive branches set up the council, the council has direct control over the legislative and executive powers of the union which means they can pass laws which might have implications on EU member states (especially if the state has decided to subdue itself to EU law in it's constitution, cough Sweden cough) in a manner that the executive branch of those states would not have agency on.
No, the European Parliament elects the entire European Commission; it just has to be an up-or-down vote on the entire Commission, but cannot vote for individual commissioners, though last year one Commissioner was replaced after the confirmation hearings and another had his portfolio cut.
The European Council nominates a candidate for President of the Commission; that person than selects candidates for the Commissioners, one from each member state. The European Parliament than holds confirmation hearings, may suggest adjustments to the Commission, and then holds a vote on the Commission in its entirety.
> The president is nominated by the council, and confirmed by the parliament.
First, the Commission President is not nominated by the Council of the EU. He is nominated by the European Council, which is not the same as the Council of the EU.
Second, the British PM is appointed by the British Monarch and is not even confirmed or elected; the German chancellor is nominated by the German president and then confirmed (or not) by the German parliament.
> This is similar to how supreme justices are confirmed by the senate in the US however the EUP has much less power over that confirmation.
No, this is how election of the head of government works in most parliamentary democracies, which is what the EU system is modeled after.
> The executive branches set up the council
Which is how the upper house is commonly set up in a federal system; it represents the states and the representatives are often selected by their executives.1
> the council has direct control over the legislative and executive powers of the union which means they can pass laws which might have implications on EU member states
The Council of the EU cannot pass laws without the European Parliament (the Council of the EU is only the upper house of the EU legislature). It does not have any power over the European Commission, which is the executive (i.e. the equivalent of a cabinet) in the EU.
Please, do read up on how the EU actually functions and do not go by second-hand sources.
Again that is simply not correct, here is Article 17 for you to read again.
Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members. If he does not obtain the required majority, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall within one month propose a new candidate who shall be elected by the European Parliament following the same procedure.
The Council, by common accord with the President-elect, shall adopt the list of the other persons whom it proposes for appointment as members of the Commission. They shall be selected, on the basis of the suggestions made by Member States, in accordance with the criteria set out in paragraph 3, second subparagraph, and paragraph 5, second subparagraph.
The President, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the other members of the Commission shall be subject as a body to a vote of consent by the European Parliament. On the basis of this consent the Commission shall be appointed by the European Council, acting by a qualified majority.
>The president is nominated by the council, and confirmed by the parliament.
Again not correct see Article 17 above.
The rest is nonsense, you are confusing ceremonial roles like the Queen appointing the head of the majority party to form the Government to the EU Council actually selecting the President and all the Members.
>This is similar to how supreme justices are confirmed by the senate in the US however the EUP has much less power over that confirmation
Not this isn't how state elections work, the Government doesn't select the Government, which appoints the Government.
>The executive branches set up the council
The Council isn't the upper house of the EU Parliament it's a completely separate body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_U...
>The Council of the EU cannot pass laws without the European Parliament (the Council of the EU is only the upper house of the EU legislature). It does not have any power over the European Commission, which is the executive (i.e. the equivalent of a cabinet) in the EU.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/20150201PVL...
They can jointly and separately adopt laws however only laws that are adopted by the council are actually turned into EU directives which is required for laws to have any effect on member states.
>Please, do read up on how the EU actually functions and do not go by second-hand sources.
Please do.
> The President, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the other members of the Commission shall be subject as a body to a vote of consent by the European Parliament. On the basis of this consent the Commission shall be appointed by the European Council, acting by a qualified majority.
As I said, the entire Commission is voted for by the European Parliament, not just the President, as you originally claimed.
> > The president is nominated by the council, and confirmed by the parliament.
> Again not correct see Article 17 above.
You realize that you are disagreeing with yourself? Or is your quoting just totally messed up?
> The Council isn't the upper house of the EU Parliament it's a completely separate body.
The Council isn't the upper house of the European Parliament; it is the upper house of the EU legislature, the European Parliament is the lower house of the EU legislature. Of course they're separate bodies, silly [1].
> They can jointly and separately adopt laws however only laws that are adopted by the council are actually turned into EU directives which is required for laws to have any effect on member states.
The ordinary legislative procedure requires the consent of the European Parliament AND the Council of the EU. The consultation procedure is largely limited to Art. 103 and Art. 115 TFEU (aspects of competition law and the internal market).
Yes, of course the consent of the Council of the EU as the upper house of the legislature is required. Never said otherwise.
The EU council and commission can issue directives, decisions and regulations without involving the EU parliament, the EUP is mostly for show it's opinions and recommendations are shafted there's a good reason why it looks like a circus filled with Neo-Nazi's/Fascists and Marxists (or at least that's how the extreme right and left like to call each other) with representation which is completely skewed from the geo-political reality within each member state.
The EUP still haven't degraded to the point of being a utter kangaroo court like the UNGC but it's not that far. If you think otherwise there's no point of continue to discuss it but if you follow EU politics you can easily see where the power lies and how and by whom pan-European policy is driven: hint it's not the greens, the pirates and the golden dawns in the EUP.
You're making a distinction without a difference (and you're muddying the waters between a proposal to appoint and the actual appointment; without the European Parliament, the European Council can only propose, not appoint). If the European Parliament says yes, the Commission is elected and can get to work. If the Parliament says no, it isn't and it can't do a thing. Same for how plenty of parliamentary democracies elect their head of government or cabinets. Lack of a write-in option does not make it not an election.
I note also that for all practical purposes, the "spitzenkandidat" system has factually replaced the power of nomination (not appointment).
> The EU council and commission can issue directives, decisions and regulations without involving the EU parliament
This is factually false, the codecision procedure (= what is now called the ordinary legislative procedure) applies to practically all legislative acts and requires the Parliament to vote for them. Legislative acts can include framework decisions with the legislature delegating implementing measures to the Commission (for example, the ecodesign directive, where the exact wattage for vacuum cleaners was then set by the Commission according to the guidelines of the directive), similar to how legislative acts in the US generally leave it to the administration to enact the necessary regulations. Note that even there, some implementation measures may be subject to parliamentary approval via the examination procedure.
As far the the legislation goes again you are mixing the various types of legislation codified within EU law, Regulations and Directives can only come from the council, Decisions and Recommendations can only come from the commission, Opinions like well the old saying says can be made by all 3 bodies. For the most part outside of mostly formal proceeding the EUP only issues opinions nothing more, Directives are the most common issue of EU law as they leave room for member state to decide how to "interpret" and implement them, the only really binding EU law is Regulations which can only be adopted by the Council the EUP doesn't get to vote on it.
You need to understand that for the most part no one gives a flying fuck about the EUP what matters is the council the council is the one that represents the Governments of each of the member states they are the ones that make the decisions. The EUP is full of people who are non-electable in state level politics and no serious politician actually wants to get involved with the EUP there's no glory, no power, and no money in play there.
You can continue arguing about semantics but you need to understand that there's much more to politics than de-jure agency if you look at every political system in the world you'll find that often the majority of the power tends to fall into the hands of positions and bodies that might not or should not have power at all on paper, the US politics are a great example for it.
As far as the EU goes the only thing that matters in terms of de-facto policy is what the Governments of the member states want no some yahoos that got elected in elections that no one really cares about with 40% or some times less turn out, and the treaties that the EU is based on leave gaping holes to ensure that member states keep their sovereignty and agency because outside of a very few or well actually one state with so far suicidal social and political tendencies most member states still value their sovereignty over unity and considering the Euro-skepticism within most state level political systems these days it is not going to change any time soon.
Have a nice day.
P.S.
ai16 Special legislative procedures
Special legislative procedures replace the former consultative, cooperation and assent procedures. The objective is to simplify the EU’s decision-making process by making it clearer and more effective. As their name indicates, these procedures derogate from the ordinary legislative procedure and therefore constitute exceptions. In special legislative procedures, the Council of the EU is, in practice, the sole legislator. The European Parliament is simply associated with the procedure. Its role is thus limited to consultation or approval depending on the case. Unlike the ordinary legislative procedure, the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU does not give a precise description of special legislative procedures. The rules of special legislative procedures are therefore defined on an ad hoc basis by the Articles of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU that provide for their implementation.
And no there isn't much limit on the "special legislative procedure" for the most part the council can enact it at any point which is why even when the ordinary legislative procedure is used the role of the parliament is much more formal and official.
This is one of those many many loopholes I've talked about that pretty much allow the Governments of the member states to have full control over the union and not vice-versa. If you still want to argue, well have a nice day again!
Basically there are two ways of making the EU more democratic: Weakening it, or for the citizens of the member nations to explicitly allow their government to cede some degree of sovereignty to the EU Parliament to reduce the need for institutions like the Council by letting the EU Parliament subsume many of the duties.
I would point at our avowedly socialist NHS and disagree with you there.
We're a mixed capitalist/socialist country like pretty much everyone else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_...
I'm a Scot and I do - and I'd rather see the UK part of it as well.
I want a democratic EU though - the current structures are undemocratic precisely because they have been designed to please national government rather than the people.