The author seems to have assumed that Europe will be a united country which is a major oversight.
Even if the UK lost its empire it didn't loose its desire to be "great again". France and Italy seem to lean on the same side.
EDIT: more and more kids -> a growing number of kids
Without a close political union there is no reason to be more proud to be European than is for any random Asian citizen to be proud of being part of Asia or for an African to be proud of being part of the African continent.
History shows us that this cultural pride / union is weak and pretty useless when money/business/power is involved.
Though you raise a point: I'm curious if such a thing indeed exists in Africa and Asia. Africa (and South America actually) I suspect yes, Asia I've got no idea really.
And I still think this belonging feeling is stronger in Europe due to the open borders, and the sheer number of your fellow Euro-citizen you interact with in your day to day life in some cities (but I probably have a twisted view because Dublin is crazy in that regard).
>> And I still think this belonging feeling is stronger in Europe due to the open borders
That's indeed the case and the open borders, free flow of capital, labour etc exist because we have a political union. That's why you can't really talk about transnational European pride without talking about federalisation and sovereignty .
The financial crisis, Brexit and Trump put EU in a tough spot. Greece shows us that we need a fiscal and banking union if we want to talk about financial solidarity, Brexit proves that some countries don't want to be states of a United Europe, Trump made it clear that US's protection will not last forever. Even worse, it sees a United Europe as a foe and threat to its supremacy.
Now the question about how European you feel is not just an abstract question. You can vote for closer or lesser integration or a total exit.
You have to give some national sovereignty to get transnational sovereignty.
I believed the European dream, that in time EU cohesion policies lead to a single stronger and united country but now I'm not so sure...looks more like everyone for themselves.
Eastern EU doesn't have many reasons to be optimistic: the top 5 positions on the top are taken by Westerners after recent elections (German, Belgian, Dutch / German - each for 2,5 year, Spanish, French); out of all European institutions, only one is headquartered in the east (GNSS - Galileo - in Prague). Etc, etc.
Babis even explicitly said they could find anyone to suggest for the top posts and Kaczynski's party tried to sabotage Tusk at every possible turn in the last term.
Point is, many people in their countries feel very differently to the leaders about the EU. Many work and marry abroad, there are lots of people from other EU-countries in eastern Europe etc. We are indeed growing together even if it doesn look like it on the surface.
As far as the top positions are concerned I believe it's an issue of candidates and the policy of the host country. Here is a good read about this: https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-overlooks-central-e...
I can understand that east european countries might not yet feel or experience that way. I think that might be due to the fact that right-wing nationalists are still in power and might try to benefit heavily out of the union.
As some eastern european countries are also not members of the EU for that long, structures (and power) were built or distributed around those member states, too. I hope this will change in the future and new members will also get their fair share.
That's because EU is exactly that at this time: a close cooperation of countries and a bit more(i.e the cohesion policy).
Without a fiscal union and a common army you cannot talk about a federalisation. Just look how the Greek financial crisis was handled. Greece was pretty much regarded as a stand alone country that needs to pay alone for its mistakes or leave the union. In a federalisation the burden would be shared like it happened in the U.S. We would talk about european citizens not greek citizens.
The pros and cons of federalisation can be debated but I'm not sure if the poor states of the US would do better on their own.
It might not look like an oversight in 1930s Germany…
> Sörgel's 1938 book Die Drei Grossen A has a quote from Hitler on the flyleaf, demonstrating that the concept was not inconsistent with Nazi ideology. (from the Wikipedia article)