United States of Europe
The member states of the European Union do have many common policies within the European Union (EU) and on behalf of the EU that are sometimes suggestive of a single state. It has a common civil service (the European Commission), a single High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, a common European Security and Defence Policy, a supreme court (European Court of Justice — but only in matters of European Union law), a peacekeeping force (Eurofor), and an intergovernmental research organisation (the EIROforum with members like CERN).
The euro is often referred to as the “single European currency”, which has been officially adopted by seventeen EU countries while seven other member countries of the European Union have linked their currencies to the euro in ERM II. In addition a number of European territories outside the EU have adopted the euro unofficially.
The EU, however, does not have a single constitution, a single government, a single foreign policy set by that government, a single taxation system contributing to a single exchequer, or a single military.
Several pan-European institutions exist separate from the EU. The European Space Agency counts almost all the EU member nations in its membership, but it is independent of the EU and its membership includes nations that are not EU members, notably Switzerland and Norway. The European Court of Human Rights (not to be confused with the European Court of Justice) is also independent of the Union. It is an element of the Council of Europe which, like ESA, counts EU members and non members alike in its membership.
At present, the European Union is a free association of sovereign states designed to further their shared aims. Other than the vague aim of “ever closer union” in the Solemn Declaration on European Union, the Union (meaning its member governments) has no current policy to create either a federation or a confederation. However, in the past, Jean Monnet, a person associated with the EU and its predecessor the European Economic Community did make such proposals. A wide range of other terms are in use, to describe the possible future political structure of Europe as a whole, and/or the EU. Some of them, such as United Europe, are used often, and in such varied contexts, but they have no definite constitutional status.
In the United States of America, the concept enters serious discussions of whether a unified Europe is feasible and what impact increased European unity would have on the United States of America’s relative political and economic power. Glyn Morgan, aHarvard University associate professor of government and social studies, uses it unapologetically in the title of his book The Idea of a European Superstate: Public Justification and European Integration. While Morgan’s text focuses on the security implications of a unified Europe, a number of other recent texts focus on the economic implications of such an entity. Important recent texts here include T. R Reid’s The United States of Europe and Jeremy Rifkin’s The European Dream. Neither the National Review nor theChronicle of Higher Education doubt the appropriateness of the term in their reviews
Future superpower
The United States of Europe is widely hypotheticised, fictionalised, or depicted as a superpower as powerful as or more powerful than the United States of America. Some people such as T.R. Reid, Andrew Reding, and Mark Leonard, among others, believe that the power of the hypothetical United States of Europe will rival that of the United States of America in the 21st century. Leonard cites seven factors: Europe’s large population, Europe’s large economy, Europe’s low inflation rates, Europe’s favourable climate,Europe’s central location in the world, the unpopularity and perceived failure of American foreign policy in recent years, and certain European countries’ highly developed social organization or quality of life (when measured in terms such as hours worked per week and income distribution) .[16] Some experts claim that Europe has developed a sphere of influence called the Eurosphere.
A small power
Norwegian foreign policy scholar and commentator Asle Toje has argued that the power and reach of the European Union more closely resembles a small power.[17] In his book The EU as a small power he argues that the EU is a response to and function of Europe’s unique historical experience in that the EU contains the remnants of not one but five past European orders. Although the 1990s and early 2000s have showed that there is policy space for greater EU engagement in European security, the EU been unable to meet these expectations.[18] The author express particular concerns over the Union’s security and defense dimensionCSDP where attempts at pooling resources and forming a political consensus have failed to generate the results expected. These trends, combined with shifts in global power patterns, are seen to have been accompanied by a shift in EU strategic thinking whereby great-power ambitions have been scaled down and replaced by a tendency towards hedging vis-à-vis the great powers. The author uses the case of the EUFOR intervention in Darfur and Chad to illustrate that the EU’s effectiveness is hampered by aconsensus–expectations gap, owing primarily to the lack of an effective decision-making mechanism. In his view, the sum of these developments is that the EU will not be a great power, and is taking the place of a small power in the emerging multipolar international order
Franz Josef Strauss
Herbert W. Armstrong of the Radio Church of God (later renamed Worldwide Church of God), had prophesied the coming of a United States of Europe before the close of World War III, and he later said it might be the German conservative politician Franz Josef Strauss as its future dictator, but he wasn’t definite. (Strauss had written a book titled The Grand Design, in which he set forth his views of the future of Europe).[19] Strauss seemed to play along with this portrayal, by becoming a guest of Armstrong in 1971 in his home and at his Ambassador College campus in Pasadena, California where he even agreed to appear on The World Tomorrowtelevision programme. According to a document written by Armstrong in 1983, he became lasting friends with Strauss, but he could not understand why Strauss had returned the friendship
