Guardian: The EU became a commonwealth

Al Guardian is claiming that the EU is set to shift its goal from being a superstate to a commonwealth. Personally I would more expect a cat to bark [No 411], ever closer union is to deeply ingrained into the genetic makeup of EU and is one of it's founding principles. However his logic is not completely without merit, since it is based on the fact that the EU is becoming very large and incorporating a large number of countries with differing national interests and cultures.

Now only someone possessed of the deliberate obtuseness of a Daily Mail leader writer could suppose that such a broad, diverse European Union will ever be a Napoleonic, federal (in the Eurosceptic sense of the F-word), centralised, bureaucratic superstate. That's why those who do still want something like a United States of Europe think Monday was a terrible day for Europe.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the main author of the EU's stillborn constitutional treaty, was in despair, while Britain's Jack Straw was grinning ear to ear. Roughly speaking, the British hated the constitution because they thought it would create a French Europe, while the French hate enlargement because they think it will create a British Europe. Thus Giscard laments that these further enlargements "are obviously going to transform Europe into a large free-trade zone". That is what continental Europeans classically charge the British with wanting.

The idea behind it being that EU integration will simple grind to a halt as the competing governments seek to further their own divergent national interests and never actually agree on anything much. Which is very plausable, except for one small problem. It is predicated on the EU's descissions being made by the governments of the nation states, and while they do have a role hte main players have always been the faceless Eurocrats who do not have to worry about national interests just the interests of the EU. It's primary interest being to become a superstate run from Brussels (and Strasbourg one week in four).