The question is: how should we proceed now? Can Europe just muddle on now that the momentum has ebbed? Or should we just stop, as has happened with a lot of past integration efforts throughout the world? Or should we breathe new life into Europe and if so, how? Let us take a closer look at four possible scenarios.

1. EURO-MADNESS

Europe is the future. Member States are the past. This is how we could summarize this scenario. All tasks should be transferred to the supranational level as much as possible. European taxes, direct European elections, a European army – these are just a few of the many possibilities.

Guy Verhofstadt, former leader of the ALDE (liberals) group in the European Parliament, is an adoptee of this philosophy. He advocates a United States of Europe with a European diplomatic corps, a European army and a genuine European government. Valéry Giscardd’ Estaing and Helmut Schmidt also have far-reaching proposals that make Europe a fully integrated monetary, budgetary and fiscal zone. This philosophy is based on the idea that what is done at European level is done better.

The gap with the citizens makes such an approach unfeasible; that is not realpolitik. Citizens already believe that everything is decided in Brussels. Entrusting yet more powers to the Schuman bubble would only exacerbate those problems and lead to further mistrust in the European construction.

The Euro-madness approach is not only unfeasible, but also undesirable. After all, from the earlier points it may be concluded that Europe is not a nirvana. It does not make sense to want to do everything on a supranational level.

Besides, the European construction is a gradual process, not one that aims to bring everything up to the European level, gradually eroding the powers at national and regional level. It only makes sense to bring a certain domain wholly or partly to the European level if there is real added value in doing so. Nor was it ever the intention of the fathers of Europe to create a kind of Moscow in Brussels.

Incidentally, the concept of ‘the United States of’ does not seem attractive to me as a model for Europe.