Its advocates admit that deeper integration requires more supranational democracy, since national parliaments will necessarily be weakened.
When European elites – German politicians in particular – now talk about political union, this is what they are thinking about: weaken legislatures, the ones in the south in particular, and establish close supervision of national budgets by supranational, unelected institutions such as the European commission in Brussels.
These forces loath the alphabet soup of supranational governance institutions – the EU, the UN, the WTO, and the IMF, among others – that globalisation requires.
There are supranational forces that take a strong interest in these things: the UN, the IMF and the World Bank chief among them.
But to grow in size, the EU must first adapt its rules, hence the meeting in Nice to settle differences between big countries and small, between supranational "federalists" and defenders of the nation-state, and between economic winners and losers.
But no need yet for a grand supranational constitution ("better a good treaty than a bad constitution"); instead, let there be "a federation of nation-states since...the nation-states are not about to disappear".
Their foreign ministers, not the supranational bureaucracy of the European Commission, will be his collective boss.
Hence Lord Turner's stark choice: either national governments take a stronger role, forcing banks that operate on their territory to set aside money to pay for deposit schemes and other buffers, or cross-border supervision becomes more assertive.The EU's response is a trio of supranational committees that will have the power to step in when domestic regulators disagree.
It should set out the EU's mission in simple language, clarify for befuddled voters the role and responsibilities of its institutions, and draw a clear distinction between supranational and national competencies.
This understates both the radical nature of the proposed court and the various objections.International law is traditionally conceived as a compact between consenting states and is horizontal in that the law is made and often applied by states rather than a supranational institution.
She backed the appointment of relative lightweights for both the EU presidency and the foreign minister's job created by the Lisbon treaty".Under Merkel, Germany is no longer an actor that supports supranational development," says Hans Stark of the French Institute for International Relations.
