The Future Evolution of the EU Compound Polity: The Obstacles to Voluntary Centralization

Abstract

This penultimate chapter has three aims. Firstly, it questions whether the hitherto successful maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium is self-reinforcing or liable to potential future disruption. In particular, this necessitates an examination of what might threaten the ability to maintain a compromise between supranational and intergovernmental visions of integration. Here the obvious threat is the exacerbation of the two longest-standing cleavages between member states: the face-off between partisans of a free market Europe and advocates of a ‘social Europe’, based on market regulation, and the conflict between backers of NATO and Europeanists calling for security and foreign policy independence.

Any federal arrangement likely to have long-term survival prospects is predicated on representation as a necessary condition.

Heinz Eulau (1974: 154)