The European Union has languished and become enfeebled — and we are all to blame. There is a noticeable paucity of ideas and methods. The whole system has capitulated and is at a standstill. Summits bringing together heads of state and of government have become a parody: getting together behind closed doors, repeating lofty principles, changing a word or two in a statement so that it sounds slightly different from the last one. The system is cut off from the world and from real life. What did the Breton farmers I have met in the past few months think? They did not say that they were against Europe, or against the Common Agricultural Policy that is so important to us. But they explained that they were against over-regulation, against over-zealous bureaucracy and against interventionist policies overseas, so far removed from their real needs.
The founders of Europe believed that political union would be a natural consequence of union in the economic domain, and that a European state could be created from a single market and a single currency.
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