Why didn't the member states of the EU (European Union) simply create Essay

Why didn't the member states of the EU (European Union) simply create a United States of Europe after the Second World War - Essay Example By the time the war had finished, much of the continent lay in ruins. How was Europe to rebuild? This was a question on many peoples' lips after 1945. Some thought a massive federalist state, similar to the United States was the solution. Europeans could pool their wealth and have a single government. That idea fizzled. There was still too much distrust in the immediate post-war period for a United States of Europe to be created. What Europe chose to do instead was slowly, piece by piece, assemble a common market that would eventually keep the door open to a more federalist option some time in the future. Although some Europeans would have liked to have seen a federalist state in the aftermath of the war, there was simply too much distrust. On top of that, foreign armies occupied much of Germany. Each European countries priority was the rebuild itself before engaging on any political or economic experiment. The British scholar Alan Milward argues that the EC's founding fathers intend ed for their states to maintain sovereignty in the system. They did not want a federalist state. They felt that they should bind themselves together not to create a super-state but to compete in the international economy. In a sense, the initial institutions of the EC were designed to preserve national autonomy. As Dr. Milward said in his book The European Rescue of the Nation-State, "The reinvigorated nation-state had to choose the surrender of a degree of national sovereignty to sustain its reassertion . . .† (Milward 1992). The truth is that the people of Europe at this stage were still too nationalistic. They had survived a war that had hammered home their national identities. The heroes of the various resistance movements had all represented pure national ideals, and these men and women were heroes well into the 1950s. The truth is that the founding fathers of the EU were looking to maximize their trading power, not their political power. They wanted to regionalize Europe , not turn it into the United States. Over the years, regionalization has done a great deal to improve business productivity. It has generate wealth and been responsible for a great deal of social development. The leaders of the EU/EC were right to pursue it as the same can be said of the economic integration accomplished by Europe over the last twenty years. The comparative advantages Europe possesses were then main thing to be exploited, not the creation of a superstate (Case 1999). What a single country can do well, it often can do better with the help of its neighbours and friends. But there is much to be said for an integration that stops just short of federalism: this kind of integration is not just about economics: it is also about the cultural and social shifts that follow in the way of reducing tariffs, striking down boundaries and easing travel and communication. You do not need a federal state to do all of this, many Europeans believe. It is possible to create something d ifferent. That was the Europe many were satisfied with up until the 1990s. But then the push came for political reforms and more power being centralized in Britain. In a sense this was a betrayal of the founding father who always say a role for autonomous states at the heart of Europe. They did not want to create a United States of Europe and they knew that over-reach or excessive expansion can cause serious problems to under-developed institutions (Duff 2009). Changes involving integration need time. Today, as the EU looks to its frontiers, the temptation to expand is still there, but patience is need (Kaid 2008). The gains made by economic integration have worked wonders to increase economic integration, but they also bring risks which need to be considered too by policymakers. The United States of