One link for all those assertions.
Seems legit.
Well, with a shared currency there are certain obvious and practical issues they need to resolve. Which is what that report was an attempt to start to do - with no guarantee that any of what is proposed will be taken up by the democratically elected governments of the EU. It was written in 2015, it's played little part in any major inter-government discussions since. Additionally, and what increases the amusement factor to me, we are not in the eurozone and our commissioner actually lobbied for some of the proposals as they are beneficial to Britain's service industries.
There are those in Europe who push for a single state. Yes, of course there are. The national veto meant it was never an issue for us to be sucked into any attempt to create one. Bonkers stuff.
It will probably come as a bit of a surprise to people who believe in this superstate nonsense but it's not just the British who don't really fancy it that much. I can't speak for everyone but pretty much all of the Dutch that I know actually like being Dutch. Some of them are as proud of being Dutch as people are of being British. Going from the music and that I would imagine it's a similar story in France and Germany as well. I reckon even some Belgians are the same. I always find the us and them logic a bit lacking.
It's no surprise at all that "the Dutch enjoy being Dutch" - in fact its the same in every nation state. That's my point I suppose - there is no public appetite to join a european nation state anywhere and yet the political elites in France and Germany have been engineering exactly that.
We may have had a veto on some aspects of policy, yes, however it becomes irrelevant if, in another twenty years we would have had to make a decision between leaving and joining fully when the EU has a common border policy, foereign policy, currency, monetary and fiscal policy, defence organisation, legislature and judiciary. What else would be required in to actually qualify it as a "state" in your eyes?
As for the "single link" - I actually spend most of my time on the football end of the forum reading rather than contributing as I am absorbing some knowledge. On this topic, however, I have some knowledge and it seems obvious to me - as it should to anyone with any appreciation of the history of the EU that it has always been primarily a political project with the goal of establishing a federal European state. This is not particularly controversial and there is plenty of information out there.
At the moment you can catch Guy Verhofstad's interview on the BBC iPlayer on the Hardtalk programme where he makes it explicit that the goal for europe is a superstate with its own defence force. He even quotes Macron, the French presidential candidate, saying that the era of national sovereignty is over and that European sovereignty has to take its place. Sadly he blames nationality for Europe's previous problems - and this is the driver behind the creation of the EU superstate.
I enjoy discussing these topics but we do have to ground them in reality otherwise its pointless.
