European Integration

Dept: The Soviet empire crumbled, and Europe s bonds with the U.S. slackened. European integration accelerated, with constitutions as thick as phone books to prove it. But it took a Eurocrat to find the new arrangements inspiring. Others chafed under this dominance of bureaucracies and tribunals, seemingly non-political entities with an arcane politics of their own, swathed in a smog of non-transparency, according to Globe and Mail. Just what does it mean to be a European? Two generations have now been educated to prefer their European identity to their respective national ones, yet no one has pinned down that European identity and at the same time, the Cold War was under way. While averse to Soviet domination, Europeans also prided themselves on their spiritual if not political or military independence from the Americans. So the negatives of Europe s self-conception multiplied: Europe, the un-Fascist, un-Communist, un-American place. So Europeans began to bemoan their democratic deficit, aggravated of late by the massive fiscal one. French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently warned that the sea of red ink may sweep Europe itself away. Fears of this kind reveal another deficit: the European identity itself. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.