Catalonia Demonstrates the Limits of European Integration

On the 9th of May, 1950 the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed “to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.” His plan was to create a common market of natural resources and production between France and Germany, along with the supranational institutions to administer it. Mr. Schuman hoped that the intense economic rivalry which had characterized much of Great Power relations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries would give way to cooperation and joint planning; and as these rivalries diminished, so too would the jealous nationalism that had led to the most catastrophic war in human history, only five years ended. This was the European Coal and Steel Community, which eventually merged and evolved into today’s European Union, an institution whose official motto is “united in diversity” and which is dedicated to “ever closer union”.

The dream of “ever closer union” involves the creation of Europeans. This was to be achieved practically through the building of common institutions: a common market, a common currency, a common set of rules for moving people and capital, a common Parliament, a common Court of Justice, a common external frontier. Beyond these useful inventions, at the heart of the dream, was the shedding of the “bad old nationalisms” that were blamed for the First and Second World Wars, in favor of a “higher” supranationalism. People would cease to consider themselves French or German or Belgian and think of themselves as Europeans first and foremost. The new Homo…