Contrary to popular belief, European integration is not a radical idea. ✊
In fact, according to a Eurobarometer survey after the debt crisis (2016), most Europeans remained in favour of more European-level decision-making in areas like:
defense (80%) 🔫,
promotion of peace and democracy (80%) 🏛️,
environment (77%) 🌳,
immigration (71%) 🧳, and
energy policy (69%) 🔋.
So what stops us from integrating further to face global challenges such as the energy crisis, security, competitiveness and climate change?
The most common argument is that citizens of various EU member states are still too different.
But this might not be true!
According to an analysis by researchers in Harvard, Bocconi and Columbia [1], there are indeed large differences of political opinions in the union. However, these are due to differences within the member states. 🤯
Additional heterogeneity between citizens of different member states is actually minuscule (5-10% vs the average), relative to the larger disagreement within each country! 🇪🇺
In fact the differences among European countries were equivalent to those of the States within the US! 🇺🇸
Nation-states and the USA have survived despite these huge internal differences. Thus, there should not be any inherent problem with EU integration.
What is really holding us back are not our political differences but our identities, our perception of these differences.
In the absence of a European narrative and political platform, national stereotypes exaggerate the perceived differences between Italians and Germans, or French and Italians, and we forget that there is not a single Italian, German or French point of view. 🇩🇪🇫🇷🇮🇹
This could be hopefully mitigated by a common European political platform and investments in cultural integration.
Who knows? One day we might realise that we are not that different after all. 🚀
[1] Alberto Alesina, Guido Tabellini and Francesco Trebbi, Is Europe an Optimal Political Area?, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2017
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