IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT!
Beware Europe’s rhetoric (and America’s fears) about what it wants to be. Focus on what it is. By Andrew Moravcsik - professor of Government at Harvard University’s Centre for European Studies Newsweek March 4 2002 FROM THE UNITED STATES IN 1787 TO EASTERN EUROPE in 1989, new constitutions bave almost always come in response to crisis. Yet nothing threatens the European Union today. The single market is a success. The single currency is a reality. Enlargement proceeds apace, as does coordination of defense, police and immigration policies. The EU is bere to star and, many believe, poised to become a full-fledged "superstate" supplanting the traditional nation-states of Europe. Nowcomes the drive for a European constitution. The case for it can be summarized in a word: democracy. Many Europeans view theEU as a distant, unaccountable technocracy. Only the relatively weak European Parliament is directly elected. At the powerful European Commission in Brussels, Eurocrats rule.