From European Crisis to Political Union of Europe

Although the European states are strangling for over half a decade to resolve the euro crisis, critical open questions on what kind of a European Union they want still remain, thus suffering from a political crisis. Which is the pragmatic next step? Should Europe follow the road towards federalism playing a major role as a global player or will continue with small steps until the right political moment suffering from economic stagnation, or worst heading for a disorderly...
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Although the European states are strangling for over half a decade to resolve the euro crisis, critical open questions on what kind of a European Union they want still remain, thus suffering from a political crisis. Which is the pragmatic next step? Should Europe follow the road towards federalism playing a major role as a global player or will continue with small steps until the right political moment suffering from economic stagnation, or worst heading for a disorderly disintegration? Is further mutualisation possible without appropriate political integration? Could the Eurozone have a banking union and common deposit insurance system without political union? It's a common secret that the crucial issue behind all the above questions is the concession of national sovereignty, a hard political issue which justifies the severity of the European crisis. The crisis has only been paused. Europe can't stay in the middle of the river forever, without a true union Eurozone's crisis will re-emerge.The main idea of this book is that the ultimate "goal'' of the European crisis is the political union of Europe. It seems that the European crisis, which began in 2010, about two years after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, will be the beginning of a long political and economic stagnation until the EU solve their structural weaknesses, but this could be done only with additional transfer of sovereignty. The EU's current institutions are inadequate for a monetary union, while monetary policy is decided jointly at European level, economic and fiscal policies remain in the member states' authority. The debt crisis has as a result established the European partial banking union, a "European Monetary Fund'' (ESM) and some others solidarity mechanisms, which was unimaginable before the crisis, but has damaged the political credibility of the European states. Because of the crisis the tensions among EU member states have reached a breaking point. The political fragmentation in correlation with the rising populism and Euroscepticism will probably halt the long European integration process, causing farther escalation and maybe a serious crisis before achieving the fiscal-economic federation of Eurozone and later the political union of Europe. During the next few years (after the elections in France and Germany in 2017), we will probably see the beginning of the next episode.The political union of the multinational Europe will be a milestone of new globalization. After the establishment of the political union, at later stage, and the completion of the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP), it seems that the creation of a single transatlantic economic entity like an "economic NATO'' will inevitably follow. We will probably not see short-term progress on free-trade talks between the US and the EU due to political pressures, but at the end the two allies will materialize the "economic NATO'' to face the Chinese challenges. This will in turn redefine the meaning of power inside the new era of globalization in various fields, such as regionalization, global economic governance, financial globalization and trans-regional mega trade agreements, in a broader multidimensional way. Under the above prospects and mostly because of the rising Asia and the aggressive Russia, Europe's road to political union it's one-way situation, even in the case of an upcoming existential crisis.However, the federalization of Europe would be a model for the regional integration in other continents. The countries have already begun to cede much of their sovereignty to supranational regional institutions, regrouping in large regional trade associations (EU, ASEAN, GCC, EEU, AFRICAN UNION, MERCOSUR and NAFTA). In today's globalised world the supranational regional organizations became central to world politics, we are moving from a world of national states towards a world of regions and states.