Independent: Federal Europe is dead. Long live the superstate

IndependentFederal Europe is dead. Long live the superstate

Many Europeans, particularly in France and the Netherlands, have slipped their moorings from reality. Both the Eurosceptic left and the Eurosceptic right have reached for the security blanket - moth-holed and threadbare, though it is - of nationalism. The Eurosceptic left's embrace of nationalism is particularly insidious, because it hides behind the language of social justice. Time was when the European left was outward-looking, internationalist, and concerned with the least well-off, no matter where they lived. In Europe today, the least well-off are to be found primarily in central and eastern Europe. European enlargement, one of the greatest achievements of post-war Europe, offers these victims of history a life-line into the modern democratic world. That's the reason for admitting Turkey. To close the borders against central and eastern Europeans, as many on the Eurosceptic left would do, is to shirk the requirements of social justice. It's also imprudent. In the absence of European enlargement, both actual and promised, a number of the central and eastern European states. A western Europe ringed by such regimes is no recipe for future security and prosperity.In contrast, the Eurosceptic right trumpets its commitment to nationalism. It values the preservation of national identity - which in Britain boils down to the preservation of "Westminster sovereignty" - no matter what the cost to security and prosperity. The only antidote to this argument, if it even counts as such, is a vigorous debate about the values that policy, whether located at the national or European level, ought to prioritise.