For better or worse, my generation, (Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer and many others), managed to develop the most amazing project in history: a union between nations who battled for more than half a millennium.
Like most of my contemporaneous thought leaders, I remain amazed and proud of this political, economic, social and cultural adventure. At University, “we” were a group of students that shared a common passion for Europe. Our origins and motivations were different, but Europe was, for most of us, the political passion of our lives and a treasure we wanted to save from nationalism by its Member States.
The recent developments of the European Union have been an accumulation of disappointments: migration, international leadership and most recently, Brexit. We can only hope that these circumstances will be the wake up call that Europe needs to understand it must accept the reality: only a small number of Member States are willing to pursue the fiscal and political integration that would create a European Federal State.