The EU is not a market, it is a political project of becoming a single European state, the United States of Europe, as the powers-that-be in the EU have always wanted it to become.
The three founding fathers of European union all called for a single European state. Konrad Adenauer said, "My dream is that one day we might be able to applaud a United States of Europe." Paul-Henri Spaak said, "Europe of tomorrow must be a supranational Europe." Robert Schuman, speaking in Strasbourg on 16 May 1949, said, "Our century, that has witnessed the catastrophes resulting in the unending clash of nationalities and nationalisms, must attempt and succeed in reconciling nations in a supranational association. This would safeguard the diversities and aspirations of each nation while coordinating them in the same manner as the regions are coordinated within the unity of the nation."
More recently, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said, "The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State." (Financial Times, 21 June 2004.) Elmar Brok, Chairman of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, said, "The European Union is a state under construction." European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said, "It is essential for the EU to become a political power and not just a group of nation states."
Chancellor Merkel said in 2012, "Without doubt, we need more and not less Europe. That's why it is necessary to create a political union." She said, "The task of our generation is to complete economic and monetary union, and to build political union in Europe, step by step." She said, "We need a political union, which means we must gradually cede powers to Europe and give Europe control."
In January 2014, European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding said, "we need to build a United States of Europe with the Commission as government." Commission President José Manuel Barroso said on 10 July 2015, "We are a very special construction unique in the history of mankind … Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empire. We have the dimension of empire."
French President François Hollande asked us in October 2015, "Do you really want to participate in a common state? That's the question." As he said, "The only road for those who are not convinced of Europe is to leave Europe…. It is the logical path."
Martin Schulz, President of the EU Parliament, said that he wanted to move the EU swiftly to a 'one government' federal constitution and wanted to turn the EU into a 'United States of Europe' by 2025. "I want there to be a constitutional treaty to create a federal Europe," he said on 7 December 2017.
The European Commission said, "the main goal of the EU is the progressive integration of member states' economies and political systems." The Commission wants complete Economic Union, Monetary Union, Financial Union, Fiscal Union and Political Union by 2025 at the latest, 'developed within the framework of the European Union'.
The EU is pressing on with its aims of developing a European Defence Force and of installing a Eurozone budget run by a Eurozone finance minister. It has put forward a 'Roadmap Towards a Complete Economic and Monetary Union'. It intends to complete the Banking Union and create a European Fiscal Board. It wants to launch the Capital Markets Union, designed to expand securities trading, which would promote the interests of banks, fund managers and securities traders at the expense of both savers and consumers. By 2025 it intends to make the convergence process more binding, set up a macroeconomic stabilisation function for the euro area, integrate the European Stability Mechanism into the EU law framework and set up a Euro area Treasury at the European level.
The EU is not about cooperation but about assimilation. There is a difference between cooperating with other nations and being merged into a single European state. Internationalism is not the same as supranationalism. Cooperation between sovereign states does not mean integration into one state. Britain is a member of more than 90 international cooperative bodies. Only one of them wants to absorb us into a single state. The EU is like the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation - an alien force which seeks to assimilate all other life forms while pretending just to be cooperating with them.
In the 2016 referendum campaign, David Cameron, like Edward Heath before him, avoided any talk of the EU's aim of creating a single European state. In the 1975 referendum campaign, Heath tried to keep the pro-EEC campaign focused on the supposed economic benefits of our staying in the single market. He told us that we were only joining a market.
Similarly, in the 2016 campaign, Cameron tried to keep the pro-EU campaign focused on the supposed economic benefits of our staying in the EU. He only ever talked about the EU as a market. He told us that a vote to stay in the EU was only a vote to stay in the Single Market. He ducked every question about the EU as a political union.
But what market ever demanded that its members abolish their own citizenship, their own armed forces and their own currency? What market needs its own passport, its own flag, its own national anthem, its own central bank, its own president and its own parliament? The EU was never just a market. The aim has always been to become a political union, using the supposed benefits of a Single Market to tempt the individual member nations, like using a sprat to catch the mackerel.
After talks with Cameron, President Juncker divulged that Cameron wanted the referendum not because he wanted to give us a real choice but because "Cameron wants to dock his country permanently to Europe." If we had voted to stay in the EU, we would have lost our independence. As a subordinate province, we would never have been allowed another referendum. Our vote to leave saved us from that fate. It saved our independence.
In the referendum, we decided that Britain was not going to be a part of this single European state. Those who call for us to be in the single market or call for another referendum should ask themselves whether they really want us to be in a single European state. The British Social Attitudes survey of 2018 found that only three per cent of us want a single European government.
