"Ever closer union" is not just an aspiration or a phrase in a European treaty. For the past 50 years it has been an accurate description of an historic process. Starting with a modest merger of coal and steel industries in 1951, the architects of the modern European Union have progressively dismantled barriers to the free movement of people and goods, and gradually turned slogans about a continent without borders into a reality. You can now drive from Lisbon to Vienna without showing a passport or changing your money. Advocates of "ever closer union" hope and believe that they will make still more progress later this year, with agreement to a new constitution that would advance the cause in such new fields as foreign affairs, defence, criminal law and immigration.
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