Professor Marta Lorimer | This House Believes In A United States of Europe | Cambridge Union

Professor Marta Lorimer speaks as fourth proposition on the motion on Thusday 22th February 2024 at 8:00pm in the Debating Chamber.
The vision of a United Europe has long been a dream of visionary philosophers and thinkers, from Leibniz to Lafayette. Successive empires seemed close to uniting Europe- Napoleon chief among them- before they crumbled into oblivion.
It was only after the carnage of the World Wars that such a dream could move closer to reality with the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, followed by the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993.
Now trade flows in a free single market and people and goods can move across, with some 27 member states representing some 450 million people. But is ever-closer union, and a European superstate, achievable or desirable?
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PROFESSOR MARTA LORIMER
Marta Lorimer is a LSE Fellow in European Politics. Prior to joining the European Institute, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Exeter.
Her upcoming book, Europe as Ideological Resource: European Integration and Far Right Legitimation in France and Italy, presents a novel argument that rather than providing as a liberal bulwark against the far right, European integration has helped normalise and spread these ideas.
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[@Winterx69]

Both the great Europeans of old, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac did explicitly promise there would not be a "United States of Europe". A lot has arguably changed since. Interestingly, where the EU has been faltering and has started to crumble and fall apart is exactly at the seams at which those who'd not follow in their predecessors' footsteps exercised change: Namely, by pressuring the member states into an EU corsage at an accelerated motion and into a general direction that had always never been bespoke. Inept policy can only lead so far - before failing fantastically. it is one thing to think about a United States of Europe. Bringing such about regardless of losses - one cannot but call it reckless and ultimately a failure. At its core the EU remains intact.