The “utopian” idea of a Europe without nation-states has failed and the “spectre of a break-up” is now haunting the continent, the President of the European Council has admitted.
Donald Tusk said that Eurocrats had “failed to notice” their ideals were not shared by the vast majority of European peoples and only served to fuel the rise of Euroscepticism across the continent.
Addressing the European People’s Party, Mr Tusk said: “Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe do not share our Euro-enthusiasm.
“Disillusioned with the great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now.”
Instead, he added, movements are rising up across the continent to oppose further integration.
“Today, Euro-scepticism, or even Euro-pessimism have become an alternative to those illusions.
“And increasingly louder are those who question the very principle of a united Europe.”
The result is that there is now a real possibility of the European Union fragmenting as citizens become increasingly resentful of centralised power.
“The spectre of a break-up is haunting Europe and a vision of a federation doesn’t seem to me like the best answer to it.”
He went to reiterate those sentiments at another speech the following day, saying that total European integration is “simply not possible” and promoting ideals of a united Europe “only leads to the strengthening of Eurosceptic moods”.
“Forcing lyrical and in fact naïve Euro-enthusiastic visions of total integration, regardless of the obvious good will of their proponents, is not a suitable answer to our problems,” he added.
The admission by the European Council President that further integration may not be possible is striking as it is the first time a senior EU figure has admitted their project may have to be halted.
As Britain debates whether to leave the European Union completely, nations in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Hungary are becoming increasingly resentful of EU interference in their domestic affairs.
The European Commission recently said that proposed reforms to Poland’s constitution threaten “rule of law”, however international commentator on Poland’s political affairs Matthew Tyrmand wrote in Breitbart London that the real anti-democratic and unconstitutional crisis in the nation was the previous government’s “illegal packaging of the judiciary”.
European Commissioner Frans Timmermans said last September that countries like Poland must get used to imposed demographic changes, accepting “diversity” as “the future of the world.”