German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was quite candid recently in Spiegel Online about the nature of European politics:
If we had always said we would only take steps toward integration if they would immediately work 100 percent, we would never have advanced by so much as a meter. That's why we wanted to introduce the euro first and then quickly make the decisions needed for a political union.
He sounds very like Jean Monnet, whose preferred method of political engrenage has long been adopted (tacitly or not) by the European political elite. So too evidently has been Monnet's supranationalism. Schäuble:
So far, member states have almost always had the final say in Europe. This cannot continue.
At the end of this week, the leaders of four major European institutions plan to present concrete proposals for the relinquishment of more sovereignty, in a variety of areas, to Brussels.