抄録
Quo vadis Europa? This is the very question that has always been posed in the history of European integration when confronted with an enlargement, and each time the answer was not given, or vague, if any. One held back from making a blueprint of future Europe, concentrating on immediately necessary minimal reforms, which was tolerated and justified from a viewpoint of the “Monnet method”. German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, putting forward a concept of “European Federation” at the Humboldt University on 12 May 2000, took the initiative in making public his stand on the finality of European integration, and caused other leading political figures to likewise present their thoughts on the future shape of Europe. This article, by analysing German, French, and British governments' positions on the EU's future, makes a study of a possible new turn of the integration process, and in consequence a change in EU-Nation States relations in the medium and long term.
The key to the future is: to deepen the integration is considered to be indispensable for Europe's coping with new situations since the Cold War ended, especially the globalization. French president Chirac's move towards an avant-garde “pioneer group” and a European Constitution as well as Fischer's “Federation” is not a mere vision, but a realistic answer to the challenges of the times. Although French leaders including Chirac persist in the sovereignty and prefer intergovernmental methods, they nowadays are ready to accept the necessary restrictions on the sovereign state's freedom and start again the “franco-german motor”. Germany and France are determined to construct the strong and autonomous Europe enough to be a major player in the world, both economically and politically. In the future, it would be possible for the CFSP to be really communitised, and the social and economic policy as well. In that case, the EU itself would strengthen independence from the Nation States and become more sovereign, and inversely be curbed and limited the state sovereignty. It would thus be established a “Federation of the Nation States”.
The problem to be solved is: whether the British nation could be identified with Continental ones and fitted for deepening on the one hand, and whether an integrative balance of power in the European Union could be kept not only between the large and the small, but also among the large Member states on the other. There would be a probability of an differentiated integration, according to circumstances. Even French foreign minister Hubert Védrine, who doesn't favour an idea of forming a “core group”, is going to resort to that and go ahead, unless at the Intergovernmental conference in 2004 one could agree about a substantial progress towards deepening, that is, a political union.
