ABSTRACT

That political, as well as economic, union is necessary if Europe is to count more in the world is one of the oldest, but also one of the most fallacious, arguments of the rhetoric of European integration. In some governmental systems the potential movement of citizens from one jurisdiction to other offering comparable services at lower cost may act as a stimulus to intergovernmental competition. Already in the 1960s some German legal scholars were claiming that the institutions of the European Communities had been designed with the idea of replicating the model of the Federal Republic. Monetary union may be seen as the latest and most advanced version of total harmonization, presenting many of the same pathologies of other applications of the traditional one-size-fits-all philosophy of European governance. To conclude: there are different models of federalism as there are different modes of territorial and functional integration, and a great variety of forms of inter-state cooperation and of policy coordination.