ABSTRACT
An account closer to observed realities is that the body which calls itself the European Union to mark that it is more than the three economic communities is a little of everything. Its Central Bank is as much uniate as it is ‘federal’, which is what the Delors Report called it because it works through what were national banks. Whatever the developments or retrogressions are, they are the interplay between internal and external situations which the leaderships neither create nor control and the kaleidoscope of political power with the governance of the Member States. The counterpoint is the equally unchanging insistence of Chancellor Kohl, the spokesman for integrated Europe: Only the European Community can serve as the strong, dynamic nucleus and foundation of pan-European unification. The Union’s anguish, shared with the political elites that drive it, is that the man and woman in the European streets see around them little sign of the proclaimed benefits.
