What Kind of Europe?

Rating:
Summary: Alot of ground to cover
Review: It is a valiant effort by Dr. Tsoukalis to tackle the structural workings of the EU. The book reads more like a survey, identifying features and layers without delving in to them at much length. Of course, that would require a treatsie of encyclopaedic proportions - a caution the author fully embraces. But his overarching theme offers an engaging manner to absorb the intricacies of the EU, namely to politicize the otherwise technocratic and elitist activity by EU actors as the only viable means of making it work in the long run. Throny sovereignty issues and monetary measures have changed since the Marshall Plan - and Dr. Tsoukalis' assertion that Europe already shares a considerable amount of "federalism" from which it can build a more effective qualified federalism (with unimaginable difficult to orchestrate decentralized agencies opreating at regional and/or national levels and centralized supranational policies , ie. foreign, or "high politics", policies) for the next decades seems, if anything, an intriguing theoretical proposition. The book is not a pleasant read and requires constant pause for reflection. It will however reveal the otherwise pigeon-holed complexity of the European Union and how it might develop.