The EU project was not originally a customs union; that was a lie, borne out by the fact that the 1951 Treaty of Paris had the phrase “Resolved to substitute for age-old rivalries the merging of their essential interests; to create, by establishing an economic community, the basis for a broader and deeper community among peoples longs divided by bloody conflicts; and to lay the foundations for institutions which will give direction to a destiny henceforward shared” as its fifth line, and the preamble of the 1957 Treaty of Rome had the phrase “Determined to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe” as its very first line. The governmental pattern we see today was already in place even in the 1951 Treaty of Paris, albeit some institutions under different names (Commission = “High Authority”, Parliament = “General Assembly” et al).
The USA is contracting, not expanding. The EU to this point has been expanding, and even if in the future it may look as if it contracts, none of the nations that get relegated to the second tier (also by design) will escape its direct rule, and many more nations besides will be so subjugated. Not enough people noticed that Obama said in his first year as president that he greatly admired “European leadership” and has been following its pattern ever since.
By treaty, every member state that joined/joins the EU has to transform its economy into the “social market economy” (Soziale marktwirtschaft), which was conceived as a nominal “third way” between outright Marxism and “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” but leaning heavily in the Marxist direction, if not having fascist tendencies from its outset. The EU is no haphazard venture; and in fact it is a new permutation of an old empire, as Otto von Habsburg once pointed out, and also Bernard Connolly when he mentioned that the “big” member states were doing what they do under “the banner of Charlemagne”.
The only thing that it was at the beginning was a customs union. That it by now has become a supra-government of many nations, and that is was never a "haphazard venture" I don't dispute.
Do you agree with the description of the EU as "the project of unifying the countries of Europe in order to harness its collective economic power, and to avoid the bloody internecine strife that stains its history".?
The author concludes that by this yardstick it failed. Do you agree?
Matters of economic expansion or contraction matter little in that. As the author points out, the European fault lines are in decline of Christianity, demographic contraction and lack of unifying civic passion. That is determinative. The economics follow. The US looks marginally better, especially if the legacy of Obama is remedied soon.