Is the European Union More than a Regional State-System?

The international order in Europe has gone through dramatic change during the last sixty years. It took two appalling wars at the beginning of last century for the continent's leaders to realise the dangers of nationalism and the traditional balance-of-power politics, with which it is often associated. Their response to the devastation of total war was to lay the premises for European cooperation, which today is institutionalised as the European Union. The extraordinarily long period of peace that the continent has enjoyed after the Second World War is enough to prove that the project for European unity has been a remarkable success. In the 21st century, cooperation takes place at a scope and depth unparalleled by any other regional union in the world.
Throughout its existence, the EU has also been the subject of intense intellectual debate. …