Musings of a modern guy

Europe has a difficult task on its hands. It has a European parliament, and had further plans to move much further ahead on political and economic integration, with a EU constitution finally drafted after a lot of planning and discussion. There was a condition whereby this constitution had to be ratified by several countries in referendums, but the move to a more integrated EU was supposed to be so popular that this ratification was supposed to be a formality. But, as when things are very confident, there were spirited campaigns by anti-integration people, and in massive surprises, it was found that the referendum voting was a close thing in France and Holland. And, finally, the EU constitution was dealt with a death blow after it was voted against in the French and Dutch referendums.
In between, there was further upheaval with plans to increase the size of the EU block from 15 countries to 27 countries; this would necessitate a change in the complex voting pattern.
A meeting of the 27 countries was planned, so that discussions could happen, and hopefully for the proponents, discussions could resolve the issues. The intention of the meeting was noble; to evolve a process such that the EU could have a clearer leadership, a more unified and hence stronger voice on the world stage, and to have a much greater influence for the various national parliaments. But looks like things are not going as expected:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought on Friday to persuade Poland to compromise over a new treaty to reform the European Union after Warsaw dug in its heels to demand a change in the voting system. Kaczynski “froze the debate” by ruling out any compromise on the planned re-weighting of voting powers, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek told reporters. Britain also caused problems, saying it was not ready to back down over its “red lines.”
Failure would deepen divisions in the Union. It could prompt a small group of states to press ahead with closer integration, leaving others behind, and make richer west European countries more reluctant to aid poorer newcomers. Prospects for a deal after years of wrangling over the division of power between Brussels and member states seemed to grow this week after Poland softened its opposition.

These are fairly complex talks, and involve states having to be willing to cede some amount of authority to the EU parliament, and it is not expected that every state will be equally on board. The financial decision making of the EU had run into problems, with many states violating the principle of inflation control and deficit control when their economies went into trouble. And this is about political control and decision making, something that has a much greater impact.
A major reason for this entire effort is an attempt to get an influence on the world stage equal to that of the US and Russia, and independent countries of Europe do not stand a chance. The calculations is that if there is a policy supposed to represent the entire EU, the voice would carry a much greater gravity and have a better chance of being heard. However, as Britain shows, there are limits to how much authority that states are willing to cede, and Britain has always been reluctant to cede the same amount of authority as say the French and Germans.

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