"Now people can (and do) argue that we are all better off in our own compartments, and "determining our own future". A message to those people -- we do not live in a little bubble of our own." But some of those people are not advocatimg living in a bubble, in fact some feel that the EU has become such a compartment (or bubble if you prefer). These people feel that we are ignoring the wider world, that in fact we have retreated from the world in our bid to be good Europeans. "Looking wider, the case for a common demos is more difficult to make, but the EU, and possibly the African Union, are big regional attempts to work towards being able to express and use a common democratic mandate." Probably due to the fact that I'm more evolution than revolution in my outlook, I think that over time such an occurence (common demos) would have happened and it would have been accelerated by sticking to the free market idea. But the political classes often seem to be driven by ego and the need for legacy, so they go down the revolution front and try to short circuit human nature. I'm actually with Jedi when he says: "In short, it is now destroying that which it laboured to create, and I would argue this is happening because too little respect has been given to the differences in aims and expectations between the peoples of europe and thus the limits