It would seem that for the future the nation-state will undergo sharp limitations of its sovereignty, occupying a twilight zone between full national independence and real international authority. This erosion of sovereignty has already begun with the development of a truly global marketplace. Capital investments flow across national boundaries unnoticed.
Transnational corporations buy and sell anywhere.
Domestic economic issues have become routinely involved in international policies. Nowhere has economic self-sufficiency been more dramatically reduced than in Brussels. Brussels, the center of the European Union, prescribes everything from working conditions to the contents of cheese. Furthermore, there is a serious sense of European citizenship, along with the rights that go with it, and laying the basis for a supranational identity. The power of the European Court of Human Rights led Turkey, an aspiring member of the European Union, where the death penalty is banned, to postpone the execution of Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader.