After the tragedies of World War II, European leaders have made striving efforts to prevent such a catastrophic event from occurring on their continent again. The best solution seemed to be highly mechanized cooperation among the highest European powers to assure that future conflict, and perhaps war, could not arise between them. If all the states ran themselves in a manner cooperating with their neighbors, conflict could be avoided. To prevent other nations from not cooperating, treaties and institutions would have to be designed for each area of international interest such as trade, communications, security, and so forth. As the century progressed, more organizations, institutions and associations were developed and soon leaders …show more content…

So, even by these simplified guidelines the outlook for the creation of a new "European identity" is rather grim.

The recent endeavors of the European Union have not been as vastly successful as originally hoped. It was hoped that the Euro would be as popular to investors as the US dollar bringing the included nations of the European Union to an equal economic plateau. As mentioned above, this has not been the case and the Euro is not performing in the world economy at all as well as expected . This has shaken the public's confidence in the European Union causing some states to rethink how beneficial European integration in fact may be to them. As a result, certain states, following Denmark's lead, refuse to even join the European Union as it is today . This is a perfect example of the reluctance states

have to yield their individual sovereignty to a greater "European state". Robert Gilpin observes:

Despite the impressive goals achieved by postwar efforts to create European political and economic unity, individual European nations remain unwilling to sacrifice economic autonomy and political independence to a truly unified European economy and a European polity capable of speaking with one voice in international affairs .

In the short run, therefore, if the EU continues to fail in its attempts at integration, support will fall, and it will become more difficult