@Hrothbern.
It is a good argument, particularly for a smaller continental country such as the Netherlands.
It is less applicable to a non continental country such as the UK.
yes
The UK combines geographical periphery, sea borders and big size
That gives another balance of natural practical advantages versus several kinds of "burden" indeed.
For France and Germany the situation is clearly differing, they have only their size, and Germany even less sea borders than France.
Italy somewhere closer to UK than France in this respect.
If you look at the following graph, the crossborder commuters (crossing national borders, with Nuts 2 size of region of home residence), you can see that the France->Swiss, the France<->Germany, the France<->Belgium borders are already disappearing.
If you know the national borders good enough you can see as well that for example the Voralberg-Inssbruck part of Austria, the western part of Poland and Czech, Slovakia, Estonia commute more to other countries.
This level, as % of residential jobs, is however still far lower than intra-national commuting between Nuts 2 sized areas, that involve similar commuting distances, shown in the second graph. A big potential left.
the within nation inter-regional commuting:
But more to the point the argument is for the EEC, and not for a centrally run European
Union super state that replaces nation states downgrading them into mere regions of itself.
I simply do not believe the EU will end up as a "super-state" in the traditional meaning of a (federal) state.
I think it will develop into an area of regions.
A balance between a "good enough" democratic identification and societal cohesion (driving smaller entities) on the one hand and a "good enough" utilising of scale size (by coordinating, pooling, sharing) on the other hand.
When the Capital of a nation is too far away and disconnected from too many national regions, and the performance of the Capital is not able to redistribute prosperity by capital investments, or domestic migrations, the drive for cohesion between a government and the governed is at the end of the day a drive for more local self-determination.
The better a Capital performs in this respect, the longer that nation-state will be stable. And instability is the final argument to make a Capital adapt.
The very fact that so many current nation-states need so much fear mongering from migrants, religions, terrorists, etc, etc to increase tribal nationalism, only underpins that they fear that they are fighting a lost battle.
I think it will not be the superstate that eats up the nations, but the regions eating up the nations.
The EU needs only to deliver those functions that need scale size and are basically pushed up from the regions towards the EU (Scotland prefers pushing up to the EU above Westminster control)
When Czechoslovakia became free, it was (for me) not a surprise it split up in two nations.
The concept of the federal state at nation-state level is imo already outdated, and transferring that concept to the future of the EU is not well thought through. We live in a completely other situation as in 1900.
And this all is besides the practical arguments that the overwhelming majority of EU members prefers a pro-EU future, but absolutely not the full treat of a federal EU (when they understand all the consequences)
And by lack of better words that pro-EU is often confused with the word federation.
Which is used by strong federalists to push for a traditional empire-like federation (like the US).
Which on its turn is used by strong nationalist to claim that "the EU" wants to be an empire.
)
