In the March 2, 2010 issue of The New York Times, Roger Cohen illustrates how useful EU-US comparisons can be.[1] He is careful to compare the E.U. of his time not to the contemporaneous U.S., but, rather, to it a few decades into its founding. In other words, he corrects for the impact of time on political development. This is not to say that the E.U. in 2010 was akin to the U.S. under its Articles of Confederation. The Articles treaty evinced far less integration politically and economically. For example, whereas the Articles sported only a common council of delegates from the states, the E.U. in 2010 had a presidency (the European Council, whose president was Van Rompuy), an executive branch (the E.U. Commission, whose chief executive was Barroso), a bicameral legislature (the E.U. Council (of Ministers) and the E.U. Parliament), and a supreme court (the European Court of Justice, or ECJ). In fact, whereas under the Articles the American republics held governmental sovereignty, the ECJ held in 1963 and again in 1964 that E.U. law is supreme over state law and state constitutions. In short, whereas the Articles did not split the atom of governmental sovereignty, the E.U. in 2010 was a federal system of dual sovereignty. Like that of the U.S., the E.U.'s federal system is itself on the empire level; its republics being commensurate with the early modern kingdoms.
The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.
1. Roger Cohen, “Greece, Europe and Alexander Hamilton,” The
New York Times, March 1, 2010.