European Integration and its Implications on the Decline of State Sovereignty
The evolution of European integration has raised fundamental concerns as to whether or not state sovereignty is a necessary sacrifice for the furtherance of European Union (hereinafter E.U.) member states’ national interests. The inherent precept for any form of integration among neighboring nation-states is federalism. Precursors to this premise such as William Penn (1644-1718), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Saint-Simon (1760-1825), and Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869), envisaged a Europe united through an inter- European common economic system and a sovereign European legislative body; all while respecting the national patronages and law making duties of European nations – a federal system. Political decision makers in the early twentieth-century realized the paradox facing Europe; demonstrated in the inter-European fighting of World Wars I and II and the failure of the League of Nations [...]