Direct Example

The admittedly illiterate call for the EU President to be popularly, even directly, elected exposes the fatal flaw in the entire Eurofederalist project. Such an election is impossible without a common language. Everyone in North Wales or the Western Isles can speak English to the necessary level, indeed with absolute fluency. Everyone in Catalonia or the Basque Country can speak Spanish to the necessary level. And so on. The extent to which this no longer applies in, for example, the United Kingdom (where it is widely overstated, but still a real issue) or the United States (where there is no overstatement involved) is a huge and growing problem, a major impending, or in America arguably arrived, crisis both for democracy and for good government. The EU, for this very reason, can never be an example of either.