This is a study of the background and evolution of the European Parliament, and in particular of the role of a popularly elected European Parliament as a "legitimating" factor in the development of a nascent United States of Europe.
To speak of history while it is still "news" is an exceedingly risky enterprise. Yet it is not unreasonable, even now, to argue that the years 1989 1992 will be seen, in future generations even, perhaps, in future centuries as one of the epochal, revolutionary turning points in world history. Certainly it can be said that a world order that had existed for roughly half a century, that of the "Cold War era," came to an end in these years. Whether these years will usher in a "new world order," in the phrase so much used by President George Bush during the Persian Gulf War, (And scarcely heard since the war ended. An irony of the times is that the U.S. has had at this time of flux a President profoundly dedicated to the status quo and "business as usual." This is not without broader significance to our discussion. The potential for a popularly elected European Parliament to generate the impulse for a United States of Europe is increased by the inability of the United States of America to define a broad new role of world leadership for itself creating a vacuum "Europe" may increasingly tend to fill), or only the beginning of prolonged instability and disorder, remains to be seen. But it is entirely plausible, even probable, that, just as World War I marks the real beginning of "the twentieth century" as a distinct period in Western and world history the end of the Old Regime, the beginning of total war, the rise of mass parties and ideologies, etc. so will the years 1989 92 mark the political "end" of the twentieth century and the beginning, for future historians, of the twenty first century as a historical era.
The revolutionary changes of 1989 92 are all the more remarkable ...