Quote Originally Posted by tedteague View Post
false, europe is not a collection of different countries all with their own way of doing things. it is a UNION. and while local governments may be elected on their own, western europe is much more like the US, the nation is europe, the state/province/territories are italy, france, ect al
Not at all. The EU is actually less formal than that. The nation is not Europe at all as each of the member states still see themselves as 'nations'. It is more of a tight alliance. The 'president' of the EU, for example, is not even elected nor do they have any real power other than as a figurehead. Instead, the heads of state (or the Prime Minister in the case of UK, as the PM is not the head of state he is only the representative of the head of state) of EU members rotate the presidential seat amongst themselves.

The move is more towards a federal state system but, beyond a common currency (which at least one member does not currently follow and several member states are now regretting joining due to the massive economical problems it has caused because of the initial massive differences in the values of the original currencies) and some EU laws and regulations (mainly linked to environmental issues, trade agreements and weights and measures) the countries are still largely independent. We don't pay taxes to the EU directly (though each member pays for the upkeep of the bureaucracy of the system), many countries conveniently ignore some of the laws of the EU (which makes them unlike the federal laws of the US which are stringently enforced) and there is a lot of squabbling between countries. I suspect that this is because, unlike the the US, we have had neither a war of independence nor a civil war to unify us under one banner (cos there is nothing like a common external threat to make even warring neighbours band together in the long term...) plus the EU has not been around as long as the US and was initially a set of trade agreements established post WWII with no formal unification until much later.