Coup d'État in Turkey under way?

[abaris]

That's fine.. But I think the EU needs to carefully consider whether idealism is sufficient to ensure long term integration of Europe, or does it need to offer to its members the benefits of being able to,act collectively as a great power to achieve that goal.

It's not idealism. That's where you're mistaken again. The project was primarily designed to assure peaceful relations and trade to mutual benefit. After two wars being at each others throats.

The political integration, and I'm all for it, is impossible right now. First because of nationalisms - that's why I said, expansion happened too quickly during the last decade. Before the political parameters had been set inside the existing community. The more members, the more difficult it gets to get a unanimous vote. And secondly because of NATO being a competition. Some countries, and I'm thinking primarily about Eastern Europe, consider themselves more a member of NATO than of a to be united Europe.