Europe as social reality

What is “Europe”? There exist European legal rules, emergent from the institutional structure constructed from the treaties negotiated among the separate nation-states over the half-century since World War II. The social reality that is Europe in 1996 remains far removed from the social reality that is the United States, where individuals are directly subject to federal laws as well as those laws promulgated through the separate states. Europe is not yet a federal union or a federalism, but may qualify as a confederation of nation-states. Europe, as observed, does not correspond to the theorists' model for political federalism. It remains open as to whether or not any approximation to this model will ultimately be realized. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996