The Benefits of Consolidating Power in the European Union

I've added this text to "The European Union: Democratic Values, The Euro, Crises and Migration: 7.1. The Power of Solidarity" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

The benefits of EU consolidarity means that multinationalism should often trump national interests. This means that when the EU acts together as a whole, the advantage to all of its members is greater than if countries maintained their own unilaterial national policies. If a nation combined its efforts in (say) ten endeavours within consolidated EU plans, it would benefit enormously even if in a few of those areas this means that the norm which emerges is not one that is beneficial. It is like any collection of humans: If you group together, the whole group has more capability, even though sometimes all individuals will feel that peer pressure has stopped them doing something they wanted. Anyway, needless to say that at present the EU is only united on a few, mostly economic, points. Great rewards can be gained in the future if further chioces are made at a EU level rather than a national one, and of those those is energy foreign policy especially. The Economist ran an article on this in 2008 with regards to Russian antagonism:

“The European Union will be heeded by Russia only when it speaks with one voice. That was the universal battle cry in Brussels as EU officials and diplomats hurried back from their summer holidays to prepare for an emergency EU summit on the Georgian crises, called by the current French presidency for September 1st. And faced with the sobering sight of tanks trundling around Europe's backyard, there was equally loud agreement among national politicians that their usual squabbling over the right attitude towards Russia harms the common interests of the 27-member union. [...]

A November 'power audit' by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think-tank, argued that Europe was throwing away what should be its considerable leverage over Russia. After all, the EU's population is more than three times that of Russia, and its wealth more than a dozen times greater. The EU depends heavily on Russian energy, but the flip-side is that it is Russia's biggest market for gas (indeed, for all Russian exports). If the 27 EU countries dealt with Russia as one, they would surely have less to fear from Moscow hawks.”

The Economist (2008)