L'interesse nazionale dell'Unione Europea: il problema politologico della politica estera europea

States and EU are not respectively prevailing on each other nor are separate: sovereign states "pool" their sovereignty in order to increase their joint capability to act as a single subject. They do not aim to keep separate the competences, which derive from the territorial nature of their power, but wish to pool them as well. Is it possible that at the end of this journey a new state will result? In this essay the author holds that this entity - neither state or super-state nor federation or confederation - is a thoroughly novel construction with respect to the other ones we know, as it started growing half a century ago: a reason why tools we made up through the past few centuries may not be suitable to a much more recent case. Foreign policy, security and borders do not have, for the EU, the same meaning they used to have for modern states.The object is different, different are its traits, as a consequence analytical tools have to be changed as well.;

Luigi Bonanate, L'interesse nazionale dell'Unione Europea: il problema politologico della politica estera europea in "TEORIA POLITICA" 3/2002, pp , DOI: