Dificuldades e soluções (ou pseudo-soluções) da integração : a cooperação reforçada europeia, mecanismo de integração ou nova forma de mera cooperação internacional?

Abstract

European integration has faced severe difficulties, which have not allowed, so far, the achievement of a higher level of interpenetration of the intervenient States. It occurs, in that phenomenon, a "structural" ambivalence, conducting to a limited de facto integration. "Enhanced cooperation" is a mechanism intended to give a new impulse to European life. But are we dealing with a juridical-political expedient still comprised in the field of integration or already located outside that frame? Enhanced cooperation represents an attempt to counterbalance the problem of the existence of diverse (sometimes, quite diverse) interests and attitudes of the Member States of the European Union, formally consecrating the possibility of "spaces" of diversity in the midst of the European community phenomenon. But doesn't integration consist essentially in uniformity? Or the lack of uniformity, allowed this way, still fits in the concept of "integration", thus not meaning a resignation to this very model of relationship among States?