Integration of Europe
Challenge for regional integration (anywhere)[edit]
"The foundation for any system of governance is the rule of law and the primary institution for promulgating law is the legislature. While the authority of local and national legislatures is generally respected, regional and international legislative bodies have been the subject of fear and suspicion."
The proposal for a United States of Europe and its economic unification is among the most significant landmarks in the League of Nations' history[edit]
"A general Pact on security has been the central purpose towards which these efforts have, ever since the League was born, tended to converge. The Treaty of Guarantee which, in the initial stages of its development, its members had considered and discussed; the debate on the Geneva Protocol, the discussion of which, at a later period, aroused among the nations, both within the League and outside it, such fierce controversy; the subsequent proposal for a United States of Europe and for the economic unification of that continent; and last but not least the policy of sanctions initiated by its members, may be regarded as the most significant landmarks in its checkered history."
- (Shoghi Effendi, in a letter dated March 11, 1936, World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 191)
Despite the ridicule of the proposal for the United States of Europe and failure of its economic union, the consideration of these ideas were evidence of their advance[edit]
"The fierce opposition which greeted the abortive scheme of the Geneva Protocol; the ridicule poured upon the proposal for a United States of Europe which was subsequently advanced, and the failure of the general scheme for the economic union of Europe, may appear as setbacks to the efforts which a handful of foresighted people are earnestly exerting to advance this noble ideal. And yet, are we not justified in deriving fresh encouragement when we observe that the very consideration of such proposals is in itself an evidence of their steady growth in the minds and hearts of men? In the organized attempts that are being made to discredit so exalted a conception are we not witnessing the repetition, on a larger scale, of those stirring struggles and fierce controversies that preceded the birth, and assisted in the reconstruction, of the unified nations of the West?"
- (Shoghi Effendi, in a letter dated November 28, 1931, World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, pp. 44-45)
See also[edit]
- beast (regarding mistaken interpretation by some of European integration being foretold negatively in the book of Revelation as a "beast")
- world currency
- free trade
- Federalism/over-centralization