Thought provoking reads on Europe/the EU

Am on the road which gives me the opportunity sometimes to catch on the reading. Or at least reading about reading. Which leads me to John Lloyd's thoughtprovoking review of Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe, a volume edited by Daniel Levy, Max Pensky and John Torpey for Verso (1995). Lloyd is very critical of the highly normative drift of most of the arguments in Old...New...Core, especially those which build directly upon the infamous Habermas/Derrida contribution to FAZ and Liberation in 2003, heralding a new 'European' movement and togetherness grounded in the 15 February protests against the impending invasion of Iraq. His demolition of those who treat national sovereignties today as illusory is particularly effective and worth reading, and a cautionary reminder that the problem of national European sovereignties in previous centuries which underpins a lot of what triggered the European Union is in itself enough to sustain a post-Cold War twenty-five member EU which now exists on a continental scale. Less successful are Lloyd's attempts to contrast the normative endeavours of most of Old...New...Core's contributors with the work of the Policy Network which did a lot of work with the UK Presidency on its much heralded review of the European Social Model. Not least this is because the attempt to derive 'generally applicable lessons' from the Nordic Experience seems widely disputed in the blogosphere. See here and here.