federalism. Unfortunately, the word federalism translates very badly among
the languages of Europe, carrying very different implications according to
different national experiences and political cultures. There is a general agree-
ment that some degree of further political integration is desirable, but how
great and of what sort is not only controversial between member states, but
inside most of them as well. The proponents of political union, apart from the
Commission, are mainly the smaller countries at the heart of the original
European Economic Community (EEC), Belgium, Luxembourg and the
Netherlands, who have little political impact in the world individually, and
can only become more influential as part of a greater political union. The
United Kingdom, as in most cases involving greater European co-operation, is
clearly the least enthusiastic, although the degree of genuine enthusiasm in
France and Germany is also suspect in the minds of most analysts. In many ways
the debate is redundant, because the EU already has a range of powers to
decide and enforce policy, and it is not clear that political union really means
much more than recognizing these powers and bringing them under more
obvious public control. Also, there already exists a political union in the sense
that the European Parliament, directly elected from constituencies in the
member states, could, if granted more powers to oversee the Commission,
function as a democraticlegislaturein those many and extensive areas where
the Treaty of Rome authorizes Community Law. Indeed, reform treaties from
Maastricht onwards have all incrementally increased the Parliament’s powers in
an attempt to eradicate the ‘democratic deficit’. The main obstacle to political
union is probably not the attitudes of the current members, but the pressing
question of the future expansion of the EU and, in particular, the problem of
how, and how far, to integrate Central and Eastern European economies into
the system.
Politically Correct
It is not clear whether the idea of ‘politically correct’ speech and thought as a
standard increasingly imposed by public opinion in Western societies is real, or
a journalistic exaggeration of a very minor tendency. Furthermore, if thereisa
real pressure for people to be politically correct, it is unclear that this is
particularly new. Political correctness as it is understood in the USA refers to a
set of attitudes aboutdiscrimination, mainly in the fields of race and sex. It is
politically incorrect to speak in any way that can be seen as differentiating
between people in a way that could conceivably be detrimental to them. It is
even more incorrect to give credence to any empirical data, however
scientific, that might support a comparative judgment about any groupvis-
a`-visanother. Thus researchers trying to establish even a basic physiological
difference between racial groups have been found to be politically incorrect,
Politically Correct