>During the next few months, Europe will transform itself from a tightly
>knit family of well-known Western nations into a federation

I think there is a misunderstanding on the part of whoever wrote the
original article. It is recognised by almost everyone that the current EU
structure will not scale once (or if) the ten candidate countries join in
2004. As a result, a Constitutional Convention was established to
investigate how the structure can be reformed, and how the current
confusion of multiple treaties can be simplified. Their current thinking
seems to favour a US-style federation (to the extent of renaming the EU,
the United States of Europe), but there is a huge amount of opposition to
this from the national governments (who will lose some power), the European
Commission (who will lose a lot of power) and some local populations.
Perhaps more relevant is that fact that there's nothing to force the
current decision-makers to take any notice of the recommendations.

In fact, the Constitutional Convention can't even agree on the best way to
proceed, and there have even been arguments about the preamble (whether it
should mention religion etc..). I therefore think that we're unlikely to
see a satisfactory outcome in the near future, and we're certainly a long
way from the member countries relinquishing their sovereignty.

>indeed this appears to be a clue that the magic moment is approaching when
>most of europes 44 worldclass tripoints will simply melt away into
>erstwhile tricountry points become trifederative ones

I wouldn't worry too much as I don't see this happening any time soon!
Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll still be able to have just as much stateful
multipointing fun as you do within the US.

Regards,

Kevin Meynell