The European Union is an emerging country - it is my country. For now, many don't yet understand how common necessity binds us, and some remain under the illusion that they can make it alone against China and the USA, but ever closer union is real and whoever has been on Erasmus student exchange knows we are one people. On my French passport, "Union Européenne" is written above "République Française" - that is the hierarchy. A nation is people who will to live together, and the European Union is that... The rest is a couple treaties and a few decades away !