Europe's Last Chance

"In the heart of Europe's current crisis, one of the continent's foremost statesmen urges for a radical remaking of the European Union in the model of the United States The diseases that plague Europe respect no borders. Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium and a leader in the European Parliament, shows that wherever we look-from the debt crisis in Greece to the rise of political Islam across Europe, the Syrian refugee crisis to Putin's aggressive imperialism-we see colossal challenges far too large for any single nation to overcome. In Europe's Last Chance, Verhofstadt proposes that Europe abandon the artificial divisions of nation-states and instead embrace a unified democracy on a continental scale: a United States of Europe. Revealing how this seemingly impossible dream nearly became a reality in 1953-when only a last-minute vote by the French parliament stopped a political and military unification of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands-Verhofstadt builds a powerful and surprising argument for the necessity of unity; so that Europe remains secure, influential, and prosperous into the future"--