Why we need two Europes

Rome

DAVID Cameron's opening bid on the UK's renegotiation of its European Union membership offers an important, if unwitting, opportunity for a necessary reshaping of Europe's structure. The British prime minister's proposal for an exemption from the commitment towards an "ever closer union" has been widely interpreted as an essentially formal request with little or no substantive implications.

I believe that the opposite is true. The British request raises a fundamental point, and obliges everyone to recognise that the mantra of 28 states having the same ultimate objective (albeit to be achieved through different routes and timescales) is officially dead. Talk of a single - though multi-tiered and multi-speed - Europe is over.