One of the rather under-appreciated features of the European Union as aneconomicentity is that there are two wildly divergent intellectual approaches underpinning policy.
Precisely because it has evolved as aneconomicentity, but not as a military one and scarcely as a diplomatic one, it has found friends almost everywhere and few if any real enemies.
In a unique economic experiment, 16 countries with a combined population of 329m have handed over monetary sovereignty to anentity at arm's length from national politics: the European Central Bank (ECB).