Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank President, who calls himself a “true European”, gave a speech accepting the Charlemagne Prize for European Unity. He proposed a “deeper intervention” in the economies of struggling countries such as Greece and praised the idea of a “fiscal union” instead of merely a “currency union”. This would give leading countries such as Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Finland “veto power” over sloppy budgets proposed by such countries as Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.

Of course what’s he’s prosing is a greater political unity which he terms, as many have before him, “the United States of Europe”.

This is not a new idea. Alexander started it. Caesar perfected it. Charlemagne, the emperor for whom the prize is named, achieved it once more in the Middle Ages. Centuries after that Napoleon dreamed of it. And even the unsuccessful Adolf Hitler had vaguely romantic notions back in the 1930’s when he nicknamed his train, “Amerika”.