Only UK, for some strange fluke of a reason said "NO!"
Read a report from the British rag "Guardian":
Of course there was no formal treaty inaugurating a United States of Europe; indeed, thanks to Britain, there was no formal treaty at all.
Instead, the hours of bleary-eyed, caffeinated negotiation yielded an agreement on a "fiscal compact", a new arrangement that will see the 17 countries of the eurozone, backed by the nine states who remain on the outside, setting budgets together rather than alone.
Now the likes of Greece and Portugal will have to seek approval for how much they tax and spend from their "partners" – or, simply translated, Germany. Fittingly, Angela Merkel hailed the agreement as a "breakthrough toward the stability union, the fiscal union which will be implemented, step by step, over the next few years".
For France and Germany, this is the "ever closer union" of Europe's founding dreams. For them, the creation of the single currency was one large step towards that goal; now, paradoxically, a crisis in the currency has forced the next giant leap. But the direction could not be clearer. Call it what you like – integration or harmonisation, compact or union – the idea is the same: a Europe in which national sovereignty gradually fades away. As Der Spiegel magazine put it, "Europe is on the path toward becoming a federal country".
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