… The Single Market, the Euro, enlargement, Turkey, the Iraq crisis … all these breaks (and that is what they represent for most citizens, whether in their daily lives or in their visions of the world) have considerably increased the degree of “European expertise” of our fellow citizens; and above all they gave them the legitimate feeling that they now had a say.
excerpt translated from “L’année de la grande transition européenne“, Franck Biancheri, 04/01/2005