ABSTRACT
Prosperity and peace have always been the two main reference points in the legitimization of European integration and governance. The notion of an ‘ever closer union’ was no doubt a response to the experience of two World Wars and an answer to the question of how one can transform conflicts among nation-states so that war becomes an unlikely, if not impossible scenario. The Franco-German rapprochement in the aftermath of the Second World War is thus often credited to the integration process, although causality in this case is certainly not a one-way street (see e.g. Miard-Delacroix and Hudemann 2005; Treacher 2002). Yet the case of Northern Ireland also shows that even violent conflict can persist for decades within an integration framework, even though integration may have helped to bring about eventual resolution (Hayward and Wiener 2008).
