Ethnicity isn’t quite the same as nationality, and ethnicity is at least part in people’s heads and not objective.
As a matter of law, Wales is part of the UK and France isn’t. And yet Wales has a language and a flag, and you can call yourself a Welsh on census forms if you feel like it.
So there might be an element to the EU that is more like an ethnicity than a state, that the peoples of assorted Western European nations feel part of some ethnicity that’s wider than a state, just as you can belong to an ethnicity that’s more regional than a state.
Ethnicity isn’t quite the same as nationality, and ethnicity is at least part in people’s heads and not objective.
As a matter of law, Wales is part of the UK and France isn’t. And yet Wales has a language and a flag, and you can call yourself a Welsh on census forms if you feel like it.
So there might be an element to the EU that is more like an ethnicity than a state, that the peoples of assorted Western European nations feel part of some ethnicity that’s wider than a state, just as you can belong to an ethnicity that’s more regional than a state.