[squiggleblaz]

I would've thought more countries = easier to unite Europe. Each country has more of an incentive to be united and less of an ability to separated if there's many small independent countries.

Someone wants to have a European Civil Code, and they say "but I already know the rules to trade with 30 million people". When you cut up the countries, they say "but if I want to trade with someone an hour's drive away, the rules are different - it's better to unify".

There's more boundaries where rules change, so there's more motivation to smoothe them out.

There's less power for each individual government, because their voice is 1 in 60 instead of 1 in 28. You'll quickly come to an understanding that the rules of European decision making have to be standard federal rules, rather than some compromise between federal and international rules.

The motivation for European integrationists is absolutely and solely for Catalonia and other places to become direct members of Europe.