'Let’s be honest: the union does not exist'

Who would have thought it possible, these days, to find a European federalist with a sense of optimism?

But Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian politician who leads the liberal group in the European Parliament (EP), is precisely that.

“I’m more optimistic than I was a few months ago,” he told EUobserver in an interview.

Verhofstadt is one of the few EU politicians who openly calls for the creation of a single superstate. His EP group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Eur...