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I suppose most Americans are unaware that the EU has a Supreme Court, a Parliament and a Council/Senate.   Few Europeans are wont to admit that these institutions constitute a government, so perhaps we can’t be blamed here in America for not taking greater notice of the relatively new government across the pond.  So it is no surprise to read that President Obama decided to skip the 2010 EU-US summit in Europe.  To be sure, he was increasingly facing challenges implementing his domestic reform agenda and had indicated that in 2010 he would spend more time on American soil. His approval ratings in the US dropped as the economic recovery was slow to translate onto the job market. Even so, officials in Brussels reacted with disappointment to the news. I don't blame them. “It is normally the case that the summits are summits precisely because they are attended by heads of state and government,” EU commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hanson told reporters. Even though as US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon stated to reporters, “The president as you all know has travelled to Europe in his first year more than any president has ever done in the past,”   the US President had yet to formally meet the new president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy.   Obama would likely insist that he had meet with several of the EU’s states’ heads of state or government, andthat they held more power in their union than their counterparts in the US.  Even so, if the EU and US are indeed commensurate as empire-level unions of comparable republics, the US President should have made meeting the EU leaders a priority.   In contrast to the US, the EU spreads out its presidency over at least three people.  The EU Commission, which is the executive branch involved in legislation as well, has a president.  The EU’s Senate or Council (which represents the state governments) has one as well.  Also, there is a rotating presidency, wherein one of the state governments holds a figure-head presidency.

So it is not difficult to understand why President Obama would skip the EU-US Summit  in 2010 (though he attended the next year's) even though the EU’s states are now semi-sovereign (as are the American states) and the EU holds the rest of the governmental sovereignty.  Obama's decision was based in part on a category mistake that implicitly relegates the US to being akin to a state in another union.  If the American President is serious about feeling pride for the Union for which he stands, he must lead in a manner that treats like with like.  This would involve standing for real change in that it would mean dealing with the European state governments through the EU, rather than independently.  They are in a Union, after all.  Es ist die Zeit zu aufwachen.  Il faut que nous nous réveillions.  Indeed, it is difficult to awaken to changed political realities and reorient oneself.

Source: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5202541,00.html