Chapter 19 — Archipelago; where do the information platforms that are states live? The EU, Paragraph 13.1 (§19.00.13.01)
In effect, the EU is the tacit interlocutor when two of its member states talk to each other. In the same way that a state does this for its citizens, it is the EU that, silently and in the background, intervenes whenever two of its member states interact, warranting that the other state is who and what it claims to be in order to enable the communication to proceed seamlessly. For example, if Belgium and Italy are interacting, the EU is silently present each time, warranting (of course, for the purposes of communication, within its own borders each party can be whoever it claims to be – this equivalence, however, not working in terms of individuals and their states) that each party is who it claims to be in order for the interaction to continue as intended (essentially, as if the countries were a single state). However, were they not EU members, for example, if Belgium and Canada interacted, each one would first nervously try to validate the other, be it through bilateral agreements or a third-party validation mechanism (e.g. the UN and/or any other international system), before the interaction could take place. Furthermore, even if this validation occurred, the interaction would always be restricted by the boundaries of the validation mechanism used (the terms of the bilateral agreement or the international treaty/-ies signed by each party). (In reality the situation today is even more complicated than that because the EU also conditions the bilateral agreements of its member states, but there is no need to complicate the example any further given the difficulty of the scheme already.) In the example of John and Maria in Chapter 7, if they happen to be citizens of different states, the interaction between them can go in either one of two directions: if both of their states are EU member states then, through the identification mechanism described above (essentially, with three silent parties present), the interaction can take place as if both John and Maria belonged to the same state; understanding and meaning is common to both. However, if their states are non-EU member states, then the two silent parties present (their states) will have to check if, bilaterally, they accept the existence of the other (and on what terms and to what extent): interaction between John and Maria is thus always framed under the terms of this tacit but ever-present check.
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