We all have our own ideas of what defines our sovereign nation.  In Britain, for the most part, we have obvious physical boundaries, unchanged over the centuries, and we have not been invaded, occupied or defeated for generations.  All of which, for better or worse, gives us a heightened sense of identity.  If we lived on the French/German border we might shrug philosophically to find one day that we are living in Germany, because in a generation or two we will probably be living in France again.  C'est la guerre.

In Britain we are much more rigid, and we regard any social change stemming from Brussels as a potential attack on our national identity.  Some of these 'attacks' are worth fighting, but in general we should really only be concerned with changes that are irreversible.  If we were to relinquish sterling it would be difficult to resurrect our own currency, and year in and year out we would have to live with lost flexibility in our monetary policy.

But commercial organisations are dynamic, introducing internal change in response to external factors, often centralising, de-centralising and back again as circumstances dictate. They are happy to 'move with the times' providing they retain the ability to control change in the future.

Over the last few days, much has been said against the idea of a European Army.  Of course, it would not really be an army, and it would not necessarily result in the abandonment of a British Army.  Perhaps.  But even if it were to be so extreme, would that impact on our sovereignty?  It certainly would not be irreversible.

Since World War II Britain has not been under threat from other European nations, although on a number of occasions we became involved in military engagements elsewhere.  Except where recently established boundaries in the Balkans and in the old Soviet bloc failed to hold, the continent of Europe has not seen one established nation having to defend itself from another.  Which suggests that national armies might be obsolete.

Had there been a large European Army over the last thirty years how would history have been affected?  Perhaps when the police in Northern Ireland failed to maintain peace, the arrival of Europeans would have been less provocative than the British Army.  When the Balkans began to fragment, a cohesive military 'policing operation' could have been instigated much more quickly and efficiently.  When the Falklands were invaded, Britain would have had to persuade her European partners to make British troops available; perhaps Europe would have counselled caution and all-out war might have been avoided.

So for the next decade or so it would make a lot of sense for Europe to have the ability to police its own internal disputes and defend itself against an external aggressor.  And perhaps ally itself to another continent to keep peace somewhere else in the world.  But as every soldier knows, an army is only as good as its lines of communications, so the first European decision must surely be to establish a common language as standard for all activities.  There may be arguments in favour of several languages, but fortunately one has already been established as the world's lingua franca.  The language of airlines, computers and the Internet, English is the obvious choice for parliament, law-making and military exercises. Fortunately, our European neighbours with their sang-froid and fluid boundaries will not feel their sovereignty threatened by such a minor detail.