And, increasingly, there is recognition that the question is not either "ever closer union" or not.
Will "ever closer union" deliver more democracy and peace or will it sow tension and division?
In the spirit of ever closer union, we were even taught to sing it in Italian.
Hence the need for an avant-garde to keep the ideal of ever closer union alive.
The approach is to build an ever closer union incrementally, step by step.
The Eurozone is forced to take the road of ever closer union but this is not a path the UK will take.
It is the country that threatens the dream of "ever closer union".
The importance of rejecting ever closer union lies in stating something explicitly that mainstream politics in Europe has been side-stepping for decades.
If you are one of those that insists that Europe must move to ever closer union then this is really a rather scary moment.
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In France or Germany, these types of argument touch deep insecurities about the war and the need to buttress peace by "ever closer union".
In the 1980s, when Jacques Delors as commission president was pursuing an integrationist vision, the answer seemed to be to go for ever closer union.
In pursuit of ever closer union, Mr Delors and his staff set up ad hoc groups, bypassed chains of command and outsourced tasks to whoever could get them done.
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The crucial question now is whether European governments should put their drive towards ever closer union on hold, or whether they should keep moving in the direction of a federal superstate.
And his attitude, as a former EU commissioner and advocate of "ever closer union, " highlights that centrist candidates could find themselves in trouble at the polls in some countries if they paint euro-sceptics as extremists.
The Tories, fulfilling a pledge by David Cameron when he ran for the leadership, promise to create a new group after the European elections in June, uniting mainstream parties of the right that oppose ever closer union.
David Cameron's explicit rejection of the idea of "ever closer union" with the words, "for Britain - and perhaps for others - it is not the objective, " may prove to be the most historically significant part in his long awaited Europe speech.
"We need to end the presumption of ever-closer union, " the MP for Camborne and Redruth said.
The way he explains it, his dedication to the idea of Europe's ever-closer union was paramount.
For more than 40 years Europe's political class has signed up to the narrative of "ever-closer union".
Broadly speaking, a Tory victory would lead to a fundamental challenge to our involvement in Europe's 'ever-closer union'.
Britain used to fear languishing on the EU periphery while a core of true believers raced towards ever-closer union.
The creation of ever-closer union was once a clear Franco-German project.
Praising Mr Cameron's rejection of "ever-closer union" - one of the EU's founding principles - he said the UK simply did not share the aims of many other EU members.
The BBC's political correspondent Robin Brant said this was a strong message about what the PM saw as the limits of ever-closer union with Mr Cameron referring at one point to "we sceptics".
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Former defence secretary Liam Fox urged Mr Cameron to make an "unambiguous declaration" that Britain will not continue down the road of "ever-closer union" and to put a new deal on Europe to a referendum.
But those who want to forge ahead with their dream of "ever-closer union" in Europe should be warned that the further you shift power and decision-making away from nation states, the more dislocated and uninvolved citizens will feel.
"It is time that we realised in this House that focusing our foreign policy on the narrow ground of greater Europeanism and ever closer political union in Europe is actually contrary to the UK's vital interests, " he added.
True, the British government did not exactly spell things out (its white paper in 1971 said there was no question of losing essential sovereignty), but the European project, with its promise of ever-closer union, always had an overtly political dimension.
"It is time we realised in this House that focusing our foreign policy on the narrow ground of 'greater Europeanism' and ever closer political union in Europe is actually contrary to the UK's vital interests, " Nigel Dodds, the party's leader in Westminster, said.
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