the European project has shown “that it is possible for peoples and nations to come together across borders” and “that it is possible to overcome the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’.”

However, there is something rather Eurocentric in thinking of the EU in this way. In particular, by generalising about “peoples and nations” in the way Barroso does, it mistakes Europe for the world.

This seems like a very personal interpretation by the author.
Personally, whenever open borders etc are mentioned in the context of the EU I know full well that his applies only tho the EU.
I am genuinely baffled that you could think otherwise.

I admit, I have not read the entire article.
It seems pretty long for merely pointing out the incredibly novel thought that the EU does not encompass the entire world.

Sorry, I can't bring myself to read all the article after the first few paragraphs. The author seems to purposely mix up the idea of EU having free borders (for member nations) with the notion that Europe should also have free borders with the outside world. That was never the main goal. Of course the benefits are something only for members of EU. Got it, UK? Maybe the author redeems himself in the rest of the article, I don't know.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Habermas argues that globalisation led to a “debordering of economy, society and culture”, and ended the historical period centred on the nation state that controlled its own territory – and in doing so hollowed out democracy.

Thus the EU can restore the power of the state over markets not just on behalf of Europeans, but for the whole of humanity, with the “cosmopolitan goal of creating the conditions necessary for a global domestic policy”.

Benedict Anderson describes how common it is for “progressive, cosmopolitan intellectuals … to insist on the near-pathological character of nationalism, its roots in fear and hatred of the other and its affinities with racism”.

At the beginning of March, as the virus swept through Europe, with Italy hit particularly badly, France and Germany imposed restrictions on the export of personal protective equipment (PPE).

“The overwhelming Catholicism of large parts of continental Europe, and especially of France and Spain, provided a newly invented Britain with a formidable ‘other’, against which it could usefully define itself,” the historian Linda Colley has written.

For example, the French philosopher Edgar Morin wrote in 1990 that Europeans had become conscious of their common destiny since 1945 and had now “arrived at the moment of the community of fate”.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

He’s wrong, but I wish he were right.

We should be taking a more active role in world affairs. Our goals should be bigger than “let’s make sure the Germans and the French don’t fight again”.