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The EU won't ever be one nation as such even if that happened, it's too diverse and has too much of a history and too many unique factors within each region so I don't think they would ever think of themselves as one nation.

While the EU as a whole does not need to project much power, there are 2.7 Million French people who live in overseas territories of France and not in Metropolitan France and in addition France has many interests in Africa. So France individually needs to project power and so the French portion of a federalized EU would always push for a more external foreign policy.