Thatcher resisted the urge to throw up her hands in frustration. "Your Highness, I'm afraid it is you who misunderstands, not I," she said, "The very point of creating an umbrella organization, which you seem to have missed, is to allow its organs to retain their own membership rules. Under my proposal, a nation would not apply to join the Community, but rather either the CSTO or the CSU. Upon admission to one or the other, membership in the Community would then be automatic. The problem with your interpretation is that it has the potential to be just as threatening to those who preach national sovereignty as the CSU, and frankly I would not be able to sell it to Parliament. The people of Tytor are not looking for additional councils and commissions to belong to; these things would not be incentives, but deterrents to those in Parliament who are on the fence on this, not to mention those who are leery of the commitments Tytor has already. The present consensus at home is that Tytor does not need those aspects of the Cross-Straits Union which you have suggested would move up to the Cross-Straits Community -- if it did, then why wouldn't Tytor have already joined the CSU? If we are proposing making things like the Cross-Straits Court of Justice a requirement for membership in the CSTO, then I will see a parliamentary revolt not only from the opposition, but from members of my own governing coalition, no matter how eloquently I may speak on their behalf. So, again, let's not start from the idea that we'll be trying to make the CSC as much like the CSU as we can, and instead talk about what is absolutely essential in the interest of greater correlation between the CSU and the CSTO, and go from there. Otherwise, we risk getting ahead of ourselves and shooting for the moon, only to find that we don't even have the range to hit the clouds."
OOC: In case it's not abundantly obvious here, Thatcher is not personally opposed to the CSU and its parts; if it were up to her, Tytor would have signed up four years ago. But it's not up to her. As a political pragmatist, Thatcher would like very much to return home with something Parliament will find palatable, which is why she is so firmly resisting her own preferred scenario. Oh, and using the Council of Heads of State as an enticement for a nation with a purely ceremonial head of state smacks of research failure on Serenity's part; while King Michael would happily attend if invited, he (by what was largely his own choosing) would have no power to participate authoritatively as a representative of the Tytorian government or to act on anything the Council decided -- at best, he would watch the proceedings and relay the Council's decisions and his recommendations to the prime minister, who would then decide what to do with that information.