There are some who believe that the European Union is a recent invention; but, to go back to its founding fathers is to arrive at Victor Hugo at t...

There are some who believe that the European Union is a recent invention; but, to go back to its founding fathers is to arrive at Victor Hugo at the International Congress of Paris (1849): “A day shall come in which war would seem absurd and impossible between Paris and London, as it is between Boston and Philadelphia. A day shall come in which France, Russia, Italy, England and Germany, without losing their peculiarities, will mesh into one superior unity. A day shall come in which bombs will be replaced by the arbitration of a great sovereign senate. A day shall come in which we will see the United States of Europe”.

Or at Altiero Spinelli, prisoner of Fascism, and author of the Ventotene Manifesto (1941): “It only takes one Nation to take a step towards totalitarism so as to make the rest, dragged by the will of survival, follow. The first problem that must be solved is the abolition of the definitive division of Europe into sovereign national states”. Or at Churchill in Zurich (1946): “There is a remedy that could turn Europe, in just a few years, into something as happy and free as Switzerland. We must build a United States of Europe to recover the joy and hope that makes life worth living”. Two years later, Sir Winston was elected president of the Congress of The Hague that led to the formation of the Council of Europe, the first political precedent for the European Union.

However, if forced to set a date for the birthday of the European integration process, the best would be May 9th, 1950; when Robert Schuman, Minister of Foreign Affairs from a victorious France, proposed to share the coal of Alsace (the regional nucleus that launched conflict in the two previous World Wars) with Germany. All of this to “not only make war unthinkable, but also materially impossible”. One year later the European Coal and Steel Community was born, laying the foundation for the European Economic Community (1957) and the European Union (1993). Never again would a united Europe suffer war within its borders.

Therefore, my sense of justice would be highly rewarded if those people that voted in favour of Brexit would be sent back in time to live in the Europe of sovereign nation states that they all seem to like so much; the Europe before 1950, a year that divided the 20^th century into two opposing halves. The first of which witnessed poverty, crisis, war and genocide in societies whose primary political leaders were called Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Stalin. The second half of which witnessed seven decades of peace, human rights and prosperity in a Europe governed by the hellish Commission and the luciferous European Parliament.

It wasn’t a miracle. It was the abandoning of the “zombie-nationalist syndrome”: the stupid attempt to regulate the processes and conflicts of a growingly global and post-industrial society with the instruments created for the industrial-national landscape of the 19th century. Also on the Brexit issue the “zombie-nationalist syndrome” had opposite results from what was expected: Cameron called for a referendum so as to reaffirm his leadership and he ended up having to resign. The people that voted for the Brexit did so in order to reaffirm the sovereignty and unity of the United Kingdom, but its most probable result will be the UK dissolution by way of a Scottish referendum and its subordination to the United States of America. Clever, the ‘Brexiteers’ tried to save their payments to the European Union, but lost in just one day of devaluations and stock market earthquakes the equivalent of 40 years of contributions. Regarding the dangers of immigration and terrorism, almost everyone that has carried out a terrorist attack on British soil possesses an English passport. “It’s nationalism, stupid!” is what one wants to shout at them, and also remind them of the inspiring Mitterrand’s statement at the European Parliament: “Nationalism is war!”.

Unemployment doesn’t seem to go down and the Brussels bureaucracy squanders resources? May be. Still, the crisis didn’t start in Europe, but in a nation state, the United States of America, and if the EU was the most damaged by the crisis it was because it lacked the federal institutions that the United States adopted: federal economic governance and fiscal unity, a last resource lender, shared debt and the capacity to print money and bonds in order to finance it. All things that were part of the original Spinelli project (1984) and of the constitution that the French and Dutch rejected in the 2005 referendums. Therefore, the crisis doesn’t seem to be a good argument to stop the European integration process, quite the opposite. In the case of unemployment, it’s at 9%. A much lower percentage than the 15% of deaths caused by the last great economic crisis, the Great Depression. The Brussels bureaucracy, meanwhile, consumes a huge 1% of the GDP of the EU, of which a scandalous 6% is destined to the administration. Any comparison with what any country spends at its own national level is an excellent argument in favor of Brussels.

The Brexit is a brilliant opportunity for the EU to move forward in its economic and fiscal integration. A more democratic Europe, with a Parliament reinforced in its competences and a strong governance of the Eurozone, will permit the end of austerity and will allow to escape from the political consequences of the crisis. For the time being, it has opened a Pandora’s box that populist nationalism works to transform into a tangible collapse. Marine Le Pen and the Dutch nationalists have started working on it, just like in 2005. It may also be that the negative consequences of Brexit to the United Kingdom might help as an example to others.

Maybe the UK will find oil, just like Norway, or quickly build a banking network like Switzerland, the only two major European nations that kept themselves outside the Union. The British are going to need it. Brexit has broken into pieces London’s role as the stock market center of the EU, as well as the possibility for the British industry to continue being the most important for its low prices for the continental market. Because of this, maybe Brexiteers won’t need a time machine to sample the benefits of Europe before integration, as the same Brexit will contribute to the possible redoing of their old successes. Not only in Europe, but also in a world that at the beginning of the 21^st century is starting to face similar problems to the ones Europe faced at the beginning of the 20^th century. Exaggeration? Climate change, nuclear proliferation, the financialization of the economy, economic volatility, massive migration, failing and failed states, terrorism and organized crime already constitute transnational, regional and global crises that are impossible to solve through national policies and international agreements.

The European Union and the UN, the two major supranational institutions that humans have managed to create after our most terrible tragedies, have been efficient enough to prevent a third world war; but have become outdated. They need to be modernized and given new agencies, they need to stop being intergovernmental and transform into vehicles for democracy and federalism, the two central principles of modern politics, elevated now to regional and global levels. We need to widen their powers and democratize them, not destroy them in the name of reactionary nationalist utopias that have already caused great tragedies throughout history.

We are constructing a technological and economically global world, meanwhile teaching our kids that the national interest is the supreme principle. We continue to believe that the problems of the 21^st century can be solved through 19^th century institutions. We call ‘political realism’ the conviction that the future will be like the present and that institutional changes are not necessary in the middle of a technological revolution. We still insist on obsolete ideas like absolute sovereignty, isolationism, economic autarchy and power politics. We still present to our youth examples of those military heroes that, with good reasons for the 19^th century but disastrous reasons for the 21^st century, have specialized in the extermination of the enemy. We love to accuse cosmopolitans and anti-nationalists of being foreign spies and cold-hearted people. If we continue like this, and  populist nationalism from the right or left continues this rise, the next UN Security Council may be formed by national representatives designated by Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist Party, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump. Something could go wrong, right?