European Federalism will soon be back on the political agenda. In the past decades, decisive steps were taken towards pushing forward the European int...

European Federalism will soon be back on the political agenda. In the past decades, decisive steps were taken towards pushing forward the European integration project. Each treaty change brought us closer to fulfilling the visions of Altiero Spinelli and the other founders of the European federalist movement: a peaceful integration of nation states that for centuries had systematically ruined each other and forced the Europeans to suffer; a democratic and stable political system for the entire continent, based on federalist principles; the establishment of a Union of Citizens. No previous treaty has brought us so close to the aim of a federal and democratic Europe as the Treaty of Lisbon: co-decision between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will be introduced as a general rule, the veto-powers of the member states will be reduced to a large extent, participatory democracy will be introduced, justice and home affairs will be communitarised and a quasi foreign minister, supported by a European External Action Service, will be introduced.

However, much remains to be done. During the implementation phase, many of the federalist achievements could be winded back. Many questions remain open: the relationship between the institutions and the relationship between the different "EU-leaders", the positioning of the European External Action Service and the implementation of the "participatory democracy" concept, just to name a few. The federalists should raise their voice in the next months and contribute to the debate. The Treaty of Lisbon - even though it is a considerable improvement compared to the Treaty of Nice - is not the last European treaty. The European Federalists have to develop ideas and visions for the next steps towards a truly democratic Europe, to be taken after the European elections next year.

The Lisbon Treaty: An important step on the path to European Federalism
The Lisbon Treaty can be considered as a breakthrough for European democracy. It is an important intermediate step on the way from an economic community to a political Union and from a Union of governments to a Union of citizens. The new post of "President of the European Council" will be introduced. But this is not at all to be mixed up with a real European President. Considering that the powers of the European Council President will be limited and considering the unlikelihood of the European governments and citizens accepting one central leader for the Union, it is obvious that the EU will not develop into a presidential system. Instead, the new Treaty defines the European Union clearly as a parliamentary system.

Once the new Treaty is ratified, the European Parliament will be more or less on equal footing with the Council of ministers. In 95% of European legislation, co-decision between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will be the rule. It will have equal rights in the budgetary procedure. With its new powers, it will be able to ensure that the EU budget is spent in the best interest of the citizens. Furthermore, it is the European Parliament who will elect the President of the European Commission and no longer the Heads of States and Governments. This is another important step in transforming the Union of States into a Union of Citizens. Soon the European Political Parties will campaign for the European elections with their top candidate, competing for the position of "President of the European Commission", the head of a developing "EU-government". By participating in the elections, the Union citizens will thus have better possibilities to directly influence the political agenda of the EU.

The Commission will be strengthened in its role as the "European government". In important areas, such as climate change, energy policy and civil protection, the EU will receive new competences. Therefore the Commission can develop new political initiatives and extend the field of activity. The introduction of the new legal forms of delegated acts and implementing acts will strengthen the role of the European Commission to execute the legislation adopted by the Council and the Parliament, a traditional role for every government. Furthermore, it will be primarily the President of the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who will represent the EU abroad. An important development will be the scaling down of the number of Commissioners to two thirds of the member states from 2014 on. Since not every member state will be represented in the Commission, the Commissioners will no longer be able to act as representatives of their member states in the EU. All of them will have to represent the common interest of the EU and will have to work for the strengthening of the Community method, even in cases where this goes against the interests of their home country.

Important for the development of European democracy is the new citizens' initiative, requesting the Commission to put forward a proposal for European legislation, if this is demanded by one million European citizens. This will help the Europeans shape the political agenda of the European Union and bring the EU closer to its citizens. A large majority of the Union citizens are in favour of a more democratic Europe. Therefore the new tool of the citizens' initiative should be used by non governmental organizations such as the UEF to put political pressure on the institutions to make further steps in this regard.

The introduction of qualified majority voting as general rule for decision-making in the Council of Ministers is an important step forward. In most policy areas, individual member states will no longer have the possibility to block initiatives launched by the EP and the Commission. Since it will no longer be necessary to find a minimum common denominator amongst the member states, policy making in the EU will be faster, more efficient and more ambitious. Policy delivery and problem solving on the European level will improve. As a result, the EU will gain more legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens.

The procedure for amending the Treaties will be revised. In the future, new European Conventions can be set up, in order to prepare substantive changes of the European Treaties. Considering the experience with the previous two conventions, it is very likely that future conventions will decide to move towards a federal Europe and to more democracy in the EU. With the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament has the right to put forward amendments to the European Treaties and it will use this right after the 2009 elections.

Unfortunately, there are a number of setbacks, in the Lisbon Treaty vis-ˆ-vis the Constitutional Treaty. A real loss was the reformulation of Article 1 of the Constitutional Treaty, which defined the EU as a Union of states and citizens. With the Lisbon Treaty, the EU will be founded on the will of the "High Contracting Parties", the member states. Negative is also the removal of the European symbols, which reduces the visibility of the European Union. During the Intergovernmental Conference last year, Great Britain, Poland and Ireland insisted on opt outs from several EU policies, endangering splitting the EU into two groups and risking to slow down the integration process of the entire EU. Due to Polish pressure, the introduction of the double majority system in the Council was postponed to 2014, possibly even until 2017. Furthermore, in some areas of Justice and Home Affairs, the member states maintain strong veto powers. Also in the area of foreign policy, too little was done to strengthen the European dimension and the role of the EU in the world. To be criticised is also the creation of a President of the European Council - next to a Commission President and the "Foreign Minister" - which could lead to confusion and strengthen the role of the intergovernmental method in Europe. However, those setbacks are few compared to the enormous number of improvements introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, compared to the Treaty of Nice.

Implementing Lisbon in a federal way
The real significance of the Lisbon Treaty depends a lot on its implementation. Like every other Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty is only a legal framework. How this frame will be filled with content, remains to be seen in the next months. Several provisions can be interpreted in different ways. One of them is the post of the President of the European Council. In the media this post is already portrayed as the future face of the European Union, as the President of the EU. However, from a federalist point of view it should be ensured that the European Council President is in reality no more than a chairperson. The political leader of the EU should be the European Commission President, the head of the quasi "EU-government" and therefore the quasi European Prime Minister.

A very important area for the future integration of the European Union will be the European foreign policy. With the Lisbon Treaty, a "Foreign Minister" and a European External Action Service will be introduced. How far this will contribute to an integrated and stronger European foreign policy, remains up to the implementation of the treaty. Although all institutions claim that the European External Action Service should have a sui generis character and should be independent from direction from all EU institutions and the member states, behind the scenes the Commission and the Council both work towards a service which is directly connected to them. The foreign service's ability to contribute to a genuine European foreign policy depends directly on the construction of the service. If the Council and the member states gain control over the European External Action Service, the Union risks to continue speaking with many different voices in international politics. Since it is possible that the service will also include aspects of the foreign trade policy and the development policy, there is a certain risk that those community policies are reintergovernmentalised through the European External Action Service.

Problematic will also be the developments concerning the opt outs of Great Britain, Poland, Ireland and Denmark. These opt outs are a dangerous precedent. They bear the risk that the EU is split into different groups - those willing to integrate and those opposing a political Union - and citizens from some countries will be treated as second class Union citizens. In the future, more must be done to avoid that further countries, especially the new member states and the Scandinavian countries, follow the example of Britain and try to block future integration steps or keep out of certain policy areas. On the other hand, the enhanced cooperation procedure is an important tool to allow "coalitions of the willing" to go ahead and to overcome blockades of the European integration project. Efforts should be made to put pressure on the governments of Great Britain, Poland, Ireland and Denmark to overcome their opt-outs.

Reviving the federalist vision
In the past years - especially after the failed referendums in France and the Netherlands - many voices in Europe claimed that the European constitutional project had been defeated and that the federalist visions had failed. Although this is far from being the truth, too little was done to openly oppose this view. Federalists should play a role in explaining to people that this new Treaty is another step on the way towards a federal Europe and that a stronger European Parliament, enshrining the participatory democracy in the Treaties and the strengthening of the Union citizens rights, is the result of political pressure from European federalists. We have to underline that the Federalists will continue to work for a more democratic Europe. We should not be scared to oppose eurosceptic views in public and strongly demand further steps towards a United Europe, even though not all of them might seem to be feasible in the short term.

In the past years, the European Federalists have partly been the victims of their own success. In the fifties, sixties and seventies, we managed to mobilize ten thousands of people with demands for peace on the continent, a borderless Europe and a common currency. All of those aims have been achieved. For the next steps towards a democratic Europe, such as a federal European Constitution, it will be more difficult to mobilise citizens. We have to define a clear message on what should be achieved. For the next years, this message could be that a strong "European Government" is needed in order to answer the challenges of the 21^st century. The citizens' initiative could be used to gather broad support for such demands.

Next steps on the path to European Federalism
The priority for the near future has to be the implementation of the new Treaty, to make the reforms work and to develop new, strong European policies. However, the construction of the European Union is not completed yet. In order to make the European Union really democratic, strengthen the role of the EU in the world and improve the European policies, further reforms have to be done. The institutional setup and the way decisions are taken in the EU have to be addressed once again. In this regard we should analyse the concept of "institutional balance". In the recent history of the European Union, there was a broad agreement not to touch the existing "institutional balance". This meant that in the past reform processes the strengthening of one institution was only admitted if also the other institutions were reinforced. This may be no longer appropriate. We have to analyse which role each institution can and should play in a democratic Union.

Especially the role of the Council and the European Council should be evaluated. Should we overcome the co-decision method and introduce in some policy areas the exclusive right of the European Parliament to decide, for example in some of the areas where the EU has the exclusive competence? Also the role of the European Commission should be reconsidered. It used to be the "guardian of a general European interest". But in times when the European Union rightly starts to become more politicised, the "Common European Interest" depends on the political point of view. Different parties represent different visions of how European policy should develop. The new Treaty gives the Union citizens better opportunities to choose the political direction they whish the Union to take. Therefore steps should be taken to better align the European Commission to the will of the majority in the European Parliament.

Also the monopoly on the right of initiative for the Commission is no longer justified. The European Parliament and the Council of Ministers should therefore receive the same right to initiate European legislation. The co-decision method and qualified majority voting should be strengthened and extended to further policy areas. The setup of the Council of Ministers could be reformed as well. One idea would be that in the future it is the respective Commissioner and not any longer a minister from a member state that chairs the Council formations. This will be already the case with the Foreign Affairs Council, which is chaired by the High Representative, who is Vice-President of the Commission. The General Affairs Council, which will be very important for coordinating the work of the Council, could be chaired by the Commission President.

Very important will be the reform of the European budget. Restricting the Union budget to little more than 1% of the Union's gross national income, will not allow the EU to fulfill all its tasks in the years to come. Own Union resources - such as an EU tax - should be introduced and all budgetary decisions, on income and expenditure, should be taken with qualified majority.

The biggest obstacle for a federal development of the EU remains the revision procedure for the European Treaty. Any single member state can block the ratification of European Treaty revisions. In the European Convention - where a clear majority was in favour of more ambitious results than those achieved in the end - the setbacks concerning a strong and democratic Union were due to a veto-threat from some member states.

There are two options to overcome the member states veto right in treaty reforms. A super-qualified majority voting for the ratification of the European Treaties could be introduced: a Treaty is ratified if it is approved in three quarters of the member states representing three quarters of the EU citizens (independent on whether the ratification has been conducted by parliamentary means or through a referendum). Alternatively a real European referendum could be held on new treaties: a referendum is held in all member states on the same day and with the same question. If a majority of the participating citizens vote in favour and if the referendums have been positive in two thirds of the member states, the referendum is successful. In both cases, the EU could be considerably strengthened and deepened. Those member states who consistently oppose further integration and the ratification of agreed reform-treaties and in which a majority of the citizens oppose membership, should make use of the new exit-clause.

Indeed, the question remains in how far the implementation of such a procedure would increase the support of citizens for the European Union and whether citizens would not see this as a betrayal of their right to decide about the future of the Union nation state by nation state. However, the European Union is doomed to failure, if it is not able to reform itself and adapt to new challenges. In a Union with 30 member states, unanimous agreements will be extremely difficult to achieve. Once the Lisbon Treaty has entered into effect, it is important to start a new debate about the questions raised above. In July 2007, the European Parliament expressed its will to use its new right of initiative to put forward proposals for changes of the European Treaties. The European federalist should speak up in this debate and mobilise public support.