The decision, taken by the Congress of the Union of European Federalists (UEF), held on 19-21 March 2004 in Genoa (Italy), to apply for full membership in the World Federalist Movement (WFM) represents a milestone in the history of federalist movements. The decision is the expression of a widespread conviction that the reasons which justified the separation between European and world federalists in 1947 no longer exist. That separation was the consequence of a different view of political priorities. The former privileged the goal of European union, the latter that of world unity.
The Cold War, while it promoted European unification within the Western bloc, excluded any progress towards world unification. The division of the world into opposing blocs left no room for the action of world federalists. For many years their precursory and far-sighted commitment could not, for objective reasons, go beyond outlining their ultimate aims and explaining the need for a peaceful world order. Today the situation has changed.
The end of the Cold War and the reconciliation between the United States and Russia have eliminated a mighty obstacle to the unification of the world and the reform of the United Nations. The latter is now on the political agenda because of the obsolescence of the institutions conceived sixty years ago. The first steps in this direction are the World Trade Organization (created to promote the establishment of a global market) and the International Criminal Court (created to punish war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity). But our efforts must be directed at obtaining more substantial reforms, such as the transformation of the Security Council into the Council of the great regions of the world or the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, conceived as the first step toward a World Parliament.
On the other hand, the collapse of the Communist bloc and the need to fill the power vacuum created by it has speeded up European unification. The fact that European unification has reached the stage of the Constitution, imperfect though it might be, marks the beginning of a new phase of federalist commitment. Federalists refuse the idea of a Europe-fortress (i.e. European nationalism). Instead, they promote the idea of a European Union whose international role is not only that of being a model, but also the engine of world unification.

The most recent evolution of federalist theory has led to a general acceptance of the principle of subsidiarity, which suggests that the nations be represented in the great regions of the world and the latter be represented at world level. It is an absurd and outdated notion that a state of regional dimension, like China, and a city-state, like San Marino, should be considered equal. The creation of a regional level of government represents the indispensable vehicle to render the functioning of the UN efficient, fair and democratic. A federalist victory in Europe will show that it is possible to create a union between sovereign states that have been in conflict with each other for centuries.
With the entrance into the Security Council, the European Union will become for the rest of the world the model of reconciliation among nation-states and the vehicle for transmitting to the other regions, still divided into nation-states, the impulse towards federal unification. The transformation of the Security Council into the Council of the great regions of the world offers three advantages. First, all states (not only the strongest ones, as happens now) could be represented in the Security Council through their respective regional organization. Second, the hegemony of superpowers and inequality among states could be progressively overcome by the reorganization of the UN into groupings of states with equivalent dimensions and power; in particular, the developing countries of Africa, the Arab World, Latin America, Southern Asia and South-East Asia could find in their political and economic unification the way to free themselves of their condition of dependence. Third, the unjust discrimination between permanent and non-permanent members could finally be overcome by replacing the right of veto with the majority vote.
On the other hand, the European Union, as the laboratory of international democracy, will become the leading country of this new political formula and will tend to expand this experiment to the world level, that is to promote the democratization of the United Nations. The creation of a World Parliament can only be a gradual process, as the institutional evolution of the European Parliament shows. At the beginning it was composed of members of national Parliaments, then it was elected by universal suffrage and finally it strengthened its legislative and control powers. Therefore, a UN Parliamentary Assembly seems to be the first step on the way of the democratization of the UN.
Both the European and world federalists recognize that the problem of uniting Europe is not simply a regional problem. Rather, it is the first step in a process which will lead to the unification of the world and to a world government. The commitment for EuropeÕs political unification cannot be conceived otherwise than a stage in a longer-term commitment for world peace through a World Federation. The universal role of the European Federation is that of showing that the era of federalism has begun, and this can only strengthen the committed federalists outside Europe.
Precisely because they are the two largest federalist organizations in the world, the UEF and the WFM have great responsibilities. Their unification is vital, because we must combat new enemies: ethnic nationalism and imperialism, which are the current reincarnation of the old demon of nationalism. The two movements must face the challenges of the new epoch together. The goal to be pursued is the construction of a strong world-federalist political actor, capable of asserting itself as a reference point for global civil society movements.
The fact is that the peace is becoming, for an increasing number of individuals, the first political objective of our time. We share with peace movement a global vision of the major problems of our age and the goal of peace. But we have a clearer outlook of the means to be employed to modify the structure of international relations. The great credit to be given to the WFM is the identification of coalition-building among NGOs as the way to exercise leadership in global civil society movements. The lesson to be learned by the success of the action, promoted by the WFM, for the creation of the International Criminal Court is that only a great coalition of forces of popular inspiration can break the resistance of governments against the limitation of their sovereignty.