I am asking myself whether the use of the name “Federation of Nation-States” is a good choice. This terminology was introduced and publicized by Jacques Delors a long time ago. It raises many questions and doubts about such a coupling against nature between Federation and Nation- State. This self-contradictory idea has been the subject of the thesis of Gaëtane Ricard-Nihoul, former General Secretary of Notre Europe. So it received an academic accolade. Recently publicized again by Ferdinando Riccardi, Director of Agence Europe, this idea of “Federation of Nation-States” has received its official seal by the highest representative of the European Union. Now, everybody gives a different interpretation and makes reference to both the nucleus of States composing the Eurozone (Jacques Delors’ vanguard and differentiation), and the whole of the Union with varying possibilities. How could the debate on the issue be opened? Shall it be placed in this context, that risks spreading confusion from the start? Shouldn’t people refrain from imposing, using their authority, the name “Federation of Nation-States” or other names like “European Federation”, “Federation of European States and peoples”, “European Federation of States and regions” and so on?
The use of the concept of “Nation-State” is detrimental to future debates on the form of the political Union. That concept, that we have tried to ban from our vocabulary together with Denis de Rougemont, has produced serious damages in the recent history of Yugoslavia’s disintegration. In fact, it has been widely used to try to create, within the former Yugoslav Republics, homogeneous Nation-States. It has thus provided the evidence of the nefarious effects that may derive from an evil interpretation of this idea of “Nation-State”. A concept that looks well adapted to France, which, despite its domestic differences, has always tried to assimilate minorities, and which remains a Nation-State. In addition, as Denis de Rougemont was often reminding, this concept adheres well to the Portuguese reality, being Portugal one of the rare European countries to be homogeneous, together with Denmark.
At present, not all the European States are Nation-States nor do they aspire to become so. Many are the States that contain several nations, like Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and the UK, but also the Balkan States, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) (30% of Albanians who do not feel themselves as belonging to a Macedonian nation) and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular. To these States one could add Romania, with a large Hungarian minority who do not recognize themselves in the Romanian nation, as well as the Turks in Bulgaria and the Hungarians in Slovakia. On top of that, some Nation-States like Hungary cherish the dream to unite all their nationals into one State. Many are the States without nation, but also the nations without State. These are the main reasons that make me react to the use of this concept of “Federation of Nation-States”, which harbors in itself a deep contradiction, and does not correspond to the federalist spirit.
For these different reasons and others, I think that it would be desirable not to prejudge in advance the name that the political Union and the European Federation will have to have. Certainly, in the Federation, the States play and will play a preeminent role, but that is far from marginalizing for that reason the future role of regions and municipalities. This tendency has been asserted when the Maastricht Treaty was being drafted, in the form of a proposal presented by Germany aiming to create a Chamber or a Senate of the Regions. As often happens in the European process, that idea, too futuristic at the time, underwent a degradation, up to taking the form of a Committee of the Regions.
It seems important to me not to become uncompromising in advance, and not to make less open, for the use that the European authorities could make of certain concepts, the discussion on the institutions to be awarded to the political Union, in the perspective of a federation simultaneously bringing together the States, the Nations, the Regions and the municipalities. This lot, being laboriously put together now, will in any case experience the shock of new technologies, that tend to impose to hierarchical organizations and powers the demands of networks of horizontal solidarity and powers. There are by now many authors who believe that the substance of power is going to change, and that the Nation-State and territorial sovereignty have no longer the same meaning and the same importance.
A debate too academic and restricted in the corset of the “Federation of Nation-States” would risk to ignore the real transformations of our societies and the innovating and original aspects of the European Union in its march towards the European Federation.
Translated by Lionello Casalegno
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