All the changes that have come about in Europe because of the crisis, particularly those that still need to be implemented, imply a transfer of sovereignty to a supranational level that should be accompanied by the necessary democratic control at that same level. This has not been the case until now, and the crisis itself can explain it. But for the future, we must consider the political model the EU is going to adopt. This may be, as is well known, intergovernmental or communitarian.

It is not clear which of the two paths is easier, and it is even less evident which enjoys more support from the European public. We have already leamed the risks brought about by the elites' wilfulness when they propose rushing headlong toward political integration. Those of us who were members of the Convention believed that the idea of a constitution would awaken the pro-European enthusiasm of the people. But suspicions about the construction of a super-European state were more important, and the project was rejected.

The change brought about by the crisis has not gone in the direction of federalism. The intergovernmental logic of assistance in exchange for budgetary discipline has predominated without increasing fiscal harmonization.

Since 2010, when a Eurozone member state needs financial assistance it is not the communitarian budget that offers it. It is financed by the other governments in proportion to their own resources and controlled by their national parliaments.

It could have been done differently, by giving resources to the communitarian fund that gives financial assistance to EU countries outside of the Eurozone that have problems with their balance of payments. But there was a preference for an intergovernmental system, of which the ESM is the most elaborate expression.

In this way, the problems with the democratic legitimacy of EU decisions have been aggravated. Quoting Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel Institute in Brussels, the problem with this system is that general European interests are not well represented, the role of the Commission is limited and the EP plays almost no role at all.

The member states, through the European Council, have been in charge of making decisions under Germany's predominant role. Politics continue to be national, and decisions to contribute with resources or to make adjustments belong to national parliaments. Each one of them responds to its national interest. They should not be blamed for that, because that is their role. As we have already stated, national interest is perceived very differently if one is standing in Berlin or in Nicosia.

The intergovernmental model seems to agree more with the weakness of the European demos and strong differences of identity among European people. But guaranteeing legitimacy and political control in an intergovernmental model requires complex institutional changes and difficult modifications to the Treaties.

Legitimacy and Taxation

A serious development of federalization requires giving the EU, or the Eurozone alone, enough fiscal capability to finance European public goods and stabilize transfers. To increase the legitimacy of the EU, the EU must appear as an agent that manages ‘its’ own resources instead of a part of the resources of the states. The EP should be able to vote to create European taxes. This would greatly increase the perception of its importance. If ‘no taxation without representation’ was once the claim, Europe must now say ‘no representation without taxation.’

This would be the opportunity for the EU to create truly European taxes based on the wealth generated by the very process of integration through the development of the single market. Or by taxing the type of phenomena that respect no borders but that we want to control, such as financial transactions, or that we want to combat, like CO2 emissions.

Legitimacy and Social Dimension

At the basis of the EU legitimacy problems, and particularly the Eurozone’s, we find the weakness of its social dimension.

The crisis has made this lack of legitimacy worse because it has required more discipline, on the one hand, and more solidarity, on the other. Both dynamics require institutions that have the legitimacy to make decisions that affect fundamental political questions. It will be necessary to combine the two sources of legitimacy that converge in the structure of Europe, the legitimacy of states and the legitimacy of citizens, evolving toward a bicameral system in which the EP fully assumes the representation of the people and the EU Council assumes territorial representation. The Commission should be an executive power supported by a parliamentary majority. Its president should be elected based on the results of the European elections and should be able to name the commissioners. The number of commissioners should be reduced. The European Parliament should have legislative initiative.

The “federal” budget for the Eurozone, notably greater than the current 1 per cent, should be based on expenses of transfers and investments of a countercyclical nature, such as the unemployment insurance on a European scale recently proposed by the IMF.

This would imply breaking another taboo: that the EU cannot intervene in interpersonal transfers. It would also mean demanding a harmonization of labour policies. The mechanisms of interpersonal solidarity would relocate asymmetrical shocks, sharing costs among the entire EU.

I am aware that the mechanisms of interpersonal solidarity are produced in consolidated political communities such as those found in national communities –or discussed communities, such as Cataluña today, when the national community is not perceived as such. And this is not the case of the EU. Moving from a limited and conditioned solidarity among states to a solidarity among citizens requires a shared ethos. But while this is a utopic idea at this point, that is what we should be addressing when discussing the construction of a political union.

Conclusion: a new raison d'être for Europe

It makes sense to have a single currency that demands the coordination of economic and fiscal policies in order to set up the Eurozone as a federation similar to the American model. In reality, the United States was born as a federation when Hamilton converted state debt into federal debt, which would in part be the effect of eurobonds. But I doubt that we are living a Hamiltonian moment in Europe at this time. Hamilton could do it because those state debts had been generated in the fight against a common enemy, colonial England, and twenty-first-century Europeans lack a common enemy to make us consolidate our goals.

Instead, we as Europeans should consolidate our goals around a common objective that can no longer be based on avoiding a repetition of the horrors of the past, but on achieving future benefits that can be perceived in daily life. As J. Habermas says, the only political project that can give legitimacy to integration and mobilize European citizens is the survival of the “social model” or the European way of life in the face of globalization. But we must be conscious that nowadays the citizens of many countries think that the EU project, particularly its economic project, has done no good in this regard and even threatens the social norms they want to defend.