On the night between 13 and 14 April, 2018, the armed forces of the United States, the United Kingdom and France bombed three sites in Syria connected with the production of chemical weapons, which Assad used on 7 April against the civil population in Douma near Damascus.

The federalist thought is based at the same time on the theory of “raison d’état” (which has its origin in Machiavelli) and on the conception of world peace expressed by Immanuel Kant. On the one hand, the State is the irreplaceable instrument for making possible the coexistence of men in the framework of the societies based on the division of labor and the market economy (as were formed in Europe since the end of the Middle Ages).

Migratory movements in time and in space

Population movements are an inherent part of the history of humanity and Europe has not always been a place of immigration. Our history is founded on population movements, wars and invasions.

With the publication of An Agenda for Peace (1992), An Agenda for Development (1994) and An Agenda for Democratisation (1996), the then-UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali launched an ambitious program to reform the United Nations, in order to strengthen, democratise and adapt the Organisation’s structure and working methods to the changed international context, marked by the end of the Cold War.

Christine Lagarde – the IMF Managing Director – in her recent speech[i] on the 20^th anniversary of the Bank of England’s independence, wondered whether virtual currencies – like the Bitcoin – pose a challenge to the current system of currencies and central banks.

There’s a feature in the USA cultural life which has always amazed me, particularly in the way Americans perceive themselves and their own history: they are considerably proud of the first chapter of their adventure – the independence war against Great Britain –, while they pay a far weaker enthusiasm to the second – the Philadelphia Convention and the birth of the first federation in history, in 1787.

I will get to the State of the European Union in a minute, but let me first spend a few words on the state of the world today, also because the two are clearly interconnected.

The state of the world today is a state of chaos, a confused proliferation of crises, where conflictuality and confrontation seem to prevail over rationality.

In the light of the EU’s existential crisis, President Macron, a truly committed European, has proposed his vision for a  “sovereign Europe”.  The bottom line is that the Union is not, or rather is insufficiently equipped with sovereign powers.

The paper “A Constructive Approach to Euro Area Reform”[i] prepared by 14 Franco-German economists represents a major step forward in the debate on the problems and reform of the euro area – after the various contributions of the European Commission – and has strong political significance, in particular thanks to the contribution of Jean Pisani-Ferry, who was responsible for the programme during Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign.

“Someday this small island will surprise Europe”, said Jean-Jacques Rousseau, speaking of Corsica in Le Contrat social.

A verdict without appeal in favour of “the nationalists”

In spite of the high number of non-voters, the more than 56% of votes for the nationalist coalition in the elections in Corsica on December 10, 2017, indicate a support for their ideas and not a rejection of the local political class as it is wrongly believed in Paris.

It is generally thought that only transnational lists can give elections to the European Parliament a real European dimension. However, there exists another alternative which is more likely to be approved by the Council and which corresponds to the long-term federalist vision. This would be attributing all of the votes to European political parties while maintaining national quotas, national and regional constituencies.

Andreas Bummel and Jo Leinen
A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21^st Century

Berlin, Democracy without Borders, 2018

“A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21^st Century”, authored by Jo Leinen, MEP, and Andreas Bummel, director of UNPA Campaign, has been published by Democracy Without Borders on 11 April 2018.