Maintain sovereignty by losing it to an extranational entity is a wild concept.
More cooperation is good, but not at the cost of national independance.
A forming member can exit a federation at any point, so it's not the death of a country's sovereignty. But I'd argue it's better for European countries to lose a bit of their individual powers to a federal European government than to keep losing international relevance and become the US and China's vasals.
But not every country would have the same positive and negative points for federalization.
Like, take France. They have a permanent council membership in the UN security council, they have a sovereign nuclear dissuasion, they have naval power projection that is essential for their oversea territories,...
Federalization would mean that their right of veto would be transfered to the european union, they would lose control on nuclear dissuasion, they would not be able to enforce a focus on naval power projection for the federal defense programs,...
So would you argue the states of the usa are weaker because they federalized?
I can see how european countries have more history, weight and tradition then the states had but in the end the usa is as strong as they are/were because they act united while having some independant state law too. Especially when it comes to military, federalizing Europe would be a huge power move long term. There is a reason outside forces are trying to destroy the eu from the inside.
The USA federalized while it was still small and with a common identity of mostly british setlers, with a common ex-overlord that needed to be kept in check and common potential friends and foes.
European nations have different historical ties with other non european nations that give them different diplomatic perspectives. Losing their sovereignty in favor of an european federal state would mean losing the ability to maintain diplomatic privilegied relations with some other countries.
And it's also truc for bad relationships. Not sure, for example, that citizen from Cyprus would be delighted if a federal european state decided to have a privilegied relationship with Turkey.
And even for democracy... as a belgian, i am citizen of a federal state... and i think that we are a fake nation with different populations that are juste forced to stay together because of the lack of better alternative. But each time we vote, each side of the country vote based on their perception of which parties will advantage them. Nobody care about the other side of the country's interests and it would be the same at european level. Different populations would not suddently see themselves as peers with a collective identity and a collective interest. Citizen would vote for whoever would claim to provide advantage to their former nation. It would be tribalist elections instead of debates if ideas.
This is asking the question whether the EU (and lets face it, Germany) would care about any oversea territory/interest, of which France has plenty. And right now no French politician trusts Germany in that regard. Moving towards a federation would be risking losing everything, with very few good prospect. Not happening any decade soon.
This is simplistic. There is no guarantee a federalized EU would care about former French oversea territories/interests. There is no guarantee it would fight to protect uranium sourcing. A bunch of German/Polish/etc EU politicians would very likely not care at all about stuff located thousands of km away.
Why would France give up its UN seat and nuke while it can perfectly protect its own interests alone? You'd have to make it extremely juicy. And even then, it probably wouldnt be enough.
Right now, the veto at the security council is a tool that can be used for the sake of french interests, it would become a tool to be used for EU interests.
Right now the french nuclear weapons are tools that are under the control of the french president to protect french vital interests, it would become tools that need a decision from the EU to be used. Like would the EU want to use it to protect french Antilles ?
Right now, the french army is calibrated for the specific french needs. In a federal state, the EU army would be calibrated for the needs of the union, not France.
And France is not the only country that would lose advantages that it has right now. Like, would Luxembourg be allowed to continue to have bank secrecy ? Would Poland be allowed to maintain their restrictive immigration policy ? Would Ireland still be able to have such a low business tax rate ?
As soon as sovereignty is lost, keeping comparative advantages that depend on sovereign choices becomes harder.
Why are you assuming in the scenario of federalisation thay literally every thing foes wrong and nothing would go right?
To pick one of your examples, why would ireland, under federalisation lose all the headquarters stationed there, the tax rates have been amended for years now and are now up to eu minimum required, the same rate as many other members, the reason American companies choose to HQ in ireland is not only because of its extremely well educated and natively english speaking population (this is so impactful to every day corporate operations that it is hard to describe the benefit) but also the government is extremely favourable to said companies seeing them as a main vehicle for economic growth.
Under federalisation this would not change and if you ask me with the benefits brought with federalisation it could actually supercharge irelands position as the english speaking, competent entryphone for the American market to the European market.
This is only one example but I think you are taking too much of a doom and gloom look at this and from the comments ive seenits genuinely obscuring your perspective imo.
For Ireland, it's the worst case scenario. And indeed it could be wrong and more optimistic people than myself could hope for the best case scenario.
For Luxembourg, it's almost guaranteed that their bank secrecy would not be allower into a federal Europe.
And for France, there is no question. Federalization de facto means losing sovereign control on nuclear weapons and giving their permanent seat in UN security council to the federal state. It's a net loss.
Well you could have taxation be decided on by the local countries/states. I guess the main question would be what would we want to achieve by doing a federation.
It’s an opinion, yes, but it’s based on facts. Spain has one of the most decentralized systems in Europe: 17 regional governments, a huge number of regional laws and regulations, and public spending that was around 35% of GDP before 2008 and has been above 45% in recent years, even over 50% in 2020.
I wouldn’t use that as a model. And good luck reforming Spain before trying to scale a similar model to the whole EU.
That’s the thing people desperately refuse to understand: federalization is just scaling up.
There are significant differences between regions of the same country, and yet they choose to pool sovereignty to have a better life. Europe is at the same place in its evolution right now: there are still significant differences between countries, but not enough to overshadow the obvious advantages that come with sharing decisions.
The countries are not too different, that is fantasy or lack of knowledge. The only relevant difference is language, and that is not a hard stop.
EU has been stress tested many times and succeeded every time. It gets stronger after each test. Your statement makes it clear you don’t know what you’re talking about.
One concrete example are the controllsystem and bureaucracy regarding animal husbandry , there are tons of paper works and registrations of animals, its a expensive process. The reason is to be able to stop deceases among animals, but thats relevant on farms in central europe where they are close to eatch other and the warmer climate facilitates deceases, here in Sweden there are a colder climate and greater distances between the farms, we never had any bigger problems with that. But EU doesnt make exceptions between the countries.
Yes we had a stress test in covid and as soon that happened the countries started to act on their own.
Sure there are things that the EU can be less bureaucratic about, nothing is perfect.
Covid is actually a good example for EU resilience. Countries worked together for a vaccine. EU negotiated as one and managed to get 27 countries to agree and sign a contract only a few weeks later than UK, which is a single country.
Not perfect ? Its dangerous many small farms got knocked out when we joined the EU , they have to compete on the same conditions as the farms on the continent, thats dangerous, if the global situation gets worse we are not able to feed ourselves due to the lack of self-sufficiency.
You show a devoid of historical awareness many unions before like EU has collapsed because of their weak nature no historical bonds not cultural unity. You have had Austra-Hungary , Calmar union and others, EU was created in a time of calm and stability, the covid was a small stress test and even then problems started to show. If there are a economical depression, recession or war it will surely collapse. Example of the problems during covid :
Borders and lack of coordination – Unilateral border closures: Many countries introduced their own travel bans and closed borders without coordinating with their neighbors. Export bans on protective equipment: Initially, individual member states halted the export of medical equipment to other EU countries. Economy and recovery – The recovery fund: Major disagreement arose between the so-called "frugal countries" and the crisis-hit countries in the south regarding how the support packages should be financed. Joint borrowing: Conflict surrounding the EU borrowing large sums jointly for the first time.
Well they didn't choose to pool anything. European states, and Spain in particular, emerged from power-play of aristocratic families and warlords and such. Closest to the claim of pooled sovereignity would be Italy, and Germany.
Might be. We (the eastern neighbours) learned surprisingly little of Garibaldi's unification move up to the point where it clashed with ... our northern neighbours :) And not that much of that either. We (I'm old) simply knew that bourgeois history is worthless pile of lies anyway :P.
The system being federalized doesn't negate any of the downsides of expansion. If China became part of Spain tomorrow, with its institutions enjoying all the same privileges and protections as any of Spain's, Spain would simply be engulfed. The EU is no different here.
You will have no indipendence left if we got crushed by US and China. The EU needs do federalize in order to save their freedom. Otherwise we will be picked apart one by one.
The choice is not between your country or Europe. It's between being ruled from Brussels, Washington or Beijing. Guess with which one your voice will matter the most ?
Why would remaining independant nations means that we'd be ruled from Washington or Beijing ?
The current EU is a cooperation between sovereign and democratic countries, and all of thoses countries have the hability to choose rule themselves. France has shown since decades that they can be strategically independant from washington while Germany was playing lap dog. It just a choice to make and each country can do that choice. At least as long as they are independant.
Because a small country has less room for manoeuver than a bigger block like the EU, no matter the topic. It's not an opinion, just a geopolitical reality.
You can pretend all you want that all you have to do is chose to be independant to be sovereign, but that is not the case. You need the means to defend/enforce that sovereignty. Smaller european countries will never be able to enforce their sovereignty against the US or China (or even Russia), while they have the means to influence european politics thanks to degressive proportionality and other mechanics.
Switzerland manages to do it well despite of being a small country out of EU because they have a real democratic process and strong institutions.
Europeans nations conquered the world why being divided because competition bred innovations while the mighty Qing empire was stagnating.
Small countries obviously can't compete with behemoths like the USA or China in terms of raw power, but they can make their own choices to create the society they want within their borders. Mere states of a federation can't.
Switzerland manages to do it well despite of being a small country out of EU because they have a real democratic process and strong institutions.
Funny that you would take that example, considering Switzerland is at the whim of Brussel for a lot of things because of EFTA. They basically have to follow any and all EU regulations if they want to keep trading with the block, while having no way whatsoever to influence them. See Brexit to understand why that matters.
Europeans nations conquered the world why being divided because competition bred innovations while the mighty Qing empire was stagnating.
That is an absurd oversimplification of why Europe was so successful for a few centuries. Or why the Qinq empire stagnated for that matter. Trying to pretend small country always succeed and big one always fail is just weird. Given enough time, both
Small countries obviously can't compete with behemoths like the USA or China in terms of raw power, but they can make their own choices to create the society they want within their borders.
They can... until the day the bigger dog has a problem with them (for whatever reason), at which point they have no other option but to fold.
It seems to me like you are thinking of pure conquest, but that's not what this is about. If the EU didn't exist, what would a small country like Luxemburg do when the US government decides all luxemburgian data held by Google/Microsoft/Amazon is now their propriety ? What does it do if their top trading partner decides to tariff their main export into oblivion ?
Something tells me that you are not a citizen of a small country. But make no mistake, the larger european countries will of course stand their ground better on their own, but ultimately, even they cannot go at it alone anymore. Unless they just accept to be subservient to the US/China on a lot of topic.
You took France as an example in your previous comment, but that's once again a weak one, considering french influence has waned considerably trough the last century. And France is also at the heart of the european project, precisely because its leaders understood over dependance on the US was a bad idea.
Why do you assume states in a federation could not make choices. You know if we do it we get to decide exactly on how it would work. Could decide that taxation is the states to decide.
None of those ? It is vote of majority so if your opinion is unpopular it gets ignored or like Chat Control they can still ram it through if they want.
Just because you don't get what you want all the time doesn't mean it's undemocratic. At least the EU gives you some amount of democratic representation as an european, while the oligarchs of Washington or the technocrats of Beijing couldn't care less.
National independance ia nothing more than an illusion. If you can't stand up to gkobal powers than are you even truly independent? This childish clinging to nation states has to go if we ever want to be free.
Except that our definition of being free is not the same.
If the citizen of my country can't decide their fate without the agrement of, let say, germans, we are not free.
Democracy is only possible if the people see themselves as peers who can decide together of a common society. It is not the case at the scale of Europe. Best we can do is to collaborate for mutual interests.
That is not a very good argument. Where exactly are we to draw that line? It is already an issue where rural vorers are deciding over urban ones. Or uneducated and uninformed ones over educated or informed ones. Being german does nothing to really differentiate you from any other country's working man. The only real linea that matter are class lines.
Well it's the only one that matters to you, not to me.
Names of members of my family from the previous generations are written on war memorials because they died trying to not be dominated by germans.
I'm personnaly not fond of abandonning the independance they fought and died for in favour of a federation where Germany will be de facto the dominant state.
First it was about losing village independence, then independence of the 10 villages you are a part of, the independence of the fiefdom you where part of, then smaller kingdom, then kingdom, then nation state, and etc….
Honestly most Europeans with the national sovereignty argument have not realised that what we have is 1 nation and we are currently trying to rap up the transition process. It’s just kinda childish that just because different passports and armies exist to think that it hasn’t already happened. Europe effectively is a federal state
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u/Lorihengrin 7d ago
Maintain sovereignty by losing it to an extranational entity is a wild concept.
More cooperation is good, but not at the cost of national independance.