The continent must unite to survive without America’s support. Federalism is the way.
The Europe we know and love is under threat. For President Trump, ‘America First’ means everyone else last, allies included. In a dizzying flurry of official announcements and offhand remarks, the man in the White House has undermined Europe’s economies, security, and ultimately, its very existence.
By threatening to withdraw military support for Ukraine, Trump has signalled America will no longer be the world’s policeman and protect Europe. The continent needs to stand on its own two feet. But it’s stumbling. Soon-to-be German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hit the right notes when he said “my absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” but there’s no plan to achieve it. When Trump asked Starmer if the UK could “take on Russia” by itself in an otherwise chummy meeting, he was met with an awkward laugh.
Without American support, Europe faces existential threats in a hostile world. We are simply not in control of our destiny. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it requires getting real about where our strength lies – together. A federal Europe, where both sovereignty and identity are shared between supranational, national, and local levels would give us the power to make our voices heard. Such a system works in America, dividing politics and culture between federal, state and county levels, and, on a smaller scale, in Germany. We are stronger united.
Federalism would work in Europe. States like France or Britain would have important powers devolved like criminal codes and voting laws. We could even keep the King, if we wanted. At the same time, critical issues for the political union would move up to the federal level such as foreign policy, the military, international and intramarket trade, continent-wide infrastructure and a constitution of basic rights. We could still vote for MPs, but we’d also vote for a federal executive and legislature.
A federal Europe would solve the problems we’re seeing today. When run at a continent-scale, our military would be both cheaper and stronger. Research from the European Parliament estimated that the EU could save between €24.5 billion and €75.5 billion per year by combining procurement via common defence. This isn’t surprising. It costs more to buy lots of different things than many of the same things. Europe has 17 main battle tanks, for example. The US has one.
Uniting would also turbocharge Europe’s flagging economies. A critical factor holding European economies back is internal trade barriers, estimated by the IMF to be 45% for manufacturing and, incredibly, 110% for services. These don’t exist at anything like this scale in America. That’s why there isn’t a European equivalent to FAANG tech stocks, why LSEG is dying, and rare European success stories like Spotify listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
A federal Europe would create a union strong enough, and rich enough, to stand up to Trump – or anyone else. It would also give it one voice. We would finally have an answer to Henry Kissinger’s question: “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?” No one can hold that role without this change. Macron has tried and failed because he has neither the legitimacy nor the institutional levers to pull. Federalism would change this.
There will be those who claim federalising Europe is unnecessary. Trump is an aberration, America will come back to the rescue, so we don’t have to be so bold. But what if Trump’s approach to Europe is the new normal. Do you really think J. D. Vance, who is the bookies favourite to replace him, would be any different? Our continent’s survival can’t depend on a Democrat in the Oval Office. And anyway, America’s geopolitical interests have been shifting away from Europe towards Asia since Obama’s presidency. Biden even copied elements of Trump’s ‘America First’ economic protectionism, although he played the role of global statesman at summits. We simply cannot rely on America anymore. Europe is a great experiment of its own. We need to protect it.
But whether Europe is truly one ‘experiment’ is controversial. Many find the claim that there is a single European identity as laughable as mistaking Africa for one country. We’re different peoples with different histories, they claim. But years of Brexit debates have made us far too focused on our differences. Beyond our distinct national stories, there is a broader European one. Think of the Roman Empire, Christianity sweeping the continent, industrialisation and Enlightenment values, World Wars fought on our soil, decades living with the Iron Curtain, and now a concerted 70 year peace project. Few countries can claim that level of unity; China, India, and maybe the US. They’re all already countries, and two are federations!
Elon Musk may have made Europeans cringe when he said that Trump’s victory meant “the future of civilisation is assured,” but we could learn something from his belief in a broader political project. Europe genuinely is exceptional and it’s worth fighting for. Federalism is how we win.
* James Lawrence is a Liberal Democrat councillor on Epsom and Ewell Borough Council. Ben Cope is a political writer and commentator.
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26 Comments
Member States with big cultural differences & languages is an unsurmountable barrier.
You’d be better off concentrating on getting voters in Europe enthused enough once every 5 years for the current EU. It might get some diehard remainers salavating , but even they know deep down it’s a pipedream.
I have to say I don’t think this is the time……there is way too much to do.
We (Britain and the continental states) need a military alliance quickly – but don’t forget many of the states that need it (including us) are not EU.
And we (Britain) need an economic alliance with the EU. Membership of customs union and then then single market sounds like something to aim for.
Write in “ever closer union” by all means, but I can’t see that being achievable right now – and I’m not sure the UK would accept it even though the Donald has made the case very effectively.
Would this federal Europe include Orban’s Government in Hungary? And where does it leave countries like Canada, Mexico, Japan or New Zealand – all democratic countries that we should arguably be working with to counter Trump just as much as we should be working with France or Germany?
We don’t need a federal Europe to cooperate on buying military gear so we buy stuff more cheaply. We just need to – umm – cooperate on buying military gear.
I’d argue Trump actually shows the opposite of what this article is arguing for: One of the longstanding problems in the US which has played some role in people’s disillusionment with conventional politics that ultimately lead to Trump is simply that the US federal Government is so remote from the people due to the US being so big. Do we really want to replicate that mistake in Europe? Or look at it another way. Suppose Europe did federalize. How would people feel if (not too implausibly) in 10-20 year’s time, that federal Europe elected a European Trump as president?
Turkey has the 2nd largst army in Nato behind the USA and has indicated its openness to deploying troops in Ukraine as part of a potential peacekeeping force Turkey considers sending peacekeepers to Ukraine.
“The idea of a multinational peacekeeping force has been floated as a potential security guarantee for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. While Washington has supported the concept, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Feb. 12 that such a mission would not include U.S. troops and should be led by European and non-European allies.”
A coalition of the willing comprised largely of Britain, France and Turkey backed by US intelligence assets and air power in the rear (paid for by US mineral rights in Ukraine) may be adequate to the task. Putin might not be too happy about agreeing to what looks like a re-run of the Crimean War, but if he really wants peace, then this my be a way forward.
“Member States with big cultural differences & languages is an unsurmountable barrier.”
The same could be said about the many cantons of Switzerland – where there are very, very real cultural, linguistic and religious differences between the cantons – yet they all are smart enough to realise the truth of the old adage that “If we don’t hang together, we will all hang separately” and as a consequence have one of the very highest standard of living in the world.
And, if you look, the member states of the EU – with the exception of one former member – seem to be perfectly willing to “hang together”.
Bit strange Paul that you pick somewhere that’s not even a EU member. The citizens of nowhere brigade are open borders and have total disregard for nation states. We all know deep down it ain’t happening, but diehards keep on skipping down that yellow brick road.
This thrust of this article is correct. Most of the previous comments emphasising obstacles are myopic. There is an urgent need for all European countries to cooperate, particularly in defence, if we are to continue to enjoy the freedoms we largely take for granted.
A European federation of some sort is a great but impractical idea. Commenting on the current flavour of day in respect to the military, the UK could be at the mercy of vetoes from those who do not agree with our interests,, such as in the Falklands or maintaining a presence in Cyprus or Gibraltar or yo supporting our commonwealth partners around the world.
Coalitions of the willing are the best for now.
>Turkey has the 2nd largest army in NATO behind the USA …
But it does not concentrate on high-value platforms and expeditionary warfare.
It would be interesting to speculate on what the UK defence budget could buy
if it were directed more towards European (land) security, rather than sending
aircraft carriers to the Pacific with USN/USMC air wings embarked. Especially
when such spending might mean fewer F-35s and more (UK made?) drones.
Such drones could be made in places outside the South-East. The could be
made to operate alongside similar compatible kit made in the EU. Not specified
in Whitehall on multi-decade long programmes that never seem to get started
properly. Localism and cooperation in practice. Maybe the families of the makers
might be more likely to consider joining up?
Trump will be gone in January 2029. We will survive the next 4 years without having to create a single European state.
The thing about having four tiers of government in a federal Europe is that one of them will ultimately become redundant; when Alex Salmond was told that Scottish independence was still important as Europe became more politically united, he asked ‘then what the hell is Westminster doing getting in the way?’
Belgium, which, unlike Switzerland, has always been in the EU, and being ‘federalised’ has meant that the central government in Brussels is weak; while there were jokes about how it was the only country in the world without a government, the reality is that most day-to-day matters had been devolved to regional governments, which have far more autonomy than the devolved parliaments in the UK.
However, they have less control over taxation and even citizenship than Swiss cantons, which are still officially independent republics; it’s not in spite of being decentralised that Switzerland hasn’t joined the EU, it’s because of it.
While the cantons can live with some of their sovereignty being ceded to the federal government in Bern, which they have considerable control over, they are less keen on ceding it to the EU in Brussels, over which they would have much less.
And there is a geographical divide in Switzerland over EU membership, with the German-speaking cantons against joining even the EEA; historically, Switzerland was never part of the German Confederation, as Austria was, or Zollverein, as Luxembourg was, while it was a puppet state of France, as the Helvetic Republic, in which regional autonomy was curtailed.
Concerned that a Federal Europe would be too slow and subject to veto. I am not sure where to turn on this one.
Another point for those in favour of a federal Europe as a counter to Trump: Just consider how negotiating Brexit basically paralysed UK politics for the best part of 4 years, with the Government and party politics having next to no bandwidth to deal with any other problems during that time? Well that is small fry compared to the complexity of federalising nearly 30 different countries and negotiating out and balancing all the various different concerns each country will have. Trump will be long gone by the time the process yields any useful results. And do you think Ukraine can wait while the whole of Europe basically paralyses itself with deep federalisation negotiations and referenda for several years? And how do you plan to get the federalisation process past the inevitable referenda in every country? – I’d bet there’s scarcely a single European country where ‘yes’ would stand any chance of winning.
Some of the more jingoistic commentators on other sites are suggesting the UK should buy a further 3 aircraft carriers – and presumably the 100 odd F35Bs to fly from them. Sounds mad to me. The F35B is US kit, full of software, and it’s entirely possible the US could turn them off remotely (see printers and cartridges, tractors) …there are no other combat aircraft that these Elizabeth class carriers can use, so if they did turn out to be lumps of expensive useless metal, the carriers become useless too. We should spend our defence money in Europe. And develop our own ballistic missiles for the Dreadnought subs, too.
@ Craig Levene
It really isn’t all that strange that I picked Switzerland as I lived there for two years!
I also don’t see why the issue of whether Switzerland is in the EU or not is relevant to “big cultural differences & languages” being supposedly “an unsurmountable barrier”. Those internal Swiss issues wouldn’t disappear if it joined the EU, nor would they disappear were Switzerland now an EU member and it decided to leave the EU.
Personally, I’d say were the EU – today – a sort of “big Switzerland” with “Brussels” taking care of defence, border/immigration control, other external matters, there would be very little demand – particularly in the face of an aggressive Russia – in most member states for a return to a current style Europe where they are largely done on a “go it alone” basis with limited cooperation between member states on those issues.
Jenny,
completely agree we should spend our defence money in Europe and develop our own ballistic missiles ideally in cooperation with France as with Airbus.
However, the new class of dreadnought subs are in danger of becoming obsolete as fast as the WW1 dreadnought battleships. Technological advance in quantum computing and sensors appear to make it likely that any submarine in the oceans will soon be able to be quickly located and targeted New ‘Quantum Sensors’ Could Make America’s Billion-Dollar Submarines Obsolete
@Simon R is making a very important point. I am not sure it is an argument against federalism in itself, at least that is not my take, but he is 100% right that Europe is also going the way of populism and liberals seem to have a blindspot over that. The EU of today is not the same as the one we left, nor for that matter the EEC we joined. In the recent German elections the AfD doubled their vote to 20%. At least for now they are not in power, but to keep them out a new Coalition is forced bringing together 2 parties who in any normal democracy would be opposed to each other. And the experience of the previous Coalition suggests that this one will also be a shambles and open the door to more support for the AfD.
2 things can be true at the same time. We need to unite with the rest of Europe in opposition to the threat from Russia, but it probably wont work very well.
In the short term Russia will take many years to recover from the war in Ukraine. But when it does it will not be easy for Europe to stop Russia from doing what it likes in Eastern Europe
I think we need to learn from and borrow from the European Coal and Steel Community which became the EEC, which in turn became the EU.
As some have pointed out federalise is potentially a worthy goal, just how do we get there and how do we get something moving now. Well it is obvious we need o make some first steps, get interested parties together and work on a clear and focused objective, then allow things to go broader.So for the present the focus needs to be on European security and on reducing our dependency on the US; recognising the modern US is different to the post war one which wanted Europe to outsource its defence to the US.
As for the Brexiteer loss of sovereignty, it is clear the UK has a simple choice, be a leader in Europe or have a status lower than Puerto Rico in an enlarged US.
@ Roland,
“…..or have a status lower than Puerto Rico in an enlarged US.”
Just on a point of information: Puerto Rico isn’t a part of the USA. They have chosen the worst of all possible options in that they also are not fully independent with their own currency.
The sensible options are to apply to be fully a part of the USA or choose to be fully independent.
Whatever mistakes our Govt makes I can’t see them wanting to use someone else’s currency at the same time as having no control over it.
@Peter – The US “acquired” Puerto Rico in 1898 following the Spanish-American war. Its current status is an unincorporated US territory. As to whether Puerto Rico chose, or the US chose for them is not so clear.
Given the likes of Johnson, Truss, Farage, and what we saw over Brexit, I’m not so confident about “our” government not making daft mistakes. I can see them signing a Trump “deal” without having read it and discovering the words are very different to the rhetoric…
Puerto Rico may not have been clear in 1898, but it has had more than one referendum on its status, the last one specifically on statehood in 2020, but the Republicans don’t like the idea of giving full representation in Congress to a Democrat-voting island.
And even if they choose to retain their ambiguous status, it’s not for us as outsiders to tell them what is ‘sensible’ for them, especially as it’s never been British, so not our problem.
On the other hand, Malta, another Catholic and Latinate island, nearly remained one for us as it nearly became part of the UK with MPs in Westminster, under a scheme that’d have cost us £280 million a year; probably for the best it never happened, but no more bizarre than French islands in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean being outermost regions of the European Union.
The problem is that in English-speaking countries, federalism is seen by its detractors as centralisation, hence some early proponents of what we now call Brexit being called the Anti-Federalist League.
While the German Empire and Weimar Republic had a federal (i.e.: decentralised) system, it was dominated by Prussia nearly as much as the UK was, and still is, dominated by England, and it was only due to Allied occupation that it was broken up into smaller, more manageable states; North Rhine Westphalia being created by the British under ‘Operation Marriage’.
By contrast, there is no real interest in breaking England up into regions with their own parliaments, similar to Castile in Spain, either within the existing UK or in a federal Europe of the regions, in which the UK, along with Germany, France, Italy, Spain and other large states would cease to exist.
Hi all – James and Ben here (the authors)! Thank you for reading the article and for your thoughtful replies. We wanted to respond to a few of them.
“We don’t need a federal Europe to cooperate on buying military gear so we buy stuff more cheaply.”
– Of the potential estimated ~75bn savings, only 12.7bn would be from procurement. You would still need to hash out extensive political agreement with 27+ different states. This is a tall order compared to a decision of a single federal government (e.g. compared to the US).
“Creation of a federal Europe would ‘leave out’ other allies such as Canada, Mexico, Australia etc.”
– We can still maintain our alliances with other countries as a Federal Republic and we’d continue to work with them.
– These are not mutually exclusive outcomes.
“Remote federal government and the possibility of electing ‘European Trump’”
– There is a trade-off between economies-of-scale in government (such as we have outlined) and the accompanying remoteness. Our opinion is that if done similarly to in the US, this is worth it.
– Disillusionment is largely inflamed due to the gridlocked nature of US politics and their electoral system rather than it being large per se, although we concede an argument could be made that being larger increases the odds of deadlock.
– It’s unlikely that a ‘European Trump’ would be elected, especially with a ranked voting system for the Presidency. We believe political polarisation in Europe is not so extreme as to threaten the unity of the federation.
“At the mercy of vetoes”
– The federal government would not grant state veto power. Federal powers are to be exercised exclusively by the federal government, and likewise for the states. (This is how all federal systems work, e.g. North Dekota can’t veto the President’s military plans!).
“4 tiers of government will cause one to eventually become redundant”
– This is an arbitrary distinction. Look at NYC which has: 5 borough presidents, a NYC government and Mayor, statewide government, and federal government.
“Use of political bandwidth to set up, which will be completed post-Trump”
– We acknowledge that the federal project would likely be completed after the (near) future of Ukraine has already been decided, but every project has to start somewhere and at some time. The reasons for it extend beyond whatever the long term relationship with the US (and Russia) ends up being.
– We judge that federation is worth achieving, and so the process should begin, but the resources l must, of course, be split between long term success, and short term crisis management (like any organisation / government does).
“How do you plan to get the federalisation process past the inevitable referenda in every country?”
– This can only (and should only) happen with popular support, state membership of the federation is voluntary.
– Articles such as ours are part of the effort to persuade our fellow citizens of Europe that this is a project worth engaging in.
We need to build a grass roots movement for a Federal Europe,but where to start? Fortunately some forward looking people from all over Eurpope have started to do just that: https://togetherforeurope.com/
They also have a manifest, soon to be updated:
https://togetherforeurope.com/about-us/the-rome-manifesto/
Please look at their website, and consider spending an hour online with the group on Thursday at 18:00 (UK time):
https://www.meetup.com/together-for-europe-brussels/events/306358607/
Can we learn from and build on America’s type of federalism? As I understand it all states have the same powers under the American constitution. If Europe modified its framework so countries could have differing levels of participation, it would be easier for countries such as the UK and Norway to join it.