Damn, I wish I would have time to watch the entire video! While the topic of European federalism is of course not new, the implications of the new government accord can hopefully bring around a push to the future of the European democratic project. That being said, I really dislike the title - the idea of a federal Europe is not at all (only) German, and I believe that no one wants an entirely “new Europe” either but rather improve the existing one :) Thanks for sharing!
@tomasz One argument I strongly disagree with is that English be used as the language to unify the European nation.
In fact the independence of geographical regions and linguistic communities is probably the one thing in the Belgian system that may be a good idea to adapt to a European state
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That would be terrible. Luckily there is way too much disagreement between countries for this to happen, ever.
May I ask why you think this would be terrible? :)
Because the EU is not democratic at all. For example, the Comission president (von der Leyen) wasnt even running in the election, but still got the post, probably because Germany decided it. Which is the next problem, Germany has way too much power in the EU, and is the main country that benefits from it (along with France, and other northern countries). But conditions in the south and east of Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, etc) have become worse and worse over the last decades.
This has been at least partially caused by the Euro. Germany and France benefit from it being strong, While peripheral countries benefit from it being weaker. At the end of the day, the Eurozone and the freedom of movement between member states functions as a parasitic supranational structure that siphons wealth and cheap, exploitable labour away from the poorer countries like Bulgaria, Greece, Romania etc and funnels it into the core countries. Look at the effect this trend has had on the Baltic countries; in Latvia, 23 percent of their working age population has been lost since the early 2000s, and population overall is in sharp decline. This is the effect of the EU as a supranational structure.
Interesting. While I’m equally appalled by the Spitzenkandidaten principle not having been upheld, stating that the nomination of Ursula von der Leyen was decided by the German government would be a massive simplification of an insanely long, complicated, and weird debate among different European political actors. Particularly, the resistance to the lead candidates (Weber, Timmermans), came mainly from the French government (see here).
I do agree with the problem analysis that some democratic features are underdeveloped though. But I’d argue that that’s exactly why a federalisation is so necessary: Through shifting power away from the intergovernmental institutions (European Council, Council of the European Union) towards the democratically elected and accountable institutions (most notably the European Parliament), we can ensure that no single government can exercise too much power in the political decision-making process.
The exact same goes for the conditions in Southern/Eastern/Southeastern Europe (which I’d be willing to say have not ONLY worsened over the last decades, as your comment kind of implies). A completion of the banking and monetary union, establishment of a common fiscal union and most importantly, advancing the social rights of EU citizens are crucial in addressing the imbalance of conditions that you describe. Maintaining the status quo or introducing even more borders and differences between the different European states on the other hand does absolutely nothing to alleviate this and only adds to imbalances in economic and political power.
I think you should ask instead “who he thinks it would be horrible for”.
Definitely a who question and not a why.
