The example of the Holy Roman Empire

Hello everyone,

The APROFED association is returning to you this weekend to present the example of the Holy Roman Empire and the opportunity France missed to adopt federalism as early as 1000 AD.

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, the Franks, a tribe of Germanic origin, seized the Gallo-Roman territory corresponding to present-day France . Five centuries later, under the Carolingian era, this territory had grown from 150,000 km² to nearly 1.2 million km² , stretching from Bohemia to the Atlantic, from East to West, and from the North Sea to the Pyrenees and Italy in the South, encompassing the six founding countries of the current EU: Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux.

However, around the year 1000, upon the death of Emperor Charlemagne, the kingdom divided and experienced a very different evolution with regard to the power of the sovereign . If France succeeded, after several centuries, in creating a centralized state by constantly fighting against the rights and powers of the feudal princes, current Germany known under the title of Holy Roman Empire preferred to move towards a (con)federal model for the benefit of some of the princes and not the emperor, which it has retained to this day; although interspersed with brief periods of centralism and nationalism, notably in the 19th and 20th centuries in response to the wars launched by France against it, in 1806 with Napoleon then in 1870 with Napoleon III and finally the two world wars of 1914 and 1939.

Thus, today’s Germany already functioned according to federal principles yesterday.

The Holy Roman Empire (902-1806) was composed of hundreds of entities (kingdoms, duchies, free cities, bishoprics, etc.), often very autonomous, even sovereign in the 16th century. These entities had their own authority over their territories . The Emperor did not have absolute power; he had to deal with the princes and the imperial diets (Assembly of the Estates of the Empire). The central power was weak , the real authority was in the hands of the territorial princes . The Emperor, elected by the princes, was deprived of the right to interfere in the affairs of those who had elected him, too attached to their customary autonomy . It was a political system where power is shared between a central “government” and local entities (States, provinces, cantons, etc.). Each level has its own powers . The Holy Roman Empire was a symbolic unity under the authority of the emperor, but allowed for great legal, linguistic, and cultural diversity. Its legitimacy, which allowed it to endure to this day, was to ensure peace within the empire and protect it from external threats. Many current federal states were founded based on these two principles, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, etc.

Due to its supranational character, the Holy Roman Empire never resulted in the formation of a  modern nation-state  , unlike France or  the United Kingdom. The Holy Roman Empire remained a monarchical and corporate entity, ruled by an emperor and the imperial states, and endowed with very few imperial institutions in the strict sense. The Holy Roman Empire is defined above all by negations:

• • the power of government of the empire is neither solely in the hands of the emperor nor solely in those of the prince-electors or even of an assembly like the Diet;

• • The Empire cannot be considered either a federal state or a confederation; however, the Empire exhibits characteristics of all these state forms.

As an ”  umbrella organization  ,” the empire encompassed numerous territories and served as a legal framework for the coexistence of the various lords. They recognized the emperor as the ruler of the empire. They took an active part in imperial politics, which they influenced, starting with the election of the emperor but also by participating in diets and other corporate representations. Unlike other countries, the inhabitants were therefore not the direct subjects of the emperor. Each immediate territory  had its own lord, and each  city had  its mayor.

The Holy Roman Empire ultimately tends to be defined as a “complementary state”.

Some would go so far as to say that if the Holy Roman Empire was federal in nature, it was because it was powerless to break the regional stubbornness of the territories and therefore ended up as a formless confederation made up of several hundred small German-speaking principalities. After the Middle Ages, these states modernized their military, judicial and economic administrations, to the detriment of the imperial level, relegating the Emperor to the rank of a confederal figure without great political and military power. The term “Kleinstaaterei” (which would today be translated as balkanization) describes this absence of central organization in favor of a multitude of states that were virtually independent of each other.

And although Germany, a descendant of the Holy Roman Empire, is territorially smaller than its French cousin, its population is larger , its economy is ranked 4th among the richest powers on the planet in 2025 (France being 7th) and it has militarily won all the theaters of war that have opposed it to its neighbor over the last 150 years (1870, 1914, 1939). France having had to cede territories and call on other federal nations (United States, Australia, Canada, Russia, India, etc.) to free itself, demonstrating that the era of nationalism and centralism is over.

We wish you a good read and remind you that federalism is the only solution to reconcile unity in diversity.

L’association APROFED