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When France is an obstacle to the federal transformation of the EU
Hello everyone,
The APROFED association is getting back to you this weekend following France’s rejection of the federal concept in New Caledonia during the Deva conclave, in the commune of Bourail.
If, as we have repeatedly pointed out, the loyalists’ project was not really federalism, the fact remains that France has always been opposed to this notion, as the history of the construction of the European Union demonstrates.
From 1954, at the end of WWII, France buried for a long time the project of a federal Europe , derived from the German model, by rejecting the European Defence Community (EDC).
By boycotting European institutions in the 1960s, under the leadership of General De Gaulle, France opposed any supranational dynamic and thus compromised Europe’s federal leap.
General De Gaulle, in favor of cooperation between sovereign states, a “Europe of Nations,” always rejected a strong supranational power that would have strengthened Germany, itself supported by the United States. France, wary of European institutions and loyal to “French particularism,” thus proposed a confederal solution instead, slowing down plans for a federal political union for the next two generations; while the confederation was only supposed to be, for 15 years, a first step towards the creation of a European federal state.
Even today, resistance to this development still prevails at the highest levels of the French state, while the majority of the population, for its part, says it is ready to adopt a federal-type structure (see: The French in favor of a federal Europe! – Union of European Federalists, UEF-France ) , like the German or American ones, judging French institutions to be archaic and not responding to the concerns of its population, having to call on the European Union or even the United States (federal state) to come to its aid in certain crises (health, military, etc.)
The origin of this federalist refusal being partly its eternal rivalry with Germany and the United States, yet today its allies. By preventing the German federal structure from becoming a European model, France therefore pushed for a model that better reflects its own organization , namely a strong nation-state , at the origin of the 2 world wars. However, the creation of the United States demonstrated that it was possible to reconcile a strong, central State in the French style, managing in particular sovereign powers with subordinate entities, also having the qualifier of States, but federated which would have for their part to manage the rest of the powers relating to the proper functioning of society, this in cooperation with the central State, called federal.
However, in the event that the EU were to become a federal state, these current member states would then become these federated states . Thus, in view of the demands for independence of certain territories (Scotland, Basque Country, etc.), approximately 9, and the integration of new states, approximately 11, added to the 27 current member states and the potential return, one day, of the United Kingdom to the EU, the latter would thus have nearly 48 states , almost as many as the 50 federated states of the USA, forming the idea defended by V. Hugo and W. Churchill of a “United States of Europe”.
The problem is that in wanting to maintain its sovereignty, France has delegated the rest of its powers to the EU (agriculture, tourism, environment, etc.). However, in the context of a federal Europe which would recover the sovereign powers , specific to the Member States, such as currency, which is already the case, diplomacy, the army, etc., the governments of the Member States would see themselves emptied of their substantial marrow. It would be appropriate for the Member States to recover the other powers currently held by the EU. In other words, for them to reverse their powers. Especially since the said powers are currently those delegated to the regions in France, autonomous communities in Spain, and to the Länder in Germany. Thus, the governments and parliaments of the current Member States would only serve as transmission belts and regulators between the regions and the EU. The only powers remaining to the governments of the current Member States would be justice and internal security . The others (sovereign powers) having been transferred to the EU, the President of the French Republic would become nothing more than a simple governor, unless elected by universal suffrage to head the entire EU.
One could even imagine, given the loss of legitimacy of the Franco-German duo, the historic driving force of European integration since the 1950s, a scenario of American-style secession with the creation by Germany of a federal Europe of the Northern countries, and around France of a confederal Europe of the Southern Mediterranean states with the same outcome as in the United States. History being an eternal recommencement, this scenario is all the more likely as it could come true in the 2070s, in comparison with American history. Indeed, the United States began with a confederation, just like the EU, between 1777 and 1781. About ten years later, they adopted their Constitution between 1787 and 1789, only to unfortunately experience a civil war 70 years later in the 1860s. The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 established the creation of the EU in the form of a confederation, then about ten years later in 2009, the Lisbon Treaty, its “Constitution”, although not designated as such given the “no” vote in the 2005 French referendum, among other things. Count on another 70 years and you would get a range between the years 2070-2080, for a potential conflict. This date also coincides with the date indicated by the association in a previous article (see The federal system: the logical continuity of the tribal and feudal model – APROFED ) which estimated the indubitable change towards federalism taking place around this date.
Faced with a major institutional crisis, a risk of fragmentation and overall weakening of the EU, the association is dismayed to see France’s behavior, reacting like a capricious child to the word “federalism,” a concept to which it offers unjustified resistance. Thus, the future will tell us whether it accepts this inevitable choice of evolving towards a fully federal structure or leaving the EU, like the United Kingdom, with possible losses and disruption.
You can find online an excellent documentary, broadcast recently and still available for replay, which partly covers the content of this article, at the following link:
Giscard and Europe, chronicle of an unfinished dream in replay – The case of the century | France TV
You can find all the answers provided by the AI to the questions below at the following link:
– What are the pitfalls that France has put in place to prevent the creation of a Europe, particularly a federal one?
– Did France prefer to build the European Union on a nation-state model rather than a federal one in order to weaken Germany?
– What is the future of the EU if it does not become federal?
– Could Germany create a federal Europe without France? What would the future of the EU be then?
We wish you a pleasant read and remind you that federalism is the only solution to reconcile unity in diversity.
The APROFED association