Europe has been involved several times in the notion of constitutional and organisational federal statehood, without wanting to become a federal Europe itself. The price for that negligence was recently presented by the President, Vice-President and Secretary of Defence of the United States: ‘Europe, you are fired’. European leaders perceived this message as a gross insult by three politicians whose tendency towards autocracy is blatantly exhibited by a fundamental lack of mental, intellectual and moral capacity. The European Union has thus become geopolitically an institution to be ignored. Serves it right.

This US intervention is another deafening alarm in terms of the need to have a federal Europe with a common defence force. But again, that alarm is not heard by deaf EU leaders. Like headless chickens, but clucking nonetheless, they run through each other, looking for a common loft without having been prepared over the past two centuries to make a functioning one themselves.

I outline some events where the concepts of ‘Europe’ and ‘constitutional and organisational federal state formation’ touched without Europe understanding that therein lies the mission school to act, namely, to establish a federal Europe.

1603: Political Method by Johannes Althusius

The German philosopher Johannes Althusius – protégé of William of Orange, the founder of the Netherlands – published his ‘Politica methodice digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata’ in 1603. That means: ‘Politics methodically set out and illustrated with sacred and profane examples’. It was the first description of standards of federal state formation. In that form of government, sovereignty is shared by communities in layers above one another. Each layer possesses its own sovereignty. The layer above is sovereign for matters that the layer below cannot look after.

It marks the essence of the concept of ‘subsidiarity’ in the sense of ‘Leave to each governing layer to do what that layer can best do itself’. It was coined around 1900 by Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper as: ‘Sovereignty in its own circle’. The introduction of shared sovereignty was a revolutionary break with the age-old tradition of linking sovereignty one and indivisibly to the person of a ruler.

As one of the main standards of federal statehood, a federal constitution is the legal basis. That contains the provision that a federal authority is exclusively authorised to take care of a small and exhaustive set of common interests that member organisations of the federation cannot take care of themselves: the care of ‘the whole’. Those member organisations are and remain sovereignly competent to manage their own affairs: the care which the ‘parts’ can provide for themselves.

The first and most important common concern for ‘the whole’ is the security of ‘the whole’. This requires the provision of a common defence force. After Althusius 1603, this issue was not addressed until 1787. Indeed, after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europe’s second system of states emerged: the emergence of sovereign nation-states which, although no longer allowed to attack each other, continued to fight wars, up to and including WWII. That was period of European ‘nation-state anarchy’. As an aside, the first European state system until 1648 was that of tribes, nobles and cities fighting each other: the European ‘noble-anarchy’.

1787-1789: Federal America

After the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the 13 English colonies in North America became independent states under a confederate treaty called the ‘Articles of Confederation.’ Even then, it soon became clear that in treaty-based cooperation of more than two member states, their leaders considered the national interests of their member states more important than the duty to comply with what was agreed under treaty law. They violated the concept of ‘Pacta Servanda Sunt’: treaties should be obeyed. They quarreled; some states threatened to leave the confederal treaty; they divided into three groups challenging each other and the confederal authority. As an aside, the exact same thing is happening in the European Union. But now it is called ‘treaty anarchy’. Learning power? Zero.

To prevent further disintegration, James Madison, authorised to do so by George Washington, convened a group of 55 delegates from the 13 states in 1787: the so-called Philadelphia Convention. In six months, these (descendants of) European immigrants designed the world’s first federal constitution. With only seven articles, it contained the form and content of a federal state, based on shared sovereignty, representative democracy, trias politica and a few other standards of constitutional state-building, derived from their knowledge of the works of European philosophers including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles de Montesquieu and John Locke; constitutionalists par excellence. Creating a common defence against threats from England, France and Russia was priority number one.

The federal USA grew from 13 to 50 member states. However, not without serious questions about its current democratic quality, its administrative stability and its judicial independence. These are no longer guaranteed. The USA now exhibits serious internal political, legal and cultural problems. However, these are caused not by a poor constitutional and organisational federal state form, but by individuals who manage to demolish even the most powerful edifice to the ground.

Strictly speaking, a well-functioning federal state rests not only on standards of constitutional and organisational statecraft, but also on the presence of political office-holders who are competent and suited to perform that office with dignity and unquestioned authority. Where that is lacking, something that cannot be denied if we look at the behaviour of the present US political establishment, entropic decay (Second Law of Thermodynamics: decay, chaos) hits rock bottom. A process of unstoppable decay that also marks the end of Europe’s political life cycle.

That entropic decay, incidentally, is facilitated by some systemic flaws of the US constitution. It puts too much administrative, military and emergency law power in the hands of just one person. Thereby, the highest judicial college is politically constituted. This regularly raises questions about its independence.

At the end of this paper, I point to the 2021-2022 Federal Constitution designed by the Citizens’ Convention of the Federal Alliance of European Federalists (FAEF) of which I was privileged to be the first President from 2018 to 2023. In that Constitution for the Federated States of Europe of just 10 articles, shortcomings of the US constitution have been improved. Incidentally, one must observe that no constitution, no matter how well designed, can withstand abuse and demolition by autocrats.

1800 to present: Growth of federations

The success of the world’s first federation was the beginning of many attempts to federalise Europe itself as well. Between WWI and WWII, activist groups in the UK took the lead for several decades to make Europe a federal state. Even including the USA. However, all attempts failed due to political reluctance, based on lack of knowledge of the meaning of federalisation and the primacy of nationalist interests.

Elsewhere, the importance of federal statehood was better understood: the world now has twenty-seven federal states that together house just over 42% of the world’s population. The treaty-based European Union has three federal states: Germany, Belgium and Austria.

20th century: failed federations

Besides those twenty-seven federal states, Africa, Asia and Europe also have failed federations. These failed because of insufficient attention to the need to make standards of federal statehood the top priority. They fell apart due to legal bungling, nationalist interests, political rivalries, ethnic tensions, unequal power relations and opportunistic action by the United Nations; an organisation that, like the European Union and NATO, has come to the end of its political life cycle.

The current twenty-seven federations include Russia’s. But it should not actually be called a federation because Russia’s federal constitution is worded in such a way that the President is allowed to rule as an autocrat: above the law. And so he does, jealously watched by Donald Trump.

Some examples of failed federations include: 

Africa: the Mali Federation 1959-1960s; Federation of Central Africa 1953-1963; Federal Republic of Cameroon 1961-1972; Senegambia Confederation 1982-1989; East African Federation (planned but never established) 1960s-1970s; Union of Egypt and Libya (it too did not really materialise) 1972-1977.  

Asia: United States of Indonesia January 1950 to August 1950; Federation of Greater Malaysia 1963-1965; United Arab Republic 1958-1961; Federation of South Arabia 1962-1967; Union Iraq and Jordan 1958; Union North and South Vietnam 1976 to present, with many conflicts. 

Europe: Czechoslovakia 1969-1992; Soviet Union 1922-1991; Yugoslavia 1945-1992; German Confederation 1815-1866; Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1569-1795. 

1941: Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi: Ventotene Manifesto

Spinelli and Rossi, as Mussolini’s exiles on the island of Ventotene, wrote the so-called Ventotene Manifesto in 1941. This was a powerful argument for establishing a federal Europe after WWII in accordance with the methodology and content of the federal constitution of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.

This Manifesto received a great deal of attention from political, scientific and cultural figures and institutes after the war. However, this was not translated into the creation of a federal Europe, but into treaty cooperation. A systemic error of the highest order that is now, 80 years after WWII, taking its toll in the form of foreseeable threat of a third world war that could and should have been prevented by a strong federal Europe. But in the game of geopolitical powers, the current treaty-based European Union is – as the saying goes – ‘A bird for the cat’.

1946 and 1948: Eisenhower and Marshall aid

After WWII, US President Truman requested Ike Eisenhower – the commander of Allied forces against Hitler – to investigate the possibility of a common defence force in Europe. The USA understood that the concern for security of ‘the whole’ was a common interest that the ‘parts’ could not look after on their own and that this required a federal form of state. But the political leaders of what was then Europe did not understand that. They left Truman and Eisenhower out in the cold. For two reasons, some countries turned against the idea of a common defence force and the need to create a federal Europe for it: fear of rearming Germany and fear of losing sovereignty, still a popular misconception among just about all European politicians.

In 1948, the USA once again underlined the need to federalise Europe by guiding the Marshall Aid for the Reconstruction of Europe with the urgent advice to form a strong united Europe, preferably in the form of a federation. But that too was ignored by Europe’s political leaders. They did happily take in no less than $13.2 billion from 1948, a sum that after accounting for inflation would amount to several hundred billions today. All that remained was the creation of NATO in 1949. And that now seems to be buried by the USA itself: a bitter example of how a once democracy- and freedom-loving nation is transforming into an genuine autocracy.

Post-war political leaders opted – as I explain below – for cooperation of European countries through treaties: intergovernmental cooperation. However, this only works as long as such cooperation has more advantages (large financial donations) than disadvantages (complying to obligations) for the participating countries. As soon as obligations arise, people look the other way. Some countries that made efforts in the past to fend off communism and fascism are now holding talks with Putin and/or forming populist/nationalist governments of their own with far-right variants. Submitting to the current US President’s unprecedented and unstoppable lust for power does not make other countries of Europe any less enslaved.

The post-war choice to base European cooperation on treaties is not cooperation, but an accumulation of treaties that is by no means more than the sum of its parts. The sum should have been securing care for the most important common interest, namely security, only achievable in a federal state form. Having failed to do so, we are now stuck with

• countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Georgia more or less siding with Putin;
• western EU countries that – as of 19 February 2025 – continue to support Ukraine, but without America’s help, and without a NATO that could provide a meaningful degree of security for Western Europe on the basis of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty;
• Baltic states and Finland in supreme state of defence against possible Russian incursions;
• no Western resistance possible if Russia wants to repeat Hitler’s trick (corridor to Gdansk) of demanding a corridor to Kaliningrad, right through Poland and Lithuania.

An imminent process of divide and rule between EU countries could lead to civil war, as a prologue to WWIII. Exactly the same situation between the 13 states in the period 1776 and 1787 in the USA. Then only prevented by the Philadelphia Convention with its federal constitution. The cause of this chaos in Europe lies in the most serious systemic error made in the period 1950-1951. And in the stupidity of Europe’s political leaders in not being willing or able to recognise and acknowledge that mistake.

If the EU is not prepared to face up to this systemic error then any choice now being prepared will be nothing but an extension of that systemic error and thus an even further deviation from what should have been settled from 1800 onwards: a federal Europe. Embedded in that unexpected extension is that some countries will be enslaved to Russia, and others to the USA. It goes far beyond who is in charge in Ukraine or Greenland.

1950 and 1951: the Schuman Declaration and the European Coal and Steel Community

With the establishment of the treaty-based United Nations in 1945 and perceived fears of loss of sovereignty of federal member states, European cooperation based on treaties, known as intergovernmental cooperation, was chosen in 1951. The basis for this was the Schuman Declaration of May 1950, pronounced by Robert Schuman, French foreign minister.

Schuman was a dunce. So was his adviser Jean Monnet (lived in the USA for years, worked with Roosevelt, familiar with that form of state). Both hailed as founding fathers of what later evolved into the European Union. But they had no awareness in 1950 of the political, administrative and legal havoc caused by their choice of treaty cooperation. The Declaration twice included an explicit mandate to create a federal Europe. But the Declaration instructed Europe’s heads of government to base that urgently desired federal Europe on treaties. This is not feasible. Schuman did not know his classics. Neither did the other European leaders. They still don’t.

A federal state is based on a federal constitution. That guarantees political accountability in the context of shared sovereignty, representative democracy and trias politica. Treaties do not have that. To call the EU with its non-real parliament and veto-proof members of the unelected European Council a democratic institution is absurd. It is merely an accumulation of nation states that conform to treaty obligations as long as it serves their national interests, without political accountability.

After the Schuman Declaration of May 1950 came the European Coal and Steel Community as the first treaty in 1951. A proliferation of subsequently ever new and amended treaties led to the Lisbon Treaty (entered into force on 1 December 2009); the worst legal document ever written in Europe. It replaced a so-called European Constitution called the ‘Constitutional Treaty’. The brazenness of claiming that a treaty can have the potential of a constitution makes constitutionalists hesitate between crying really hard or laughing. Whatever choice they make, in the end all that remains is deep despondency. There are not enough pillories of shame in Europe to punish those guilty of this process of European decay.

2025: break-up of the European Union, but neither a federal Europe nor a strong NATO

The culmination of systemic failures of the Lisbon Treaty causes the demise of the European Union. As I noted: unstoppable entropy (decay, chaos), a concept from the Second Law of Thermodynamics inherent to any system, organic or not, is leading to an enormous identity crisis, absorbing the EU’s energy to stay alive and renew, after which it will disintegrate. This is how a natural law works.

This was foreseen, predicted and substantiated with facts and arguments many years ago. It has never been listened to. The structural mechanism built into the Lisbon Treaty to deem own national interests of a higher order than common European interests has, with the speeches of the three US politicians in February 2025, dealt the EU the final blow: an unfathomable chaos in the European Union. It faces the impossible task in 2025 of ensuring Europe’s freedom with a political, legal and cultural past that for centuries has been consistently hostile to federalising Europe, the only state system capable of ensuring common security.

Now it is too late, unless Europe’s leaders do what their predecessors failed to do in their arrogant and opportunistic ignorance, which is to establish – within weeks – that Europe will become a constitutional and organisational federal state, based on standards of constitutional and organisational federal state-building, with the first common interest being security for Europe, ensured by a common defence force. Then the Lisbon Treaty – divisive of commonality – is thrown in the bin. Exactly the same act the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 did with their treaty of the ‘Articles of Confederation’: get rid of that mess.

I know of course that there is no point in asking a lame man to jump over a wall. He can’t. Asking the collection of ignorant European leaders to still do in a few weeks what all their predecessors failed to do in culpable negligence over several centuries, namely declare a European federation, will not happen. Therefore, a political-administrative vacuum awaits the citizens of Europe, filled with autocratic rulers and their favorite pastime: waging wars. Once these have fizzled out, the fourth European state system will emerge after 20 centuries, a federal Europe. There is no doubt about that. But at what price?