Decoupling and federalizing : Europe after the multiple crises

Abstract

The 2010s multiple crises brought to the surface of European politics a division on the very rationale of the integration project. The latter has been challenged by nationalistic parties and governments under the banner of sovereignism. In fact, the dramatic consequences of secession (from the EU) even for a country such as the United Kingdom have led to an interpretation of nationalism as sovereignism within the EU rather than secession from the EU. To weaken the sovereignist challenge, it is necessary to free the EU from the tyranny of ‘one size fits all’, acknowledging the difference between the countries that need or want to move towards an ‘evercloser union’ and those which wish to participate only in a single market. This acknowledgement should lead to negotiations, between national and community leaders, for institutionalizing, within the single market, a distinct federal union (around the Eurozone member states), governing traditional core state power policies through a separation of power system. This would amount to a necessary differentiation for undermining the sovereignist challenge. The single market and the federal union should have different legal settings, although the member states of the latter would participate in the functioning of the former, according to rules that would prevent them acting en bloc. Decoupling is a condition for bringing federalism back again to the European integration project, although the federal model which should serve this purpose needs to be based on the experience of federations formed by aggregation and not disaggregation.