Federal Leap or Political Unions?

The on-going evolution of the eurozone crisis has elicited healthy calls for a boost to European integration which often crystallise around the concept of a “federal leap”. Yves Bertoncini tries to clarify the terms of this debate, in a Notre Europe’s viewpoint identifying four main issues:

A “European Federation of Nation States” based on a specific social and political contract
Adjusting the share out of competences between the EU and its member states
The issue of European government and of recourse to differentiation
The need to rise to the democratic challenges at the national and Community levels

Competences, government, democracy: those are the three main issues in a European “roadmap” which must not be purely economic and social, but must also be political and institutional – and they are also the ingredients of the political jolts, as daring as it is reasonable, which the EU so sorely needs.