Year LXVI, 2024, Single Issue, Page 75
Towards a New Sovereignty:
European Federalism as the Response
to the Crisis of National Sovereignties*
GIACOMO BRUNELLI
The theoretical reflection developed by Altiero Spinelli, together with Rossi, Colorni, Ursula Hirschmann and other detainees on the island of Ventotene, prior to the drafting of the famous Manifesto of Ventotene, sprang from the undeniable and irrevocable crisis of the totalitarian nation state. These individuals felt that the European federation, born from the ruins of totalitarianism, should be built starting from a new premise, namely the need for true peace, not peace that is really just a fragile truce,[2] or interval, between one conflict and the next. This was the thinking behind the Manifesto for a free and united Europe, which, ably penned by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, comprises three parts focusing respectively on the crisis of modern civilisation, European unity and social reform. The Manifesto was the first truly radical critique of the nationalism[3] of the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, a time when this political ideology, stripped of all romantic ideals and founded, as it was, on the myth of the primacy of the nation state and the pursuit of imperialist power, was recognised to be naturally inclined towards war. In the face of this reality, ‘the abolition of the division of Europe into national, sovereign states’ was felt to be the only possible solution.[4]
The Manifesto of Ventotene does not merely set out the crisis of the nation state. It is the first text to combine critical analysis of the question with a federalist political programme designed to bring about change. After all, a critical analysis (pars destruens) that is not accompanied by concrete proposals for change (pars construens) does not deserve to be considered to have political value. Critical analysis should indeed focus on a model, take it apart and reject it, so as to be able to affirm a different ideal. As Norberto Bobbio recognised, the ‘Ventotene Manifesto marked a turning point...considering the creation of a European federation not as an abstract ideal but as a political priority goal to be achieved through specific political action.’[5] In other words, it marked the transition from so-called ideal federalism, be it Kantian, Proudhonian or the pan-European version espoused by Kalergi, to a political project aimed, as we have said, at the federal transformation of the European forms of state.[6]
So, on the night between 27 and 28 August, 1943, the first European federalists gathered at the home of Mario Alberto Rollier in Milan to devise an alternative to the decaying totalitarian state. They recognised that the contemporary European states were teetering on the edge of a tipping point: either Europe changed its institutions, adopting a definitive federal structure, or it would become a mere spectator, rather than a player, on the world political stage.
This federal structure had to be achieved through a concrete plan of action involving the establishment of institutional pacifism[7] and pursuit of multilateralism, the latter permitted by Europe’s readiness to position itself between the Western and Eastern blocs, dominated respectively by the USA and the USSR (or China in today’s world), in a constructive and collaborative rather than oppositional or competitive way.[8] But there was no time to lose; this European federation needed to be built immediately after the collapse of the totalitarian states, and before the rebirth of the nation states.[9]
However, history followed a course different to the one the authors of the Manifesto envisaged and desired: the 1949 Marshall Plan allowed the European states to put their institutions back together and rebuild their cities and industries on top of the rubble of war.[10] The European countries, faced with the ruins of the totalitarian state, whose institutions had suddenly caved in on themselves, opted for a form of state inspired by the principles of pluralist democracy. This led to the birth of what public law doctrine might describe as a democratic liberal and social constitutional state, governed by a rigid constitution (hierarchically superior to ordinary laws) that enshrines not only negative freedoms (freedoms from) but also positive freedoms (freedoms of) and social rights.[11] Such constitutional safeguarding of these inalienable rights also protects them against the effects of ordinary legislation.[12]
Politically, this situation was problematic for the European federalists: no longer able to be the vanguard spearheading the immediate construction of a new type of state (the European federal state), they found themselves instead called upon to promote and support the progressive integration of Europe’s nation states, a process as urgent as it was necessary, given that the new European nation states were ‘built on foundations of pretence and lies’ that would condemn them to ‘inevitable decline’.[13] This process of European integration is the perspective from which we must read the evolution, during the period from 1950 to the present day, of the types of state existing in Europe.
In particular, this historical period has seen the Europe-wide introduction of processes that have allowed competences to be devolved[14] to extents far exceeding what the original constitutional provisions envisaged. These processes, based on the principle of subsidiarity, have seen portions of sovereignty transferred from the central body (the state) to regions and local bodies (downward subsidiarity), but also to the European Union (upward subsidiarity). As a result, national sovereignty, squeezed between both lower- and higher-level institutions, now has little in common with the vision of state sovereignty as supreme (superiorem non recognoscens). And yet, if analysed critically, stripped of the obfuscations of nationalism, this organisational-governmental model seems to be in just as much difficulty as the old totalitarian state was.
Indeed, even though it was clear that competitive nationalism was at the root of the horrors of the Second World War and the destruction of the western Europe of the period before the global conflicts, and that federalism was clearly the only solution following the doomed marriage of state and nation, the creation of a federal state as a natural response to the events of WWII (the outcome desired by the authors of the Manifesto of Ventotene) failed to occur. Instead, Europe built new nation states, and while these were, certainly, states governed by socially-motivated liberal-democratic constitutional regimes, equipped with constitutional provisions designed to protect minorities, the principle of equality, and civil and social rights, and characterised by limitations of sovereignty in favour of both supranational and regional and/or local institutions, they nevertheless remained nation states. The point is, are we now witnessing a crisis of this new, evidently Gattopardian,[15] model of nation state [16] (where everything is changed in order to change nothing, and profound modification of state institutions fails to really address the main problems that afflict states), by which we mean the nation state that took the place of the ones (governed first by constitutional monarchies and liberal parliaments and then, following the definitive crisis of liberal institutions, by authoritarian and totalitarian governments) that prompted the first federalists’ reflections on the ‘crisis of modern civilisation’? And if we are, then what are the most evident (or rather: self-evident) aspects of this crisis of the contemporary European nation state?
There can certainly be no doubt that the aforementioned ‘democratic liberal and social constitutional state’, in which decentralisation, both downwards — sometimes minimal, as in France, and sometimes very significant, as in Germany — and upwards (European Union), is a constant feature, is in crisis. And even though its crisis is very different from that of the European totalitarian states (centralised, based on the myth of sovereignty superiorem non recognoscens, ethical states), laid bare in the Manifesto of Ventotene, it is just as real as that one was, albeit less evident, being masked by ‘false solutions’ such as the functionalist method.
This crisis is very evident in the case of states of modest size (in terms of surface area, population and GDP), such as the Baltic states and the countries of central and eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, etc.), which clearly struggle in today’s increasingly globalised world, with its ever larger and more interdependent value chains and increasingly integrated markets.[17] But it is equally evident in the case of Italy, for example, despite Italy boasting a well-structured foreign policy and an extensive diplomatic network. Indeed, one need only consider Italy’s legislative output[18] in the period between 2022 and 2023: of all the laws approved in the seventeenth legislature, 21.9 per cent were law decrees converted into law, a proportion that rose to 33 per cent in the eighteenth. Furthermore, law decrees are largely approved through recourse to the confidence motion mechanism which was used (in at least one branch of the parliament) in 43.4 per cent of cases during the seventeenth legislature and in 55.8 per cent during the eighteenth. Confidence motions were used to approve ordinary laws, too: in 12.5 per cent of cases in the seventeenth and 20.9 per cent in the eighteenth legislature. We are also seeing a significant increase in the insertion of law decrees into other law decrees, a mechanism, giving rise to the so-called Russian doll effect, that formally reduces the total number of such decrees, while the use of emergency decrees remains a rapidly growing phenomenon. Moreover, it has been known for as many as three law decrees to be converted into law together. Of the 100 law decrees approved during the seventeenth legislature, 17 were combined with other laws, this rate rising to 28.8 per cent (41 out of 146) in the eighteenth legislature. Finally, 30 per cent of parliamentary laws were ratifications of European regulations and international treaties (a percentage that excludes all laws implementing European directives).
All this naturally begs some questions: how sovereign is a parliament that struggles this much to legislate, and how might this situation be resolved? This latter question can be answered either with false solutions, such as ‘going back to the start’, i.e., to a situation characterised by less Europe and less local autonomy, or alternatively by proposing that the process of European integration be completed through full realisation of those federal institutions that, alone, have the capacity to contain the present European crisis. The nation state is indeed clearly ill-equipped to tackle the great problems of the present day: environmental protection, regulation of globalisation, foreign policy management, and so on.
The federal state, on the other hand, can be defined as ‘a political organization in which the activities of government are divided between regional governments and a central government in such a way that each kind of government has some activities on which it makes final decisions’ (Riker),[19] or as a system in which ‘the relationship between the legislature which has authority over the whole territory and those legislatures which have authority over parts of the territory is not the relationship of superior to subordinates...but is the relationship of co-ordinate partners...’ (Wheare).[20]
Federalism is therefore characterised by a distribution of powers based on the principle of subsidiarity, which is necessarily supported by the principle of loyal cooperation.
This principle of subsidiarity, introduced into the European legal system by the Treaty of Lisbon (specifically by Art. 5 TEU), was forefront in the minds of the founders of European federalism from the outset: ‘the United States of Europe, is, for the Europeans, the only possible response to the challenge that history has thrown down before them…Federating Europe means uniting the free peoples of Europe under an irrevocable pact which decrees that public affairs pertaining to the single nations be administered by each of the respective nation-states in the manner they choose, and the affairs of common interest be administered by a common government…Each individual is, at once, a citizen both of his own nation-state and of the federation.’[21]
Having established that the process of European integration, albeit already very advanced, must culminate in the complete construction of federal institutions, several questions naturally arise. How should these institutions be created? And what powers and structure should they have? Altiero Spinelli, writing in 1942, provided a crucial and succinct reply: ‘the federal authority must have the powers necessary to put a definitive end to exclusivist national policies, meaning that the federation must have the exclusive right: to recruit and deploy armed forces (the latter also to be tasked with safeguarding public order internally); to conduct foreign policy; to determine the administrative limits of the various associated states, in such a way as to satisfy fundamental national needs and guard against abuses of ethnic minorities; to provide for the total abolition of protectionist barriers and prevent their re-erection; to issue a single federal currency; to ensure full freedom of movement for all citizens within the federation’s territory; and to administer all the colonies, or rather territories that are still not equipped for autonomous political life.
The federation, to perform these roles effectively, must have a federal judiciary, an administrative apparatus independent of that of the individual states, legislative and control bodies based on the direct participation of citizens and not on representations of the federated states, and the right to tax the citizens directly in order to fund its functioning.’[22] These steps, in essence, trace the process of European integration as it has unfolded to date, and must continue to unfold.
The same clarity of thought emerges in a subsequent passage of the same text in which Spinelli examines the economic doctrine that Europe should adopt in the post-war period. In it, he advocates establishing a common market based on a single currency and the free movement of people, goods, capital and services; intervening, with a European fund, to facilitate the reconversion of industry and worker retraining; and promoting full employment. A further point he made was that the European common market, to come about, would have to be framed within a system of justice and social security. Of all the advances desired and proposed by Spinelli and the European federalists between the 1940s and 1950s, the single market has proved to be the most successful. Starting from the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, it is this that has determined the subsequent stages of European integration, even though the process has unfolded differently from how the European federalists envisaged.
Indeed, Spinelli’s project was based on the so-called constitutionalist method, rather than the ‘functionalist method’ inspired by Jean Monnet and proposed by French foreign minister Robert Schuman in his famous 1950 declaration.[23]
As regards the political instrument needed to win the battle for the European federation, he acknowledges that a party is not the answer,[24] given that ‘parties...serve to mobilise national forces, in the national framework, in the service of national life’,[25] whereas ‘the aim of the federalists is not to become part of and to serve the national governments’, but rather to create a European federal government.[26] This is indeed why the federalists ‘do not set out to compete with the national parties [or] interfere in the affairs of national politics that should rightly remain national affairs.’ Conversely, since national parties can only deliver national solutions, the federalists dispute their ability to deal with issues that fall outside the sphere of the nation states, whose assumption of responsibility for them can be considered abusive.[27] In fact ‘in the affairs…that should…remain national…the federalists do not, by definition, have a clear stance. [They] come from all countries, from all walks of life, from all parties and from all spiritual, moral, religious and political families that acknowledge the value of human freedom. [They] wish to be builders of institutions, not leaders of souls.”[28]
During the years between 1941 (Ventotene Manifesto) and 1957 (The Manifesto of the European Federalists) the main goals that federalist militants would pursue in their battle for the construction of a United States of Europe began to emerge. The considerations developed in that period remain valid today, and the European Federalist Movement (MFE) still strives, through its current campaigns, to bring to fruition what Spinelli did not live to see: the creation of common European defence, foreign and fiscal policies. That said, we cannot fail to take into account many things that have changed since Spinelli’s death in 1986. What we therefore have to do now is take the reflections of Spinelli and the ‘first generation’ of federalist militants and set them in today’s political context. In practice, we have to understand how the historical situation [29] has changed in order to set our theoretical-political line in a new strategic plan, adapted to the new social, economic and institutional reality.
[*] This text is based on an address given during a meeting on Sovereignty and Subsidiarity: Two Souls of European Federalism held in Ferrara on 13 April 2024 and organised by the Debate Office of the European Federalist Movement.
[2] This is what is meant by ‘Kantian peace’: ‘No treaty of peace shall be held valid in which there is tacitly reserved matter for a future war. Otherwise a treaty would be only a truce, a suspension of hostilities but not peace, which means the end of all hostilities – so much so that even to attach the word “perpetual” to it is a dubious pleonasm.’ I. Kant, Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch, http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class per cent20Readings/Kant/Immanuel per cent20Kant, per cent20_Perpetual per cent20Peace_.pdf.
[3] A. Spinelli, E. Rossi, Per un’Europa libera e unita: progetto d’un manifesto (1941), in: A. Spinelli, E. Rossi, Problemi della Federazione europea, Edizioni del Movimento per la Federazione europea, 1943, p. 10. English translation at https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1997/10/13/316aa96c-e7ff-4b9e-b43a-958e96afbecc/publishable_en.pdf. They write that the nation ‘has…become a divine entity, an organism that has to consider only its own existence, its own development, without the least regard for the damage this might cause to others.’
[4] Ibid., p. 21: ‘The question which must first be resolved, and if it is not then any other progress made up to that point is mere appearance, is that of the abolition of the division of Europe into national, sovereign states.’
[5] N. Bobbio, Il federalismo nel dibattito politico e culturale della resistenza, in: A. Spinelli, E. Rossi, Il Manifesto di Ventotene, con prefazione di E. Colorni, Anastatic edition edited by S. Pistone, with an essay by N. Bobbio, Turin, Celid, 2001, p. XXV. Bobbio’s essay, referred to here, was first published in S. Pistone (ed.), L’idea dell’unificazione europea dalla prima alla seconda guerra mondiale, Turin, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 1973.
[6] For in-depth analysis of the evolution of federalist thought, from an ideal to a more concrete scenario encompassing institutional reform, an aspect that, necessarily, can here only be touched upon, see H. Mikkeli, Europe as an Idea and an Identity, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
[7] As Norberto Bobbio pointed out, ‘within the federalist movement since its inception, peace has not been regarded as the ultimate goal, but as a prerequisite for the achievement of other goals considered to be preeminent, such as freedom, social justice, economic development and so on.’ N. Bobbio, Il federalismo nel dibattito politico…, op. cit., p. XXXV.
[8] A. Spinelli, E. Rossi, The Manifesto of Ventotene, op. cit.: ‘the European Federation is the single conceivable guarantee that relationships with American and Asiatic peoples can exist on the basis of peace cooperation; this while awaiting a more distant future, when the political unity of the entire globe becomes a possibility.’
[9] Ibid., ‘If a sufficient number of men in European countries understand this, then victory is shortly to be in their hands, because the situation and the spirit will be favourable to their work. They will have before them parties and factions that have already been disqualified by the disastrous experience of the last twenty years. It will be the moment of new action, it will also be the moment of new men: the MOVEMENT FOR A FREE AND UNITED EUROPE.’
[10] A. Spinelli, Manifesto dei Federalisti Europei, Parma, Guanda, 1957: ‘independence in the face of the insatiable and cunning Soviet imperialist expansionism could be ensured only because America protected Western Europe militarily, undertaking to defend it in the event of aggression, and helping the European nations to rebuild their armed forces. In the shadow of American aid and weapons, the Western European states restored their democratic regimes.’ N.B.: Here, it is important not to make the mistake of interpreting Spinelli’s attack on nationalism as criticism of democracy. Since democracy has always gone hand in hand with nationalism in European history, Spinelli, when he talks of ‘democratic regimes’, means nationalist regimes.
[11] E. Cheli, Lo stato costituzionale: radici e prospettive, Naples, Editoriale Scientifica, 2006.
[12] Since this aspect cannot be dealt with here, for a more in-depth analysis of the relationship between constitutionalism and the protection of rights, crucial in order to fully understand the role of contemporary constitutionalism in post-war Europe and its connection with European federalism, see N. Bobbio, L’età dei diritti, Turin, Einaudi, 1997.
[13] A. Spinelli, Manifesto dei Federalisti Europei, op. cit.: ‘But if the free man’s real objection to these tyrannies is that they are built on terror, the accusation that must be levelled against the democratic states is, in a sense, even more serious. These states are still the repositories of all the hopes of a rebirth of a free European civilisation, and yet, because they are built on foundations of pretence and lies, they are condemned to inevitable decline.’
[14] France, in this regard, is emblematic. Once a champion of the indisputable and centralised sovereignty of the functions of the state — all that was seen, in the course of the centuries, was a process of administrative decentralisation, which in any case responded to the need for control of the territory by Paris —, today it is a state characterised by marked decentralisation of multiple functions, and may even be moving in the direction of a regional model.
[15] This is a neologism which comes from the title of a novel by G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo, in which the author describes political reforms that give the impression of bringing about great change, but actually change nothing (G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard, Everyman’s Library, 1991).
[16] The gradual devolutions of sovereignty which, as emerges from comparisons of public law, have characterised the evolution of European states from the post-war period to the current day, certainly fall within the ‘false solutions’ that Altiero Spinelli very clearly identifies in the 1957 Manifesto dei Federalisti Europei (op. cit.): ‘A series of false European solutions are proposed that are all expressions of the dream harboured secretly by the profiteers of the national sovereignties and by their political spokesmen. These people all know that their states now retain only the appearance of sovereign states; they know that the nation-states can no longer master the problems of foreign and military policy, or those of economic and social policy; they know that these have now become problems of European dimensions.’
[17] N. Acocella, Politica Economica e strategie aziendali, Rome, Carocci, 2020.
[18] Camera dei deputati - Osservatorio sulla legislazione, La legislazione tra Stato, regioni e Unione europea - rapporto 2022-2023, https://temi.camera.it/leg19/macroArea/politiche-legislazione/comi-tatolegislazione.html?agenda=.
[19] Riker W. Federalism, in F.I. Greenstein and N.W. Polsby (eds) Handbook of Political Science, Vol. 5, Reading Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1975, pp. 93-172.
[20] K.C. Wheare, What Federal Government is, in: P. Ranson (Ed.), Studies in Federal planning, London, Macmillan, 1943; also available in: Kenneth C. Wheare, prefaced and edited by Luigi V. Majocchi, The Federalist, 33, n. 1 (1991), p. 73.
[21] A. Spinelli, Manifesto dei Federalisti Europei, op. cit.. We suggest comparing this passage with Art. 5 TEU: ‘Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.’
[22] A. Spinelli, Gli stati uniti d’Europa e le varie tendenze politiche, in: A. Spinelli, E. Rossi, Problemi della Federazione europea, Edizioni del Movimento per la Federazione europea, 1943, pp. 60-61.
[23] Schumann Declaration, 9 May 1950: ‘Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.’ https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/1945-59/schuman-declaration-may-1950_en.
[24] N. Bobbio, Il federalismo nel dibattito politico…, op. cit., pp. XXV-XXVI: ‘the movement that arises from the manifesto does not aim to be a party in the proper sense of the word…but neither does it intend to give rise to a simple opinion movement. From now on, federalism must be both thought and action.’
[25] Altiero Spinelli, Manifesto dei Federalisti Europei, op. cit..
[26] Ibidem.
[27] Ibidem.
[28] Ibidem.
[29] N. Mosconi, La battaglia per l’Europa: strategia e organizzazione, in M. Albertini, Una rivoluzione pacifica – Dalle nazioni all’Europa, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1999.
