Gemma is a young finance professional who has decided to make a U-turn to follow her true passion: the European Union. Passionate about the European integration project, she is always ready to defend federalist ideas and the principles that guide a Europe for peace, progress, justice and sustainable development. Currently, she is a member of the Board of JEF Madrid , an organization with more than 40 years of history dedicated to defending European values and bringing the EU closer to the new generations. At the same time, she continues her studies in the area of the European Defence Policy. Gemma regularly collaborates with institutions and organisations such as the European Parliament Office in Madrid and the Spanish Youth Council. She also has extensive experience in youth, pro-European and feminist activism.
With only a few days until the end of 2024, half the world opens its newspapers, watches the news and logs on to its social media with the fear that a new war will start, another regime will fall or a leader with little sympathy for democracy will decide to play with intercontinental missiles.
This has been a year of real upheaval for a European Union that has overcome the far right and Euroscepticism in its elections and institutions by a small and very worrying margin. Their voices are louder than ever, and we are not managing their arguments effectively to minimise their impact on society.
Empty rhetoric and the search for an enemy to blame for people’s plight has led Europe to embrace an argument that has not been so powerful since the interwar period, the very time when federalist ideas began to develop in the region.
Understanding the Growing Unease and the More Radical Alternatives
It goes without saying that I do not agree with any of the arguments I am going to make, but I understand that not everyone knows how to deal with the unease they feel in the same way, and that there are many carrion birds in politics that thrive from their reactionary bastion on the hardships of the rest.
The rise of nationalism justifies the rejection of a European Union that has done nothing but shrink in the face of the rise of the BRICS, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza and the return of Donald Trump. The reactionary rise against social conquests justifies the fear of the advance of women and feminism, the rights of LGTBIQ+ people and the rights of migrants, that some EU states have promoted and that had some relevance in the previous legislature.
The rise of racism justifies the irrational hatred of those who seek a better life in our region and at the same time demand a minimum of human rights on which to be treated. Fascism, in the form of this neo-extreme right, rejects everything that represents a hint of progress and looks for enemies to punish and blame for the malaise of European nations.
A Rudderless Ship
Global governance is a battle of egos, nothing new in history, but disruptive since the advent of nation-states in those pre-Enlightenment dawns. Before that Western turning point, that intellectual and humanist awakening, each monarch was the visible face of his kingdom, and his offenses made clear the dominance of whomever had the larger ego and means.
Trump’s America’ or ‘Putin’s Russia’ reduce nations to a figurehead which, on the borderline between reality and fiction, pursues an outdated policy that millions of people have bought into. And during the struggle for governance of the changing, tense and constantly uncertain world order, the European Union is sailing.
Like a ship guided by rows and rows of oarsmen, the EU sails through waters filled with battle-seeking submarines, large merchant ships, the occasional cruise liner laden with tourists and a handful of yachts on which the multi-multi-billionaires who have decided to play politics like those who play Monopoly with their friends for an afternoon, with their consequent negotiations and shortcuts.
Federalism as an Alternative
Federalism is not a new movement or a new school of thought in our region, it has more than a hundred years of history and a thorough review takes us back to the time when Charlemagne was rambling about gathering several territories under the umbrella of commonality and diversity and calling it Europe. Again, we have not discovered anything that Spinelli and his cohorts did not dream of.
It is true that the European Union, as an integration process, has been the project that has gone furthest, but today it has not been able to combine the national with the feeling of European citizenship, and the lack of European identity in citizenship impacts on the organisation, distancing it from those strong states that fight for the leadership of world governance, beating their chests while raising their voices singing their national anthem, or are led by egomaniacs with the pretensions of emperors.
To speak of federalism in this day and age is a challenge. When any statement seems a threat to the EU Member States, when the rise of the far right rejects a project of peace and progress and when outside the academic world, ignorance prevails rather than a willingness to listen.
We have the legacy of a movement that restored non-existent peace in the most belligerent continent, whose population has become accustomed to living “watching the bulls from the sidelines” and is alienated from the European project. Sometimes I get the feeling that, with all we had, we have not done enough, at least with the ordinary citizen, who still does not understand that the European Union is not an enemy, but an ally that does not make itself understood.
The greatest challenge for today’s European federalism, which is nothing more than this perpetual integration of countries, competences and, as we used to say, communities, is to reach agreements. These are becoming increasingly complex and intricate because the new players in the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council have come to destroy, not to build. Although it is true that we have overcome more complex moments, we have gone through the Cold War and left behind a long post-war period with many wounds, we cannot say that we are living in the most brilliant moment. The federalist project must continue to touch the ground and reach out to ordinary people.
Show them that the identity of nations can multiply and grow hand in hand with federalism, that no one wants to erase countries, but that together we can prosper and join forces so that progress is within reach of all our nations. You do not lose your nationality; you gain citizenship and a European feeling that comes with a large dose of pride and a good deal of criticism. I would not want to resort to the much-maligned motto “unity is strength”, but perhaps in these times it is as fitting, if not better, than “united in diversity”.
The global picture is complex, and Europe is not far behind. The world’s elite pioneers of peace and progress have forgotten vital areas to continue playing the power game of the international order, such as defence or competitiveness, making these issues some of the great challenges for this legislature and implying compromise and sacrifice.
But what can or should we sacrifice to achieve some of that global leadership? Is strategic autonomy worth the sacrifice? What alliances are we willing to sign for? Who is who in this game? And, most importantly, who are we and what role do we federalists play?