Now I share all these objections, because they are correct. That is why it would be an irreparable mistake in the construction of Europe if one were to try to complete political integration in opposition to existing national institutions and traditions rather than alongside them. Any such endeavour would be doomed to failure by the historical and cultural environment in Europe. Only if European integration takes the nation-states along with it into such a Federation, only if their institutions are not devalued or even made to disappear, will such a project be workable despite all the huge difficulties. In other words: the existing concept of a federal European state replacing the old nation-states and their democracies as the new sovereign power shows itself to be an artificial construct that ignores the established realities in Europe. The completion of European integration can only be successfully conceived if it is done on the basis of a division of sovereignty between Europe and the nation-state. Precisely this is the idea underlying the concept of “subsidiarity,” a subject that is currently discussed by everyone and understood by virtually no one.
So what must one understand by the term “division of sovereignty”? As I said, Europe will not emerge in a political vacuum; therefore, an additional fact of our European reality is the different national political cultures and their democratic publics, which are also separated by linguistic boundaries. A European parliament must therefore always represent two things: a Europe of the nation-states and a Europe of the citizens. This will only be possible if this European Parliament actually brings together the different national political elites and also the different national publics.
In my opinion, this can be done if the European parliament has two chambers. One will be for elected members who are also members of their national parliaments. Thus there will be no clash between national parliaments and the European parliament, between the nation-state and Europe. For the second chamber, a decision will have to be made between the Senate model, with directly-elected senators from the member states, and a chamber of states along the lines of Germany’s Bundesrat. In the United States, every state elects two senators; in our Bundesrat, by contrast, there are different numbers of votes.
Similarly, there are two options for the European executive, or government. One could either decide in favor of developing the European Council into a European government, i.e. the European government is formed from the national governments, or – taking the existing Commission structure as a starting-point – one could opt for the direct election of a president with far-reaching executive powers. But between these two poles are various other possibilities as well.
Now objections will be raised that Europe is already far too complicated and far too opaque for the citizen, and here we are wanting to make it even more complicated. But the intention is quite the opposite. The division of sovereignty between the Union and the nation-states requires a constitutional treaty that lays down what is to be regulated at the European level and what has still to be regulated at the national level. The majority of regulations at the EU level are in part the result of inductive communitarization as per the “Monnet method” and are an expression of inter-state compromise within today’s EU. The respective competencies of the Union and the nation-states should be clearly defined in a European constitutional treaty; core sovereignties and matters that absolutely have to be regulated at the European level would be the domain of the Federation, whereas everything else would remain the responsibility of the nation-states. This would be a lean European Federation, but one capable of action, fully sovereign yet based on self-confident nation-states, and it would also be a Union that the citizens could understand, because it would have corrected its democratic deficits.
However, all this will not mean the abolition of the nation-state. Because even for the finalized Federation, the nation-state, with its cultural and democratic traditions, will be irreplaceable in ensuring the legitimation of a union of citizens and states that is wholly accepted by the people. I say this not least with an eye to our friends in the United Kingdom, because I know that the term “federation” irritates many Britons. But to date, I have been unable to come up with another word. We do not wish to irritate anyone.
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