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Joschka Fischer, The nation-state is irreplaceable

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

Page 9

So what must one understand by the term "division of sovereignty"? As I said, Europe will not emerge in a political vacuum, and so a further fact in our European reality is therefore the different national political cultures and their democratic publics, separated in addition 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 then 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 Germanys Bundesrat. In the United States, every state elects two senators; in our Bundesrat, in contrast, there are different numbers of votes.

Similarly, there are two options for the European executive, or government. Either one can decide in favour 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 can opt for the direct election of a president with far-reaching executive powers. But there are also various other possibilities between these two poles.

Now objections will be raised that Europe is already much too complicated and much too intransparent 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 constituent treaty which lays down what is to be regulated at Europe level and what has still to be regulated at national level. The majority of regulations at EU level are in part the result of inductive communitarization as per the "Monnet method" and an expression of inter-state compromise within today's EU. There should be a clear definition of the competences of the Union and the nation-states respectively in a European constituent treaty, with core sovereignties and matters which absolutely have to be regulated at European level being 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 which the citizens could understand, because it would have made good its shortfall on democracy.

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      Cf.  Morgenthau, The German Character * Le mémorandum d'Alexis Leger * The Briand Memorandum * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * L'Union Européenne selon Altiero Spinelli * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union * Il Manifesto di Ventotene

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