A core of committed states led by Germany and France should push ahead to create a federal Europe with a directly elected president and a government and parliament with full executive powers, the German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, said yesterday.
Speaking at the Humboldt University in Berlin almost half a century after Robert Schuman proposed the creation of the European Coal and Steel Federation, Mr Fischer outlined a vision for the completion of what he called the "grand ideal" of European federation.
Looking ahead to an enlarged EU with as many as 30 member-states, he asked how such a large number could balance interests, take decisions and act.
"There is a very simple answer: the transition from a union of states to full parliamentarisation as a European federation, something Robert Schuman demanded 50 years ago. And that means nothing less than a European parliament and a European government which really do exercise legislative and executive power within the federation. This federation will have to be based on a constituent treaty," he said.
Mr Fischer insisted that he was speaking in a personal capacity and that his views did not represent the official position of the German government but he cleared his speech with the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, and sent an advance copy to his French counterpart, Mr Hubert Vedrine.
Acknowledging that many EU citizens saw the process of European integration as "at best boring, at worst dangerous", Mr Fischer insisted that a federal Europe did not mean the abolition of the nation-states.
"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 which ignores the established realities in Europe," he said.
Mr Fischer proposes the division of sovereignty between Europe and the nation-states, with a two-chamber parliament possibly similar to Germany's Bundestag and Bundesrat. One would be for elected members who are also members of their national parliaments, the other would be made up of representatives from the member-states.
The European executive or government would either be formed from the national governments - like the present Council of Europe - or would be based around a directly elected president.
"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," Mr Fischer said.
German and French political leaders have been moving in recent weeks towards a proposal for a more flexible EU that would allow a group of countries to push ahead with deeper political integration. Mr Fischer yesterday expressed support for this initiative but insisted that any avant-garde must be prepared to accept new members as time goes on.
