Also give your personal opinions on the various changes you want to see

Hello everyone! I’m new to this subreddit and really excited to be here. I don’t know if this question gets asked a lot, so I hope I won't annoy anyone if this is just the same old topic. If so, I apologize in advance!
Excuse me if this is a beginner's question, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! 😭

We often talk about a Federal Europe, but achieving it under the current EU system would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 member states, which seems almost impossible.

Wouldn’t it be more realistic to start with a voluntary union?

What if a smaller "core" group of countries founded a new, separate federation (let’s call it the United Federal States of Europe) that other nations could join later, but only if they want to and if they meet strict criteria (like economic stability and a strong defense contribution)?

I feel like this could be much more realistic and easier to achieve than waiting for all 27 countries to agree at the same time. What do you think?

To be clear, my personal dream—which I know is shared by many of you here—is a single, fully united Federal Europe without any divisions. Ideally, we should all move forward together as one. However, given the political reality, I wonder if this "multi-speed" approach might be the only practical way to actually start building it.

The central problem we face to form a European federation is that the idea of ethno-nationalism is deeply ingrained into us.

When people hear the word nationalism most will assume the meaning of the Wilsonian idea of the nation namely that a nation is formed by a collection of people with the same ethnicity language and culture.

However, there is a different kind of nationalism as well, namely "state nationalism", where the nation is defined by it's institutions and shared values, like Switzerland, Belgium and in part Austria.

If we want the European project to be a success we have to make people aware that nation is not just that your neighbors look similar and talk the same language, but that nation should be about shared values and interests instead and that we create common institutions in order to preserve those values and enable us to follow through with our interests.

Unfortunately, the big players in Europe are mostly ethno-nations and this will be an uphill battle if we don't make people aware of the alternatives.

Do you like the idea of a multi-speed EU? it could be in 2,3,4 or even 5 layers, just asking your feelings about the main idea, because it could create and/or allow a federal EU and it could be a way of getting there in an easier way, but is it something that we should wish?

Many people, even Eurofederalists, like to complain sometimes that the EU and European Federalism feels very soulless and pragmatic, technocratic; lacking philosophical depth and pathos. I think, this is mostly, because much of european federalist history and philosophy is not taught at schools and even most european federalists, are only aware of fractions of it; most often just the last few decades shaped by Spinelli and Kalergi. But how many do know, that a democratic european federation was already a hot topic in 300 years ago? not many. So this is i hope a useful summary of the history of european federalism, which i wrote, well, because apparently no one bothered to compile it into one essay of this kind before and i cannot just throw entire books at people. Looking forward to your comments.

So far, a lot of the discussions around Eurofederalism, whether in subreddits, Volt conversations, or campaign materials, tend to focus heavily on the benefits: a larger market, greater global leverage against powers like China and the US, lasting peace, freedom of movement, and all other things like those. All these points are valid and important to talk about, but what often gets lost is a deeper talk of why federalism is the right approach in the first place, exept the idea that “it would just work better.”

When you look at the other small and non-systemic movements fighting for people’s attention, they often have a clear philosophical foundation. For instance, Neoreaction offers Yarvin’s Cathedral thesis, while Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism presents a distinct civilizational perspective. Even revolutionary Marxism has a clear, if debatable, theory of historical progression that argues why capitalism needs to be replaced. Regardless of your view on these ideologies, and I personally find most of them lacking under critical analysis, they explain why someone should adopt their worldview, not just what they promise to deliver.

To me, much of the discourse around Eurofederalism can sometimes feel like a policy objective wrapped in the European identity thing. Statements like “We believe in strong institutions, human rights, and shared sovereignty” sound right, but what is the foundation behind these beliefs? Is it based on Kantian perpetual peace, Popper’s anti-utopianism, or a more detailed argument about why national sovereignty might be unnecessary in today’s world? We need to choose a perspective and defend it. Right now, federalist speeches could often be replaced with generic center-left technocratic discussions without losing much of their point.

This is not just a matter of aesthetics, it has real-world implications(especially among young intellectuals who are not falling for simple ideas). Consistent ideologies tend to attract more followers because they provide a sense of narrative, inner logic, a story that explains history, identifies challenges, and presents a vision for the future. If federalism cannot clearly express its own foundational principles, it risks falling behind movements that can, even if those competing ideologies fail under closer examination. Why? Because politics is not only about being logically consistent, it is also about offering people a worldview that gives meaning to their choices(Yes, I’m aware of the Euro-federalists’ meta-game, and that we’re supposed to have a whole host of federalist parties with different values. But you must understand that the very idea that we need a single state must be one that appeals to people far more, because traditionalistic ideas in Europe, for example, often come with anti-European and nationalistic narratives, and I'm sure we are not able to change this).

I do not think we need to create a mythos for federalism. Instead, we should aim for the opposite: a clear, testable, and philosophically grounded argument explaining why shared sovereignty and institutional pluralism are preferable to both national fragmentation and excessive centralization. This argument should be strong enough to withstand repeated questioning and not collapse into the answer “because it is obviously better and btw Russia/America wants conquer us one by one".

Hi everyone! We are planning the next MeetEU event season, and we'd love your input! Tell us which topics interest you most and who you'd like us to invite as a guest speaker. The survey is anonymous.

Click here to take the survey:
https://forms.office.com/e/kzq5MxJfkj

Hey everyone,

​I’m a software and platform engineer based in the Netherlands, and I’ve been mapping out a long-form manifesto on technological sovereignty for a European movement called Astra Europa.

​Right now, the global race to capture the gains of automation and AI is hyper-concentrated between Silicon Valley and Beijing. The dominant narrative treats the tech-panic as an unavoidable algorithmic wave. But looking at it from a system architecture perspective, the technology doesn't decide its own direction; the institutions we build around it do.

​Europe has a unique historical experience in building democratic institutions that transcend national grievances and hold diverse interests together without domination. We don't have to passively accept corporate consolidation. In fact, the proof of concept for software sovereignty already exists on Europe's eastern edge under extreme pressure, from Estonia's distributed digital democracy to Ukraine migrating its critical infrastructure to a resilient, distributed cloud while building the Diia app platform.

​I wrote a deep-dive essay exploring how a united Europe can stop acting as a passive consumer of foreign tech consolidation and instead reclaim its sovereignty.

​The argument that democratic institutions are too slow, too cautious, too entangled in process to compete with private actors moving at the speed of capital, that argument looks different when you hold it up against Tallinn and Kyiv.

​I'd love to get this community's perspective on how we scale this kind of digital sovereignty to a continental level. You can read the full piece on my blog here: who owns the future - the future is ours