The Case for a European Federation 

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Still cant get over the fact that the european anti corruption force is called Olaf

Adam: Military should unite *Luxemburg who shares a helicopter with Belgium*: I’m 4 parallel universes ahead of you

It’s too ironic that Ireland is the only native English-speaking country in the European Union.

You know the whole "Russia war on european soil" truly aged well on this one

The title: the case for a federal europe The video: the case for why the Hungarian government is incompetent and corrupt

Your federation is going to have a giant Switzerland shaped hole in it tho :(

* finger gets pointed at Ireland as being a taxhaven * Luxembourg and the Netherlands: Innocent whistle

I feel like you really handwaved over a lot of the arguments you were addressing. The sovereignty argument is not just a ploy by evil dictators. This federation plan will need to address that somehow otherwise the tiny nations are actually giving up their sovereignty due to their citizens not being numerous enough to have any impact on the federal government. When the US formed this problem was addressed by having the bicameral legislature and in today's world that is fairly controversial due to the "tyranny of the minority" perception. What concessions are you willing to make to give these tiny nations an outsized level of influence due to them not being willing to give up any noticeable control over the top levels of government. Your tax haven argument seems similarly hand wavy. The reason Ireland is a safe haven now is because it greatly benefits Ireland. Taking that away means you have to give something tangible in return so what concessions would be made to entice them to join this federation? Language: Teaching everyone English seems like a reasonable solution but I do think you would need to enforce it everywhere. If you want to be a united force you need to actually be united from the top down. These multi-lingual countries work fairly well on a small scale and as long as they don't need a united military. Multi-lingual forces are historically proven to be unsustainable in any form of legit war due to the breakdown of communication between units as casualties mount. Money: You hand wave away the vast wealth differences by saying you are going to pay minimum wages to key sectors. Why would the small wealthy powers sign up to increase their taxes to directly pay other countries? This is a direct transfer of wealth away from one set of countries to another and all of those millions of individuals will likely talk a big game until they actually have to write a check. The overall problem seems that the EU already exists and can't solve some of these problems. If you want these nations to fully cede certain powers to this federal body you would need to sort out these issues first otherwise the nations won't agree to join. Just because something could be a great thing doesn't mean people will actually do it or that it would actually be a good thing in reality.

Step 1# Federalise Eu Step 2# Become global super power Step 3# Build orbital battle station capable of destructing planets Step 4# Become galactic super power

13:30 I really wanted you to finish “Poland for example is extremely anti Russian” with “whilst Russia is extremely pro Russia”

In simple terms, Monke strong together, weak alone

i find it somewhat ironic and hilarious that the entire EU is learning English while the UK has essentially left the chat.

"federal anti-corruption court" you'd see half of Spain pushing to get out of the EU ASAP

I don't know why but I find it funny that English would be become the common administrative language, especially when the English are the only people to have left the EU. That is very ironic.

1:13 Being from Switzerland, I would recommend to have not just one president. Make an executive council with several members (five to nine people) who all come from different countries. You could make rule, that they have to represent the regions somewhat proportional (east, west, Scandinavia, Mediterranean) so no-one feels completely left out. They have all the same power but for some representive tasks one person out of that group is a kind of president (that rotates every year and brings no additional power). That way they need to work together and you have continuation over many years.

Imagine going back 200 years and showing this video to an European. They would either laugh in your face or have an aneurysm on the spot

*In order to ensure the continuing growth of Adam Something, the European Union will be reorganized into the first European Empire!*

"The federalisation of Europe won't be the founding of the Galactic Empire" You do know your video's meant to say why Europe SHOULD federalize, right?

Unrelated to the video topic, but I would just like to point out that Adam gained 360,000 subscribers in August according to Social Blade, going from 26,000 to 386,000 in one month is complete insanity!

I think the biggest issue atm regarding a federation is that the EU's current government structure is defective and non-democratic. If the EU Commission had more of it's power delegated down to the EU Parliament, I imagine that a EU Federation would be viable and good, but as it stands, the EU Parliament needs to be able to propose legislature, not just vote on it.

Man, as a Ukrainian I appreciate the: "war on a European soil" statement about Donbas. Thanks. 😉

In the 24th Century, a number of worlds, and all of Earth, are united under the Federation... Except England, which is still negotiating Brexit. This is why the Picard family moved back to France.

The Netherlands: Not unless everybody get real cool about a whole lotta stuff real fast.

You know, Russia "currently engaging in active warfare on European soil" was true then and hasn't exactly gotten better. On the EU front, I absolutely think the 2022 invasion of Ukraine may be the thing that pushes Europe into creating an EU army. Germany, long a holdout on especially where the money would come from, has done a complete about-face on military spending, and the EU has stepped into the driver's seat on Europe's response, both in terms of sanctions and even on supplying arms to Ukraine. The EU has this tendency to whenever it faces a crisis or a potential breaking point, it simply refuses to give up and fights like hell. So far it has come out of every existential crisis just a little bit closer to a federation.

Strongest argument: The EU flag looks sick

"[...] When the next capitol riot eventually succeeds" Damn, Adam.

Your cultural argument is very anecdotal, and boils down to "I'm young, urban, progressive, educated, worldly, and I hang out with others like me, ergo cultural differences: solved"

My biggest fear is that larger 'states' like France and Germany that already have more power and influence would be able to overrule smaller countries, making decisions that benefit those regions and disadvantage smaller ones. This already happened with the EU. We really don't want things to get worse. Now, I'm from Greece, and as you can see in the charts people here don't really trust EU institutions since we had a pretty bad run with them. (Of course part of it is the fault of Greece, but not entirely. And when people can't take their money out of the bank, lose their jobs and see their wages and pensions getting halved because of the EU, you can't really blame them for being distrustful.)

I’m at the language section, and I gotta say, I would pay actual money to see someone tell the french they need to learn and speak english en masse. It would make my fcking year

My fellow countrymen: "But, EU federation would take away power from Slovaks" Me: "Good"

As a Pole I am glad you mentioned the political divide within ours countries and as of PIS, they’re slowly, but surely losing ground.

Fun fact: European countries never had a single language. There were a million ethnic groups in each kingdom, and migration was way more common between them. This was partially the reason why so many monarchies used latin as the language of administration.

Fun fact: The Irish govement is trying to introduce a 4 day work week, with the same pay, holidays benefits etc as a 5 day one

As an Irish person, I was always hesitant to deeper European Integration as previous unions that we have been part of didn’t work out very well for us… I too went on the Erasmus program and met wonderful likeminded people I am still in contact with years later. My biggest criticism would be the neoliberal trend the EU is heading towards. I think with a leftward shift I would support federalisation and more integration programmes like Erasmus would be helpful in reaching this goal Once Erasmus, always Erasmus 🇪🇺💙💛

Also, as reply to the Language argument: I live in Switzerland. Switzerland has 4 official languages (And we have only live 8 Million people), these being German(in many many different dialects), French, Italien and Rumantsch (which is slowly but surely extincting). I am from the german speaking part, and I speak neither Italien, nor French nor Rumantsch. I personally also have very little interaction with the parts of Switzerland speaking other languages. And this on an area of 41,285 km² for the whole of Switzerland. And it works. So the language argument in my opinion pretty much falls apart when looking at Switzerland today alone.

Let's just look at a union between Germany and Denmark. Let's imagine that Denmark becomes extremely anti-military, and doesn't want to have an army. But Germany really likes war, so in our 2-country federation Denmark is forced to send troops to fight. It's so small by comparison that it has no say even in a democratic system. This is obviously just a weird form of imperialism: Denmark in this system is just a satellite state of Germany. Germany would have near-total control, and would therefore have the direct interest to take even more power. This isn't some conspiracy to keep Orbán in power, it's just that people understand how these systems work. The only countries whose governments would go in for this are the countries in western Europe that are currently the core of the EU: in other words rich nations that would benefit immensely from all this imperial expans- I mean "federation". We don't need bigger, more powerful countries. We need smaller ones that can better represent their constituents.

Personally I would be very careful with the "English is already a very common language in the EU"-argument. The way those statistics emerge is unreliable at best. They seem to count everyone who had English in school, but 90% of those could hardly order a sandwich. In Germany, where I come from, you are lucky if 10% are actually capable of more than just stuttering a few words. But your main point still stands. Not every citizen needs to be able to perfectly communicate with every other citizen to form a federation.

Does the "borer security" (shown at 1:25 ) have anything to do with Elon Musk's tunneling business? What dangers do they face, that warrant a the creation of a European Federation?

I'm Swiss. Once the EU adopts the plebiscite, I'll vote yes on the next initiative (or no if it's a referendum against) to join the EU.

"Now sweden is a progressive heaven and Poland is a European Taliban". Me, watching from Poland: ayyyy fair enough

It's extremely disappointing to see this debate being reduced to: "Well, any form of criticism of the EU is just a reactionary far-right distraction from domestic issues." Especially as a somewhat skeptical left-leaning person.

To be super frank here: Federalized Europe is our only shot at the reunification of Hungary with Transylvania.

As a Pole I must say that apparently bashing our own government is something we have in common haha

Getting to net zero would be much easier under a more centralised Europe.

You can't solve corrupt governments by installing something even more powerful above them.

The section on self-determination feels very glossed over here and not really handles the central issues. What you can't get around simply by pointing to the self-interest and deception of the national political classes is the tension between national self-determination and transnational democracy across the whole of Europe. This is something that must be handled for an idea like this, and you basically have to come down on one side or the other: If you have a democratic vote in Europe, and one side wins the democratic vote, what happens if there are nations where it did not? Say if the whole European population voted 60/40 in favour of introducing some policy, put in a country like the Czech republic the people voted 30/70 against it. In any issue where there is a democratic decision to be made, this tension is unmistakably at play, even if not in such sharp focus as in this example. Either you side with the people's decision and have a majoritarian democratic system wherein the citizens of the federation are able to have control over the government and popular sovereignty. Alternatively, you side with the nation's decision, say that Czechia cannot be compelled into such a policy or can exercise some kind of veto whenever it doesn't want to abide by the majority decision. In that case, you have a system where democracy is limited by national self-determination, where people who do not see a decision that was made by the majority of the people as legitimate unless it also had support in the area where they live do not have to accept it, and so you don't have a democratic system anymore in the sense of one-person-one-vote where everybody's vote counts equally. You either require total unanimity or a supermajority, which fails democratically along the same lines as FPTP, electoral colleges, or other such rules that constrain democracy and which are overwhelmingly of benefit to conservatives and against the interests of the masses.

I've been looking for a video like this for years, thank you so much! The two things I would say however, would be that there should be no President in the US sense of the word. I believe we should have a Council of Representatives instead of just having one person with the power like the US (I know that's not actually how the US Presidency works, but it does feel like it's still a bit much). It would be fine to have one dedicated person from this council represent the Federation when it comes to International Geopolitical Meetups like at G20 summits and stuff like that, as long as they don't hold political power above any of the others. I also think that as long as the "United in Diversity" aim remains a priority, we'll do fine as a Federation.

Its so interesting how much you focused on corruption, understandably, as a Hungarian. From the perspective of a Dane, the greater unifying dilemma would be that of wage negotiations. From the Italians, about regional autonomy and state decentralisation. So on and so forth until most Europeans who are concerned with a federal idea would return to you a different priority. All in all, very intriguing to see all of the different volksgeists of Europe talking past each other as, other than COVID, no more than 3 nations care about any one topic.

You are clearly wrong on the national sovereignty argument. You use Viktor Orbán there as your example but seem to forget that he is indeed elected official, elected by Hungarians with quite a strong mandate too. If Europe federalized then control over the issues the federation would handle would indeed go away from Hungarians in favor of what ever German and French wanted (seeing as that's what it comes down to in a democratic numbers game). Sure people would still have democratic control over their decision making, and in the case of the more corrupt states,"the people" might have more control over it, it just wouldn't be Hungarian people but Germans or French. It is very clear that in this case say the anti immigration electorate of Hungary would obviously lose power to the pro immigration electorate of Germany and lose their national sovereignty on the matter. This isn't limited to just Hungary either and is instead true by definition, and claiming it isn't is very strange. Any power or responsibility you transfer from a local entity to the supposed federal entity means the local people lose majority portion of their control on that issue, they can still vote, their votes just cease to matter. Be it French nuclear power, Spanish migrant workers, German gas deals or Norwegian fishing, any local issue turned into a federal one means majority of the voters come from areas outside of where the issue is actually being handled which translates to loss of sovereignty, the more responsibilities and powers the federal government has, the more loss occurs. The Orban example does imply that you don't care about the loss of sovereignty, not because it wouldn't happen, but because it would take power away from people you don't like and give more to those you do like, which I believe is the crux of the matter here. This is exactly why people oppose EU federation.

As an American, a Federated Europe would likely see US spend less on military since it wouldn't be in the Union's best interest to have a fuckton of bases there anymore, and then we can actually have the US fix some domestic issues with the budget

Not if it fall for the same neoliberalist pitfalls that the EU has gone into.

The "national sovergeinty" argument was incredibly crudely dismissed, despite being arguably the biggest problem. The fact is that EU member sovergeinty and EU federalisation are in direct opposition to each other. You cannot have a federalised European union without the reduction of national sovergeinty and vice versa. Regardless of how you put it. The interests of each nation will not disappear if EU became a federation. Sweden would still have a military industrial block looking to preserve its interests. Finland would still have a massive wood and forestry export industry etc. If there wouldn't be a nation looking to preserve its interests and economy, the people would do it. You'd have 5.5 million Finns and 10.5 million swedes voting against 83 million Germans and 67 million french. The system would be incredibly flawed without some sort of electoral college system, and oh god what a shitstorm that would be. I'm not saying this problem would be totally unovercomable, but that the video did a pretty shitty job at honestly looking at the issue, pretty much dismissing it outright. It would be an issue for every EU member state, but mostly for the countries on the fringes of the union, and the members with smaller populations, not just for Hungary and whatever country's political system the author seems to dislike. It is an issue currently, so to say that it wouldn't be an issue if the co-operation was tightened to a federal level is lunacy. Also "just merge militaries" is super reductionist, and also would hugely strip away a lot of sovergeinty. Most northern european armed forces are constitutionally constructed as defence forces. Their duties mandated by law, are to protect the countries borders and national sovergeinty only. Would the EU federation force these Defence forces to merge together with the rest of the EU army and be pontentially sent to Greece to fight against Turkey in an escalating border conflict, against that countrys constitution? Not to mention what an undending moneypit the merging process of not only the command and rank structures would be, but also the equipment and doctrine. In ten years, and with 10 trillion euros, the EU could not create a functioning EU armed forces.

Dismissing the counter arguments as nonsensical and presenting your own as simple and logical, this is a horrible way to argue. The biggest problem with the video is the over reliance in your own personal experiences and opinions passing them as the majority, correct and unavoidable truth. There are some good arguments made here but most don't need a EU federation to put in practice and besides, the EU as it stands faces way more problems than the ones mentioned, be them bureaucratic or social, that federalizing wouldn't fix.

7:33 This is something I've been experiencing as well. I find it easier to relate to my foreign friends than friends back home or people who are native to the land. I think knowing other cultures and people's ways of thinking makes them more reasonable to talk with and open to new ideas.

My best case against the federalization of Europe would be that at the moment Europe is not very democratic. The European parliament hardly has any power and it is the only elected body of the EU. To sell a European Federation you would need to greatly overhaul the democratic organization of Europe (and that includes having a strong legislative power)

As a Pole, I am absolutely horrified of the idea of even stronger European integration. How *dare* they give us even more money?!

You had me until the cultural argument. A) anecdotal evidence is the weakest form of argument. B) you saying how little you have in common with other Hungarians reflect more on how much of an outlier you are C) you also show you lack of understanding of your nation, considering you forget the significance of not being forced to learn a language from a foreign authority (Russian during the cold war) D) we don't also know if the German individual is also representative of the culture of every German. For all we know, he could be an outlier, just like you E) a lot of states in Spain are fighting to regain their original languages after being forced to just speak castellano, specially during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. So they would fight of they were forced to have another official language. F) you will also find the same issue on other autonomous areas or areas trying to regain their identities.

This video has too many assumptions. Just because the youth are more liberal and speak English does not prove a sufficient enough argument of what the WHOLE of Europe wants. You are also assuming that this is the trend that will forever keep going, when there's no evidence of that being the case. Waves of conservatism and religious awakenings have happened many times; point is, the future is uncertain. Also, how do you really believe that a bunch of countries with very complex histories, cultures, and values to unite under a neutral banner like Europe? How do you think normal citizens in Poland or Spain will react when English speaking French or German politicians determining their futures due to being out voted in Brussels? You are also assuming that federalism will just lead to more efficiency overall. How do you know this? How do you know a European police force would NOT become a corrupt beaucratic agency? You don't KNOW these things and it's a huge gamble. I think European Confederacy isn't a bad idea, but higher federal power could be very dangerous and result in farther right extremist groups in response and the stagnation of many countries. I'm not saying that WILL happen, but it MAY, and to assume it would be way better in the ways discussed, is intellectually dishonest.

17:55 but what if i want a galactic European Federal Empire? there already is the Moon Europa, we have naming rigths on that one

As an American you can’t model a European federation after our government, the states were all formed as administrative subdivisions, near culturally identical. I have no real issue having my president being from Delaware. But I wouldn’t expect an Irishman to ever accept a Greek as his leader anymore than I would accept a Brazilian. I would follow the Swiss model to have any hope of a sustainable system.

"Poland is the European taliban" xDDD You just offended my whole nation, but yes.

As a Romanian... no, just no. I am well aware of the fact that our economic growth has been accelerated by the EU but I still think it is not a good idea. Also, you cited Vaush lmao.

Basically, the European federation would be nothing more than a single naming declaration after all the natural bureaucratic shifts have already occurred within existing EU institutions

An comparison to India, the only miltilingual, multicultural, multireligious federation, that spans across a whole (sub-)continent is also interesring. A lot can be learned from this federation, about how we can form a European Federation. We can learn good and also make stuff better.

I'm just looking forward to the French being told the official language is going to be English.

Long live strong and United Europe! Support EU federation from Poland. Yes, there are a lot of Polish people who support that!

i'm from romania, and when i heard "2000€ minimum salary" (for doctors, but still) my eyes went wide open. that's indeed a lot of money

I'm not completely sold on the federalization of Europe, given the caution that would need to be taken in order to balance power. Something you didn't touch on is just that: the imbalance of political power distribution among European countries (with the power both economically and militarily of France and Germany I would question in particular). I would be interested in hearing people's thought on this question. Another point I would like to touch on, is that while conservative political tendencies are often framed as the ones who would oppose further cooperation, In France, at least, where I live, certain popular liberal political ideologies have also been in opposition to the EU. For example, the public vote on whether to accept the EU constitution In 2005, was polled in favor by the general population; yet after a huge campaign lead by BOTH conservative and liberal parties, this public opinion completely changed. even with the unreliability of polling as an accurate guage of public opinion, the statistical difference observed is too significant to reduce the impact of their actions. Meanwhile, a presidential condidate who won 22 percent of votes in the first round has stated that if he was elected, and if his demands of the EU were not met "we would have to resort to plan B": a thinly veiled insinuation that not only would he opt out of many EU agreements, but he might have resorted, or planned to leave the EU all together. Is this observable in other parts of Europe? Do the progressive parties also stand in opposition to EU cooperation?

So... You didn't want to address the democracy and neoliberalism issue?

EU bashing isn't some new anti SJW thing, I've been seeing it since the adoption of the Euro and I've seen it in every European country I've been to. Granted it wasn't in a college surrounded by students, it was working construction and speaking with laborers, but even though we were quite different in many aspects, all of us agreed that even though we constantly heard in the news how the Euro was on the rise, purchasing power was way lower than when we had each our own currencies. There was such a time when a family could have a decent living with only one of it's members working a low/medium skill job (construction, factory workers, drivers etc...), but since western companies could just import workers from other, less developed countries (I'm not criticizing the workers, I'm criticizing the companies) all of a sudden there was less of an incentive to keep your local workforce happy. I would agree that a common tax system for the entire continent could be beneficial, but when it comes to the military..... European militaries nowadays look more like social work than actual fighting forces, and giving a bunch politicians in Brussels full control over them would only make things worse. Just look at how the UN forces operate and how utterly useless they are. The best soldiers fight for national pride, if you take that away you just have a bunch of low salary mercenaries who wouldn't give a shit about protecting what they would consider a foreign entity. Plus, when speaking about Russia, there is zero will to fight them, they just have to threaten Germany with cutting off their gas supply and the whole EU would have to bow down. About what you said regarding a federal police... Europol is a thing. If they can't do their job correctly we should look into that, no federation required, so it's kind of a moot point.

When you showed the graph for the EU member states views on a federalised EU, I was trying to find where the UK was and it took me a while to realise we wouldn't be on that 💔

When I heard that you compared Poland to Taliban of Europe it made my blood boil. i understand what you meant by it, but even I as a left leaning person in Poland, would't go as far as calling the right wing that.

Watching this rather enviously from Scotland. Keep our seat warm for us, we’ll be back.

There's something else a federalized Europe will need as well- a voting system that accurately represents voters' political distribution. CGP Grey talked about this extensively. The US has a federal system where representation is heavily skewed into a political duopoly upheld by an electoral college that uses first-past-the-post, allowing a political minority to be over-represented. As advice for federalizing Europe, I'd recommend that voting-ranges encompass populations such that each votes for multiple representatives instead of one, allowing for multiple parties and candidates to compete, and that voters use ranked-choice or approval voting systems to choose the candidate(s) they prefer. Hopefully this would avoid political duopoly that can be captured by elite and corporate money.

I would prefer an elected Constitutional Assembly as an alternative way for a federalized Europe

“No but that wouldn’t work we’re different” 😭 Meanwhile India with hundreds of different languages being a single country…

My biggest problem with the EU is that it feels like an undemocratic dinosaur and a retirement home for domestic politicians. I've lived in it my whole life and I still have no idea why it needs a Commission, Parliament, two Councils and who knows what else, or what they do, or how the politicians in charge are selected. There are small elections once every 5 years for one of these (in which the smaller countries get the short end of the stick anyway) and that's it. I would be all for making it more powerful but only if it was also reformed to be much more of a direct democracy. However, the EU politicians have the same flaws as nationals and don't want to give up any power.

As an Austrian, this is the first time I disagree with you. Because federalizing with Europe would be against my country's constitution. Every EU country with the exception of Ireland, Sweden, Finland and my country (Austria) is a member of NATO. Austria's 1st constitutional amendment is that this country will forever be neutral and never involve itself in war ever again. And so far the EU is the only thing holding us back. Federalizing would be an abolishment of neutrality and being forced to combine our military with the one of countries like France that have committed several war crimes in Mali and The Central African Republic over the past few decades. Federalization is literally the biggest threat to my country's constitution right now and although the quality of living the eu has brought us, i prefer if it's just a union of Nations, rather than one nation

The biggest problem I have related to centralization of power: the bigger the area that is represented through a single entity (EU in this case), the harder it is to get rid of when things go wrong. I prefer decentralization, even if it's somewhat less efficient.

When I first saw this, I thought the points were good but still wanted the EU structure to remain mostly the same as today, at least for the nordic countries, since we in the north have significant diplomatic, political, and humanitarian pull in regions across the world, which we would risk losing. Now with NATO membership imminent and seemingly necessary, I've changed my mind - if we lose our global influence, stature, and geopolitical (mostly humanitarian and egalitarian) interests by joining NATO then we won't lose it by becoming part of a European federation; while if we manage to maintain our seeming neutrality, prestige, and respect despite joining NATO then federalizing Europe will very likely not change that either, except maybe putting even more economic and political weight behind the peacekeeping, democracy-encouragement, foreign aid, and treaty negotiations we do. If "...or the UN will send the Irish, Austrians, Swedes, and Finns to _make you_ stop committing human rights violations" can already keep developing countries from collapsing into civil war and dictators from the most egregious crimes against humanity, then being able to mobilize the political and economic might of Europe (even if it is still only our forces actually doing anything) would be a huge asset if the air of legitimacy and justice can be retained. And by now NATO membership is both inevitable and necessary, so we already have to face this question.

We can’t even get a singular education system for the 16 states of Germany, so I think it’ll be difficult to achieve a similar education system for all of Europe… again because of different interests

I think a swiss system would be great, allowing for referendums and initiatives, along with a 7-member coequal cabinet (federal council) that cannot fire one another and rotates every year the figurehead presidency. Instead of country, let regions, linguistic areas, and parties fill the council proportionally. Further, let the capital cities of the EU be federal cities (ie directly federalised with the union rather than their country).

Bonus points: Americans would actually be right in calling all of us Europeans and nothing else

Just make sure your anti-corruption laws are iron clad (ei: "donations" loophole) and you shouldn't have any problems.

But what about French interests in Africa? Would other Europeans want to participate in military activities driven by other eu countries?

As a Bulgarian im all for the EU taking power away from our government

Speaking from a British perspective, I think a lot of my reasons for supporting Brexit would still be relevant as problems that a federal Europe would have, since I personally see European Federalisation as inevitable and voted with that context in mind. I'll try and lay out all my points here as best I can so if anyones having a kneejerk reaction to just dismiss me because I supported Brexit, please don't, I really encourage you to actually consider each point, because for a federal Europe to succeed they would be problems that need solving. A federal Europe isn't something I'm opposed to after all, I just don't think the UK has a place in it. Anyways Problem 1 The first one is the administrative one, namely the severe differences in how existing political structures are organised within each country. Germany for example is a decentralised federal republic, while it's neighbour France is a very centralised unitary republic. To have both of these nations exist as states within a single federation, these administrative differences would either need to be reconciled or simply exempted. For a practical example of how this may cause growing pains, healthcare is a good one to call on. In Germany (and Austria I believe) a public healthcare system is mandated federally, however the creation, running, and funding of the systems within each state, are left to those states, whereas in France it is entirely run by the central government. Trying to not only make a single healthcare system for the entirety of Europe but also one that integrates different systems such as these would be a challenge to say the least. On the first possible solution, namely reconciliation, one of them, or perhaps both, would need to reform their system to meet the new homogeneous European standard, which would already come with considerable growing pains lets say, but the new system could also bring with it the chance of being less effective than some of the existing ones. Effectiveness and funding not necessarily going hand in hand. An example from here in the UK this time, England and Scotland each run their own independent branch of the NHS, during Tony Blair's tenure as PM his NHS reforms turned out to be completely disastrous which the NHS is still struggling to recover from today, but since Scotland was free to create its own system it managed to both avoid this disaster while also creating an efficient and effective healthcare system. This would be a problem in a federalised Europe in this route, as a single bad policy decision such as that would have severe consequences for the entire federation, while in the EU's current state with multiple systems existing independently, a single bad politician's actions are more limited in their reach, and it allows an observer to see how many different systems operate and can compare their effectiveness, which may inform future policy decisions. On the second solution, namely exemption, whereby the 'national' systems are not covered by the new federal system and continue to co-exist, while it would be the simplest solution, it at best undermines the federal system and at worst calls the whole project into question, i.e, why federalise when the federation would effectively be the same as the European Union in it's current form. That may seem hyperbolic but remember, it's not just healthcare this applies to, but every single institution that the new European federal government would possess. If - practically - there's only a handful of institutions that will actually be federalised, then it may be better to simply create these institutions as a new arm of the current European Union. This is especially important in the context of my Brexit vote, as the UK would completely cease to exist within such a federation. Either the entire current UK would need to be unified as a single state, thus ending the freedoms of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland as England would completely dominate the politics and economics of this new state, or each of the 4 nations would be integrated as 4 separate states, thus completely ending the Union anyway, and a 3 tier system where both the UK and the nations exist within a federal system would call to question why a transition from the Union to a Federation was necessary. Problem 2 I've seen this raised in other comments already so I won't spend as much time on it, but it's the problem of democracy and accountability. The EU as it currently stands has serious problems with it's democracy (and yes I know that national governments do as well and in some cases are worse, but there being problems elsewhere does not magically mean the EU's problems don't exist) and this would need serious reforms to be a fully functioning democratic federation. However it seems as though the current leadership of the EU is more focused on creating a meritocratic technocracy rather than a true democracy, which speaks to the larger problem. All of the flaws of local national governments that the federal europe would supposedly hold to account, such as corrupt politicians and interest groups, liars swaying support for their power using cheap talking points instead of facts, etc, would all still exist, just one level up in the federal government, this time without any higher office to oversee them like in the current EU. Problem 3 Last point, but its more of a criticism of how you answered the national-cultural question than a new problem. I think you're not giving enough credence to the differences that exist between people of different nations; the example you gave of getting along with 'foreign' students better than people back home is one I can relate to a lot actually. When I was in university I connected far better with my friends that were American, German, Pakistani, and Filipino, far better than I do with most people from my hometown, but that speaks more to the character of the sorts of people that become international university students, rather than speaking to the wider culture. A European Federation would need to be a federation for everyone in Europe, including those rural small town people that we find it hard to connect to, not just cosmopolitan university-educated young adults like us. All in all, while I do think it's possible, inevitable even, I do still see significant problems that will need to be addressed which also mean that a federalised Europe wouldn't just be a purely beneficial move in all areas. Rather it is just a changing of forms. The EU in its current form has flaws and it has benefits, a Europe of independent nations has different flaws and different benefits, a European Federation would be the same as well, many benefits for sure, but also many new flaws. I think if a European Federation is to be pursued seriously, it needs to be approached that way, with the conversation being about how the new benefits are worth the new flaws, rather than only describing the benefits.

You had made some mistakes. 1. You think that a federalized country wuold not become more centralized. It wuold. You said yourself, the politicians want to mantain their power and increace such power. So, a federal government wuold slowly become more centralized. 2. You think that the local government wuold not be so corrupt because a federal government wuold stop them. You are forgetting that the federal politicians could be just as or more corrupt then a local politician. Actually, these two could help eachother to become even more corrupt and help eachother to gel away with corruption.

Did you just equate hating a neoliberal transnational body to being an anti-SJW?

I just want to say I would STRONGLY DISCOURAGE modeling a federated Europe after the US Government. Lol.

Calling Polish government alt-right is a huge simplification. While culturally right, economically it invests into a lot of pointless welfare that's supposed to help the poor but only facilities the spread of pathological behavior. It's populist, not alt-right.

My concern is that Europe is predisposed to being divided. the interests of Spain will always be different to Poland. As seen in the Eurozone crisis, the currencies of Greece and Germany shouldn't be the same. Their economies and most importantly exports are vastly different meaning one will lose out from sharing a currency by necessity.

Countries like Estonia would have zero say in a federation with a population less than Berlin. Federation benefits huge corporations, not periphery states.

It's really weird to me that Americans or even western Europeans think of Poland as an unilaterally conservative country when it's divided almost exactly like the US is, it's liberal cities versus conservative rural areas. In the recent presidential election the liberal pro LGBT candidate lost by around 1,5% despite our ruling government doing everything in their power to undercut him. It was almost exactly 50/50 with a slight edge for conservatives, why then are we all seen as anti LGBT conservatives when progressive Americans would never see their own country that way when Trump won the election? The huge city/rural area divide is seen with the mayoral elections, a conservative candidate from the ruling party hasn't won the mayoral election in a single big city, liberal candidates almost always win the mayoral elections. And the country is divided between the largely urbanized and wealthier western Poland and poorer and rural eastern Poland, it's almost exactly like the North/South divide in the US. So it's upsetting to me that we're all seen as anti LGBT conservatives because the conservative party has been ruling for 7 years. Also in our senate the liberal senators are the slight majority, sadly our senate doesn't even come close to how politically influential it is compared to the US senate. Nobody likes to be generalized just because they live in a certain country, please don't assume that we're all like that because that's how our government is. We didn't do that for you with Trump and we'd like to be treated the same, with democracy sometimes idiots get elected and they make the whole country look stupid and backwards but if they didn't get like 90% of the vote then there is no reason to assume that it reflects the ideology of everyone in said country.

I don't think a more federalized Europe would be at all good for democracy or working class interests. But that is in part because of the horrendous political system in the EU. Were a project for closer integration preconditioned on, or happening alongside, substantial reform to the EU, some of my objections wouldn't necesarily apply. The first would be getting rid of the commission and the council of ministers in their entirety. Sole legislative power should rest with a unicameral european parliament. Parliamentary sovereignty would allow for government that can actually effectively channel the interests and demands of the people into government and law, without the conservative chokehold currently exercised through the non-elected institutions.

Although I agree with the idea of "monke together strong" I cannot help but to fear that smaller nations in the EU would get assimilated into and resemble more and more cultures of Germany and/or France if federalization were to happen, not to mention that the voices of the smaller nations would get outnumbered by the sheer number of votes from the bigger nations.

This was the idea of crown-price Rudolf except of course he was talking about the United States of Austria-Hungary. He was ahead of his time.

In listening to the arguments presented here in favor of such a union, I'm hearing the word "could" used an awful lot. That tells me that 1) you're basing your suppositions on absolute best case scenarios where everyone agrees but even worse, 2) the assumption of a staggering level of benevolence and good will from a legislative class that has proven time and again that it possesses neither. Has the word "corruption" ever entered your lexicon? Has anyone ever tipped you off that the bigger and more omnipotent and powerful the government and its bureaucracy is, the more broad ranging and deep rooted the corruption is, the easier it is to hide and the harder it is to root out? Yes, it's true that there "could" be many benefits to such an arrangement but those of us who've been around a while and have seen this movie and heard this soundtrack a hundred times before know damned well where the road paved with good intentions leads. What "could" happen is almost never what does happen. The reason we have small, local and national governments is because they and the bureaucracies that grow up around them, are a whole lot easier to keep in line and ultimately get rid of when they get out of control..... and they ALL get out of control eventually. Power corrupts. Perhaps you've heard one of those old fogies you so contemptuously dismiss use that phrase. Efficiency is a great thing and all but it's not the only thing. You could make all the very same arguments for why we don't all just live in communal barracks and eat in communal dining halls or better yet, why not go all in, swing for the fences and just implement that ultimate wet dream of every socialist who ever lived... one world government. Think of how efficient that would be..... but more importantly, how easy it would be to quash dissent.

Rejecting the cultural differences argument solely with your personal experience studying abroad makes absolutely no sense. Exhange students are a very small group in Europe that are probably biased on cultural openness.