A federalist's dream comes true

	The EU Constitution is a decisive step toward the United States of Europe

There will be the United States of Europe…

Those politicians sympathetic to an “ever-closer”(1) European integration subscribe to the idea of integration taking the form of a series of small but significant steps(2), leading irreversibly towards the goal of a ‘United States of Europe.’ Like that European Union is transforming itself from a genuinely federal union into a unitary European state.

The new European Constitution is the most decisive step in that direction, a clear sign that the EU is becoming one state, not merely in a functional sense, but in an institutional sense. It has developed the institutions, powers, mechanisms, behaviour and habits of a state.

But without the citizens’ participation …

With the proposed Constitution the ‘boundaries of integration’ have been overstepped, and the EU’s inherent democratic deficit is not solved but enshrined by it. The Constitution claims to “reflect the will of the citizens and States of Europe”(3), but those citizens were barely consulted at all on the content of the document.

The democratic legitimacy; supposedly guaranteed by the elected members of the European Parliament; is seriously undermined by the European Court of Justice, which has illegitimately usurped much of its power.

The Court as a ‘motor of integration’(4) drives the EU towards the integrationist dream of an economically and militarily powerful Europe, whilst giving little consideration to the real economic, political and social consequences this might have.

it will be a state without democratic legitimacy!

The ‘state’ created by the EU is in fact illegitimate, because this state has been created, developed and extended by an authority devoid of democratic legitimacy, with a minimum of popular participation. In the absence of this participation, the creation of a constitution and a European Union with many of the characteristics of a state cannot constitute the creation of a single European people.