Campaign for a European Federation

- concerned about the persistent financial and economic crisis, and deploring the lateness and inadequacy of the measures adopted by the national and European governments;

- convinced that the debt reduction and greater budgetary discipline, although necessary, are not sufficient to guarantee a way out of the crisis;

- certain that, with an integrated European economy and a single currency, the national economic policies are totally inadequate to stimulate growth and protect future generations;

- aware that, in the absence of  suitable European initiatives for development, the economic recession is bound to deepen, making the condition of the most indebted countries untenable, eroding incomes, and leading to mass unemployment and a breakdown of social cohesion;

- conscious that the crisis is not only economic, but also political and institutional, and that it cannot be tackled through intergovernmental solutions alone;

- certain of interpreting the requests coming from society, the economy and European culture, which wants, without delay, solutions to the crucial problems of the democratic legitimacy of the European Union and the government of fiscal, budgetary, and monetary policies, so that the European institutions might win back the consent of the European citizens and of the international community;

REQUEST

1 - the implementation of an environmentally and socially sustainable European development plan, possibly through the procedure of enhanced cooperations (and specifically the one provided for under art. 333 of the Lisbon Treaty), which allows the European Parliament to take part in the decision-making process, in order to promote investments in infrastructures, environment-friendly transformation of the economic model, greater use of renewable energy sources, research and innovation ; the plan will be funded by own resources and by doubling the European budget through the introduction of European taxes (such as the one on financial transactions and the one on CO₂ emissions, which, will partially replace national taxes and will allow a more balanced distribution of the tax burden between different levels of government, local, regional, national and European) and the issuing of Euro-project bonds;

2 - the drawing up, before the European elections of 2014, of a draft revision of the European Treaties, in order to establish a new European institutional architecture which will provide for :

- a strengthening of political unity, starting with the Eurogroup and all the countries wanting greater unity, in order to ensure democratic and effective decisions, on the political, economic and fiscal plane;

- the inclusion, in the new Treaty/Constitution, of a provision for differentiated integration that will allow reluctant countries sufficient time to opt either to join the countries determined to press ahead, or to withdraw from the Union;

- the convening of a constituent assembly/convention composed of representatives elected by the citizens both at national and at European level, as well as representatives of the governments and the European Commission, which, overcoming national vetoes, will have a mandate to develop a federal constitution, based on the draft produced by the European Parliament;

- ratification of the Constitution through a referendum held in the countries that were involved in drawing it up, in such a way that the European federal union is founded on the will of the people;

- the entry into force of the Constitution following its ratification by a majority of the states that participated in its drafting, representing the majority of the citizens.