EUROPEAN FEDERATION NOW
FOR A EUROPEAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Europe is at a crossroads: either it completes the process of its political unification or the present crisis will culminate in the collapse of the whole European edifice.
To avert the disastrous prospect of Europe’s disintegration it is necessary to find a way of bridging the gap that currently separates the European citizens from the European institutions, so as to recover consensus for the European project, and also create the conditions that will allow full trust to be restored between the eurozone countries. To achieve this, the EU must, first of all, show that it is capable of promoting growth and employment; it must also take steps to usher in the knowledge economy. Because Europe has an integrated economy and a single currency it is misleading to look to national solutions. The EU, or the eurozone at least, must undertake to promote a broad and detailed European sustainable development plan that would be funded by European own resources representing at least 1% of the European GDP – resources generated partly through the issuing of euro-project bonds and partly through the introduction of a European tax on financial transactions and a carbon tax.
The struggle to bring about the transfer of new resources to European level, sufficient to make the European governmental system independent of the national governments and capable of boosting development, must be accompanied by the start of a broader programme of European institutional reforms: these reforms are crucial in order to confer a new, supranational, democratic legitimacy on Europe and create the conditions necessary for strengthening, with the support of the citizens, solidarity but also mutual obligations.
Therefore, the European Federalist Movement (MFE) calls upon the Congress of the European Socialist Party to:
- support a European sustainable development plan, promoting a popular movement from below, through a European Citizens Initiative (on the basis of art. 11 of the Lisbon Treaty)
- support the objective of creating a European federation, starting with the eurozone countries;
- establish the time frame of and stages in this process, which must culminate in the convening, by the end of 2013, of a constituent assembly/convention, responsible for drawing up the Constitution of the new federation. This Constitution must be ratified through a referendum, to be held simultaneously with the 2014 European elections in the countries that participated in its drafting. It will enter into force following its approval by a majority of the states that participated in its drafting, representing the majority of the citizens;
- propose a candidate for the European Commission Presidency, to give the citizens the power to elect not only the Members of the European Parliament but also the European Commission’s President in the 2014 European elections.
