In the summer of 1947, in Montreux, the world federalists and the European federalists decided to separate in order to better pursue the objectives they considered priorities: the world federalists thought that the priority was to put an end to wars, in an international reality dominated by superpowers with nuclear weapons: the world federation was necessary. The European federalists decided that their priority was to build the European Federation, to overcome national divisions among Europeans after the catastrophe of the Second World War and as a first step towards overcoming national divisions at the world level.
For many years, the two organisations achieved their objectives in complete independence, each one ignoring the work of the other federalist organisation. It was only in 1993, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Maastricht Treaty, which sanctioned the achievement of European monetary unification, that the two movements resumed the dialogue interrupted in Montreux. At the Pescara Congress, on May 2nd 1993, the MFE (Italian section of the UEF) approved a motion stating that “federalist action must take the form of a unitary action on different levels with the aim of overcoming the division between different organisations”. In addition, “it decides to ask for the recognition of the MFE as an Italian WFM organization”. This decision made it possible to start forms of collaboration between young Europeans and young world federalists in the Ventotene seminars and to activate a cultural debate thanks to the “Federalist Debate”, where the members of the two organizations could discuss the problems of international and European politics. Furthermore, in the following years, the UEF also took note of the need for this political and organizational turnaround.
More than three decades have passed since 1993, in which personal meetings have increased and debates on world political events have been intertwined, but the different political priorities remain unchanged. World federalists consider what European federalists do interesting and vice versa. However, when it comes to deciding “what to do” everyone decides in separate congresses on strategic priorities. Even the problem of the ecological crisis, which could not be predicted at the time of Montreux, has now become an existential emergency, on a par with the nuclear threat, because the future of humanity depends both on a possible nuclear war between great powers and on an irreversible climate crisis. However, even the search for a common position on this second front has so far proved fruitless.
Are we to think that the division of Montreux between European and world federalists should continue into the Twenty-first century? That would be a mistake. The international and European reality has changed profoundly since 1947. Today, there is some reason to think that all federalists can and should find ways to join forces. If the European Union becomes an active “international peacemaker”, federalism as the ideology of peace can become the political thought adopted by other peoples as well. On the world front, any success that strengthens peace between large and small powers, between rich and poor countries, will represent an impulse to the federal unification of Europe. An example of this synergy is the Marshall Plan that the United States launched after the war to promote European unification.
It must be acknowledged that the Cold War is definitively over, there are no longer any superpowers: the United States of America is no longer the dominant power, not even for the so-called West, as in the days when the USSR existed. President Obama had already understood that the United States could not play the role of international peacemaker, intervening everywhere to extinguish hotbeds of regional tensions. With President Trump, this orientation is obvious: Trump deliberately ignores the multilateral world institutions created by Roosevelt and in some cases sabotages them. The UN has become an empty shell, the Security Council is paralyzed by crossed vetoes. International politics is dominated by nationalism and the arms race. The struggle for world domination generates conflicts between great powers (USA, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Brazil). Policies for international, economic and political cooperation, and policies against climate change are a souvenir of the past.
The policy of European unification is also stagnating. Nationalism (called sovereignism in Europe) is eroding the European supranational construction. The parties that defend the idea of a European confederation (not a federation) are gaining strength even within the European Parliament. The European Union is an economic power without a real supranational government, it is not a state. It is incapable of having an independent voice in world affairs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that, without the US, the Europeans are unable to help the government in Kiev resist the invasion. The crisis that has opened up again in the Middle East depends on Israel’s refusal to accept the United Nations resolution of 1947, which provides for the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Israel uses military domination as the only guarantee for its own security. However, peaceful coexistence between the peoples of the region would be possible and would guarantee, in addition to security, a common prosperity. The European Union is watching the drama in the Middle East, but is waiting for the United States to propose a temporary truce among the Mediterranean countries. The countries of the European Union have built a Union that, until now, has guaranteed European citizens peace and well-being. But until when? Europeans seem to ignore that Europe has become the rich continent that other world powers are trying to divide and conquer.
“Supranational Federalism” is an editorial proposal available to all federalists and to those who intend to participate in the search for the political and cultural means necessary to found the cosmopolitan civilization of the citizens of the world. This process is underway in the European Union, where its citizens already enjoy a threefold identity: they have a spontaneous citizenship, which depends on where they were born; a national citizenship and a supranational European citizenship. Europeans, like all the other inhabitants of the Planet, can become citizens of the world, provided that a solid policy for international pacification is developed up to the creation of a world federation.
“Supranational Federalism” is the cultural tool that aims to activate a debate between different peoples, nations and civilizations. The goal is to build, step by step, the contours and contents of a cosmopolitan civilization in the awareness that the new civilization of the citizens of the world cannot arise from the prevalence of one national culture over the others or from the prevalence of one civilization over the others. Léopold Sédar Senghor. who promoted policies for the federal unification of African peoples and the creation of Eurafrica, understood that dialogue between peoples and civilizations cannot lead to the supremacy of one over the other, but must produce a Métissage, a mixture that includes part of the past and prospects for the future. The new cultural identity of the citizens of the world and of the policies necessary to achieve it are the Métissage that “Surpranational Federalism” proposes to all federalists and sympathizers to seek. It is necessary to identify with patience and tenacity the ways to abolish war and avoid climate catastrophe. It is necessary to unite the forces of federalists from all continents until the creation of the World Federation.
