Comments by "Jasper Mooren" (@jaspermooren5883) on "Why an EU Army Looks Increasingly Likely" video.

Yeah, the only way in which I agree with a European army, as someone who considers himself quite federalist and very pro-EU, is if the EU properly federalises, so the army can be democratically controlled (by a proper minister of defense that is properly controlled by parliament). An EU army without a European parliament with full democratic powers is just not an option. It would grant a not so very democratic institution the monopoly of violence, which is a hugely dangerous thing. Federalisation first, EU army second. The other way around is outright dangerous. And that's coming from someone who really believes in the European project, the vast majority of people are far less keen on the EU than I am, and would be significantly less keen on a European army.
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@alkazarjkdghjd I'm sorry but saying that a majority of people are against the EU is just objectively false. In literally every country in the EU right now there is a significant majority in favour of the EU, that's just a very well researched fact. And there is such a thing as a European identity, all you have to do is ever leave Europe and you can immediately see it. Literally everyone I've ever met that claims that there is no such thing as a European identity has never left the continent (or have never been to Europe and are just echoing what they heard on the internet). I'm a European, I truly feel as such, and as much as I feel Dutch and Brabander. An identity is not exclusive. Just geographic identities I already have 3. I arguably feel more connected to the continent than the country. That might not be true for everyone, but it is definitely true for a significant part of the population. Particularly the younger and more highly educated population feels that way.
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@ShikiByakko that depends on how it is implemented. The US works reasonably well as a federal state for example. A federal state is still defined by the fact that its powers are granted by its member states, not the other way around. That would be a unitary state, which no one is suggesting. So the autonomy a federal EU has, would still be limited by the willingness of the member states to give it that power. Also I fundamentally disagree that people are really that different, yeah any time you look at a bigger group the differences are going to increase, always, but the differences between European countries are way overblown. In the end we're all Europeans with a combined history and culture. There are of course cultural differences, but so are there within countries. Just across the border the cultures are often far more similar than across the same country.
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@ShikiByakko like I said theres no reason why federalisation would mean less power to nation states though. It would just mean that the power that the EU de facto already has would just be formally supported in a fully democratic structure. In the end a federal state is defined by its member granting power to the federal government, but the sovereignty is with the states, not the federal government. What you are describing is a unitary state where the sovereignty lies with the national government and the states only hold the power that the national government deems them suited to hold. A national government can retract powers from the states at their whim. A federal government only has the powers that the states are willing to give them, that's the fundamental difference. You're here arguing that a unitary state for the EU is a bad idea, which I fully agree with. But that is not what federalisation means. Federalisation would just mean that the powers the EU already has follow a democratic properly designed structure, rather than the mess it is now which is really just the result of decades of slightly tweaking things from a framework that was something completely different (just a lot of trade agreements really). The fact that the European Council has more or less unrestricted power is very weird and not really that democratic, since they are representatives of a government that is chosen by national representatives. So these are 3 layers removed from the actual voters which is not very democratic. And the fact that there is almost no check on their power doesn't make it better. Estonia could still hold quite a lot of power in a federal system as long as the sovereignty remains with Estonia. Like in the US, where the state actually has a far greater influence on the lives of its citizens than the federal government has. Healthcare, education, policing, infrastructure, culture (like theatres and music halls and the like) are all matters of the state. Even laws are mostly stately affairs, not federal ones. There's a reason why every US state has their own court and it matters which one you go to. They literally have different laws, not unlike the way it's different to go to a French or Dutch court. The only things that are federal in the US have been decided at some point to make federal affairs by the states. Which after 200 years is quite a bit to be fair, but fundamentally the federal government can't do anything unless the states agree. And even then there's a senate where representation is not equal at all, every state has 2. So there's absolutely no reason to assume that in a federal system Estonia would lose power and France would gain it, in fact the opposite is quite likely depending on the way it is implemented. Edit: also the US was not really new. The 13 colonies had existed for hundreds of years at that point and were completely independent colonies. This idea that the US was far closer culturally and socially is largely untrue. In fact it were mostly the fringes of society that travelled to the US, so extremists with wildly different ideologies were far more numerous relatively (the 13 colonies only had a small fraction of the pupolation that Europe had at the time) than they were in Europe. If anything Europe has always been more ideologically united than the US was in 1776. Particularly nowadays, when the EU is far more politically, culturally and socially connected than the US was in 1776, mostly simply because of stuff like this, where I can talk to you despite you not even knowing who or where you are. The human experience has never been more similar than it is nowadays. The differences between European countries are far smaller than the differences within them, and have been for decades. The idea that Europe is too culturally diverse to be in a Federal state just holds no ground. There is definitely such a thing as European culture, and yeah of course there are big differences between countries, but so do there exist within countries. Nobody denies that Dutch culture exists (well some people have in the past, but almost no one does), yet there are clear cultural distinctions between let's say Eindhoven and Groningen, or even Eindhoven and Helmond (2 cities that are like 20 min by car removed from each other). That does not mean that there isn't such a thing as a European identity. All the really fundamental ideas are shared within Europe. If you just look at politics (which is what we really care about when talking about federalisation anyway) we see that on almost all the core issues every state within the EU agrees. It's really only in the margins that there are differences. All the big events in European history are taught throughout Europe, while for example American history is barely more than a footnote in European history classes. I've learned probably 100x more about the Roman empire than the American one in school, yet the borders of the Roman Empire only barely reached the Netherlands, because there absolutely is such a thing as a European identity and what happened in Italy at that time is also part of our culture. I've been taught about German composers and the French Revolution in great detail. Yet what I learned in school about the US is barely anything more than they had slaves and it was bad (I know a lot more now about it, but that's despite the education system, not because of it). In fact it was only in my 20s that I realised that segregation was still a thing in the US in the 60s. Before that I always kinda assumed it was an 18th and early 19th century thing. If such a thing would have happened anywhere on the European continent at that time, I definitely wouldn't have made that mistake. And in our history books Asia and Africa didn't even exist until the Europeans got there (I've heard that's better now than back when I was in middle school, but still). Europe has a shared history, it has a shared culture, it has a shared identity. It's what defines Europe, since from any other perspective, it's just a peninsula of Asia, to call Europe a continent is actually kinda weird. It is exactly its shared history and culture that defines it as something at all. To say that Europe is not culturally unified means that A: you only know Europe and therefore only see the differences and not the similarities, or B you don't know Europe at all.
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@ShikiByakko those powers are still given to the US government by the states (quite a while ago to be fair in most cases). And the US government is still nothing more than a bunch of state representatives, so every federal law is passed by the states. My point is much more that in the US the government basically has no power over the vast majority of state affairs. Only in some really weird ways by kinda misusing the constitution for things it clearly wasn't designed for can the supreme court indeed mingle into state affairs, but that's about it. Any new federal laws are specifically approved by the senate, which is a body of state representatives. So the states give power to the federal government. There is no reason to assume that any European federation would give the same rights to the federal government as the US has done. I'm giving the US as an example of what a federal system means, and you immediately assume that we would have the same laws, while that is of course a completely separate issue. It is up to the states to determine what powers are given to the EU, and nothing else. A federal government usually has a unified foreign policy and is considered 1 nation outwards, but even that is up to the nation. I mean just imagine the EU having 1 football team in the world cup, it would win every tournament. For example the UK plays most competitions still as England Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland independently, there's no reason the EU couldn't still do the same. But geopolitics would be unified yes. Also the EU is not just a bunch of trade agreements anymore and hasn't been for a long time. The EU has a court (that regularly has rulings), regularly presents itself as a single diplomatic entity on the geopolitical stage (more often than not it's the EU that makes deals, and not just trade deals, with foreign partners, such as migration pacts), it has a single monetary policy, and EU law stretches far futher than trade agreements. EU law covers extensive privacy laws, environmental protections, heavy mingling with the agricultural industry, and even specific regulations on how governments can operate, just to name a few. The EU even subsides the arts and immaterial cultural heritage in places. For all intended purposes the EU already is a federal state, it just isn't recognised as such, denying it the opportunity to reform the political structure (not necessarily its powers) to accommodate that. Also it would massively reduce the administrative costs alone already if foreign affairs would be formally an EU thing rather than just in practice. It would mean for example that the EU just needs 1 embassy in every country rather than the 27 it has now. But also Brussels itself could be far more efficient in operation when it is just actually recognised as a federal government. There's already a European police force with pretty significant powers (Europol), and even healthcare has been a European topic to a certain extent, such as the European vaccination strategy. To say that the European Union is nothing more than a trade block is just wholly untrue and has been for well over 2 decades. The European Union is a federal state in all but name. I think it's highly time we make it one in name as well.
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