National governments in Europe have been left without the tools to address national problems. Irrespective of political colour, once in power, they have to follow European Union guidelines. People protest because they want changes their governments cannot undertake.
In his presentation as a presidential hopeful on the 18th of September 2026, Gabriel Attal, a Macron protégé and former (though brief) Prime Minister of France under him, proposed moving the European Union (EU) towards the United States of Europe. This was part of his bid to differentiate himself from political opponents, but it does not come out of nowhere.
Attal’s proposal builds directly on the conceptual framework championed by French President Emmanuel Macron. In his Sorbonne speeches (most notably Sorbonne II, April 2024), Macron warned that “our Europe is mortal, it can die” unless it achieves true strategic sovereignty. Macron has pushed for a “two-speed Europe” or concentric circles of integration, arguing that member states willing to integrate deeper on defense, capital markets, and industrial subsidies should do so without being held hostage by unanimity rules or veto-wielding states.
This was followed by Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness, which argued that the EU faces an existential economic crisis without federal-scale coordination. Draghi asserted that without collective action, Europe will face a “slow agony” in the face of competition from the United States and China. That action, he argues, is common financing, a unified capital markets union, and joint defense and technology procurement.
Three days before Attal delivered his speech, Ursula von der Leyen made the argument in a State of the Union address that the continent faces external aggression and economic vulnerabilities that individual nation-states cannot address alone. She proposed establishing a unified Defense Union, creating an EU Defense Commissioner post, advancing the “One Europe, One Market” roadmap, and pursuing treaty changes to streamline decision-making.
They are not alone; Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has long been an advocate for a federalist European Union. Sánchez has frequently stated that the traditional nation-state model is insufficient to handle global financial shocks and geopolitical threats. And even those who have been opposed, ideologically, to it have recently been making concessions.
Giorgia Meloni ran on a eurosceptic platform with calls to leave the Eurozone and the euro. She has now shifted her position to position Italy as a strong player within the EU, calling for an EU that is an “alliance of homelands”. Marine Le Pen, who promoted the idea of “Frexit”, has now also abandoned it, proposing to reform the EU from the inside akin to what Meloni proposes.
I have argued before, about a year ago, that one of the reasons—if not perhaps the main one—for Europe pursuing the war against Russia in Ukraine is because the EU is not a state and thus has a problem with the euro. The euro is a currency backed by the European Central Bank (ECB), but the ECB is not backed by a sovereign state of its own. Rather, it is backed by the conglomerate of European states that compose the EU, which is a problem.
In that argument I highlighted, in light of standard political theory and practice, that one of the reasons that justifies and gives meaning to the birth of a state is the liberation from an imposed authority or defense from an enemy. In this case, Russia serves as the threat that a European state would save the western continent from, thereby justifying its existence. Because, if the European Union falls apart, who then backs the euro?
The implications of undoing the euro are so complex that it seems European central planners—that is, the European Commission (EC)—have decided that the only path forward is further integration of European states into a federal state. This could be argued to have been the goal from its inception at the Treaty of Rome in 1957. But it is a complex task and a very difficult sell to national populations. However, the policies that have been implemented by the EC towards national governments over the past 25 years would indicate that this is happening, if not de jure, then de facto.
National governments have handed monetary policy to the ECB by agreeing to relinquish the right to control their currencies. They have also handed border and immigration control to EU regulators, though it is still enforced by national forces; that’s part of the implications of Schengen. They are increasingly handing over foreign policy decisions and trade, as exemplified by the Mercosur agreement, the trade agreement (or disagreement) with the U.S., or tariffs on Chinese imports. Through environmental policies and sanctions, especially but not uniquely towards Russia, they are also handing over energy policies. Even fiscal policy is increasingly regulated according to EU guidelines.
I’m not arguing here over the benefit or harm of those policies or over wider integration into a federal state. What I’m trying to indicate is that there is a political discourse that champions further European federal integration and a correlating policy agenda that promotes it. My argument is that a core motivation behind this inertia is to protect the euro by creating a European federal state. And this has consequences at the national level.
For example, an open immigration policy could be beneficial by feeding a workforce into the economy amidst a sub-replacement fertility rate in the European Union (1.34 in 2024). Maintaining a sufficiently large workforce is, of course, necessary, especially if part of it will accept lower wages, which would help sustain the economy. Faced with such a low fertility rate, it makes sense for central planners to advocate for open immigration policies. If you add that an increasingly diverse population could weaken nationalist sentiment within member states and help lessen resistance toward a European one, then it’s a rational policy decision. But how is that received, and what kind of consequences does it have for national politics?
Once again, that is neither a defense of nor an attack on particular immigration policies, but rather an example of how one type of policy that makes sense from a centralization perspective carries many and diverse consequences. We could extend that analogy to trade, foreign policy, or defense.
Does it make sense to continue supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia? If the goal is increased centralization of defense and military procurement, thus inflating macroeconomic indicators and transitioning Europe into a military-industrial economy, and justifying the idea of a united Europe against an external foe, thus purging internal dissent and opposition, then yes, it does. But in terms of how it affects the average person, who sees energy prices going through the roof and experiences an inflationary spiral, it’s difficult to understand.
We could extend the same rationale to many other areas—housing, education, healthcare—and we would find that the policies pursued at the European Union level make sense when one looks at them through the lens of increasing centralization. We would also find that national governments, irrespective of which side they stand on, have few tools with which to respond to the challenges created by those policies.
An example of this would be the protection of agricultural production within the European Union. The EU has signed treaties, and seeks to do so with Mercosur, which forces European producers to compete with others from outside the EU—a tough prospect. Another example is the EU’s call to increase military spending, which will affect national budgets allocated to other priorities. These types of policies are top-down rather than bottom-up.
Are these policies intentionally designed to hollow out national sovereignty, or is that a consequence of strengthening the center? In practical terms, it does not matter. Another way of asking the same question would be: is the wave of protests taking place across Europe encouraged in order to justify increasing centralization, or is it the result of an increase in centralized management? Although here the implications of an affirmative answer to the first question would be more worrying, in practical terms, it does not matter.
People are protesting because their social contexts and circumstances are changing rapidly, and not necessarily for the better. They want the lifestyle that, at least, their parents and grandparents had, and they want to vote in governments that can deliver that. Rather than a revolutionary movement—in the sense that it seeks to fundamentally alter the basis of the system—the protestors are asking to maintain the previous status quo. Ironically, that is also why right-wing parties that promise to return things to the way they were are gaining increasing support.
However, as things stand, that is not really possible. On the one hand, due to the centralizing inertia described above, national governments have little ability to effectively address many of the challenges at the national level. On the other, there are geopolitical and economic reasons, such as the restructuring of the U.S. empire or the halt in the supply of cheap energy from the East, that impose their own interconnected demands. And finally, much of Western welfare was subsidized by resource extraction elsewhere.
If a political movement of any color were to try to respond to any or all of these three challenges, that would be revolutionary. But I believe that is highly unlikely in the current political climate.
