Abstract
There has been a rise and fall in interest in federalism in the context of European integration. This article assesses the federal nature of the EU. It draws in particular on the work of Michael Burgess who has been one of the key thinkers on this issue. Because there are many types of ‘federalisms’ available across the globe, it is helpful to make a comparison with another political system to offer a base line. In this article I explore to what extent the EU already has federal features. With the help of the work of Burgess I seek to look beyond the specific characteristics of the EU and reflect on how a comparison with this other polity can offer us insights into what is going on within the EU political system. Drawing on the comparison with Canada, I seek to identify the characteristics of the EU that are already those of a federation. Therefore, the guiding question of this article is: compared to Canada, what particular features does the EU have that reminds us of a federation and what features is it still lacking? It finds that the EU has a considerable amount of federal features (federation), but that a federal tradition, a federal ideology and advocacy to a federal goal (federalism) are mostly absent.
Highlights
The European Union (EU) is typically categorised as an international organisation
This article started off examining the concepts of federalism and federation drawing in particular on the work of Michael Burgess
Its leading political bodies still miss the autonomy that is typically attributed to the highest political body; its citizens are not yet identifying with the EU and are not in all bodies directly represented
Summary
The European Union (EU) is typically categorised as an international organisation. For instance, the Union of International Associations (UIA), founded in 1910, states on its homepage: “an Intergovernmental Organization IGO is an organization composed primarily of sovereign states, or of other intergovernmental organizations. Ingeborg Tömmel (2012) offers a nice comparison of the EU with ideal type federations and concludes it is not a fully-fledged federation; she does not expect it to Politics and Governance, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 3, Pages 100-110 become one in the near future, yet she finds that it does have some characteristics of a federation She names the EU ‘a federation sui generis’ (Tömmel, 2011). This article seeks to study this question theoretically by examining the concept of federalism and federation drawing on Europeanist literature on federalism, in particular through the work of Michael Burgess. It offers a concrete comparison with an established federal state, Canada, as an example of a federal state. Because at the end of the day the EU needs to deal with multinationalism (as does Canada). Canada is a much more
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