Is Donald Trump’s return to the White House paradoxically an opportunity for European integration ? European federalists are faced with this age-old question (asked since 2016). The start of the American billionaire’s second term in office has, unfortunately, lived up to all its promises : ecological devastation and extractivist fads, unprecedented attacks on American democracy, first and foremost, and on the separation of powers, a knock-on effect for other autocrats around the world, the sacrifice of Ukraine to Russia...
Donald Trump’s re-election is giving rise to many anxieties, such as that of Dr Joseph Preston Baratta, an American historian of federalism and former representative to the United Nations in New York of the World Association of World Federalists (WAWF, now the WFM), which we are publishing in partnership with the Turin-based review, The Federalist Debate, edited by Lucio Levi.
Faceing the most powerful man in the world, the European Union is beginning to understand that the future will be without its traditional post-war ally, much to the chagrin of the most Atlanticist. At the beginning of March, the European Commission proposed a funding package to support European defence. Entitled ‘ReArm Europe’ (‘rearming Europe’) and analysed at length in our magazine by Jo Leinen, Honorary President of UEF Europe, this action plan should enable the European Union to become more strategically autonomous. This initiative might seem highly innovative. But it is nothing of the sort : as far back as the early 1980s, Altiero Spinelli reminded us of the imperative need to build strategic autonomy in an archive studied by Hervé Moritz, President of the European Movement - France and a Crocodile Club specialist. However, here we must not forget or overlook the absolute necessity of a genuine common foreign policy built and controlled democratically, as Monica Frassoni, Vice-President of the European Movement International, reminds us.
Beyond the single issue of European defence, the return of Donald Trump also inspires a single word : chaos. Contributions from Jean-Guy Giraud, Dominique Méda, MEP Mounir Satouri, Robert Belot and Domenec Ruiz Devesa on various angles show us the extent to which the current world is leaping into the unknown.
Other topics include Hervé Moritz on the Crocodile Club between 1980 and 1986, Francesca Tortorella on the situation in the Middle East, Pier Virgilio Dastoli on the rise of the far right in Austria and the ‘antidote’ to ‘nationalist degeneration’, Chantal Meloni on universal justice, Céline Spector on the need for a European social contract as a basis for federalism, and Silvia Romano on the figure of Franca Trentin, as part of her ‘Fédé’femmes’ column. It would be impossible to summarise all the contributions made by our editors here, but we do invite readers to take a closer look and enjoy reading them, despite the less than glowing subjects.