Federalisation of the European Union

[citation needed] However, with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, new intergovernmental elements have been introduced alongside the more federal systems, making it more difficult to define the EU.

[1] A Pan-European movement gained some momentum from the 1920s with the creation of the Paneuropean Union, based on Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi's 1923 manifesto Paneuropa, which presented the idea of a unified European State.

[5] At the end of World War II, the political climate favoured unity in Western Europe, seen by many as an escape from the extreme forms of nationalism which had devastated the continent.

Since then, the European Community has gradually evolved to Union in which a whole range of policy areas where its member states hope to benefit from working together.

The process of intergovernmentally pooling powers, harmonising national policies and creating and enforcing supranational institutions, is called European integration.

In their words: "widespread political opposition to the creation of anything approximating a large, unified executive bureaucracy in Brussels has long-since ended hopes, for the few who harboured them, of creating a European superstate.

[12][13][14] In November 2021, the incoming German government, the Scholz cabinet, called for European federalism in the coalition agreement and wanted to help achieve this.