A constitution,
The EU has more of a constitution than the UK.
a parliament with full legislative power
Not necessary for statehood – parliament is still the main legislative power, and requiring parliamentarians to draft laws has its own issues, you need tons of knowledgable staff to do it properly so it makes sense to centralise all the technocratic work. I agree though that staff should be split off from the commission into its independent thing, all three of parliament, commission, and council can then task it to come up with drafts regarding something.
a unified legal system in key areas such as criminal law
Not all federations have unified criminal law. In Germany it happens to be federal prerogative, but in e.g. the US every state has its own system.
a unified citizenship
We do have EU citizenship. Restrictions mostly apply to not being able to access other member’s welfare systems if you haven’t worked there for some time.
a unified administrative system.
Fuck no. Are you French or something where municipalities are run by Paris.
federal political parties
Already exist, though the large incumbents basically confederacies of parties… and newer, smaller, ones which started in a united Europe and developed their programme and identity in a pan-European context from the very beginning, like the Pirates and Volt, aren’t recognised because not enough seats, neither in the EP nor member state parliaments.
But that brings me to the one actually crucial point: We need a European political sphere. Bluntly said as long as elections on the EU level are a vehicle to tell national parties whether they fucked up we’re not there, yet, we’re not one voting public but 27.
If ther parliament has no initiative right for legislation, there is no directly democratically legitimized legislative body. And the EU comission is way to indirect to be considered properly legitimized.
That the US is lackluster in its criminal system should not be an acceptable example for us.
While your citizenship extends to allowing you freedom in other EU countries there is still plenty differences outside the EU. But you wouldnt find it that inside a nation state people from one federal state can travel under different rules than people from another federal state. They are all subject to the same rules and that needs to be the case for the EU too, to achieve statehood.
With the unified administrative system it is not about control from one place. It is about uniform standards and uniform interactions. For instance getting married requires different papers and prerequisites depending on country. Things that are a complicated act with multiple personal appointments in Germany can be done in 5 minutes digitally in other countries. This is unacceptable for a nation state.
we do not really have eu wide political parties yet. there is alliances, but those are different and people can only vote the local part of the EU election. There is no EU wide electable lists and worst of all there is different rules to the countries EU elections. Something again impossible in a true collective nation state as elections need to be equal.
So we are still a long way from having the EU works as one nation state.
