Yes pls.
How much is missing before you can simply call it a state? It’s all about definition.
Plenty is still missing.
A constitution, a parliament with full legislative power, a unified legal system in key areas such as criminal law, federal political parties, a unified citizenship and a unified administrative system.
E.g. you would need to be subject to generally the same laws in France as you are in Italy, which are coming from one constitution that all lawmakers and courts need to uphold. When the passport you made in France need to be renewed you should be able to do that just as easily at any government office in Italy and during elections you should be able to vote the same parties that you were able to vote on before. And the people you elected need to be able to actually submit laws and the laws need to be able to pass purely in the parliament, without a veto and design power purely held by the government (comission).
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.
We already have a not insignificant minority trying to leave the EU or destroy it. Imagine how many votes they get if the EU tries to become a state
It would probably be very difficult inside the current system. Maybe it would need to grow dynamically starting with central countries first and then moving further out. If Hungary and Slovakia prefer to be Russian puppets thats fine for them. I am sure they’ll learn in due time.
I dont agree with this. More centralized power just makes it harder for local and national changes and also makes it easier for lobbyists to undermine the interests of the general population for their own benefit
The power already is centralized to a strong degree. But with an actual statelike system we would have full legislative power through democraticly elected parliaments and governments. With that more changes could happen, as they would now be represented, instead of having the mutant-organizations of comission and council without triple and quadruple indirectness between them and the citizens. That is where the lobbying power is so successfull. Because there is no democratic representation and hence no accountability in these structures.
