Feature photo: European Congress 1948 | National Archief | Snikkers | Anefo | Wikimedia Commons | CC BY SA 3.0
Recently, I've been asked more and more whether it wouldn't make sense, especially nowadays, at least in Baden-Württemberg, to European movement and the EUROPE UNION bring together as one association.
A question that bothered me a few years ago and for which I even once formulated a corresponding request. Luckily — from my point of view today — my request at the time was rejected.
In order to be able to better understand the question asked, one must know that the active members of both associations are mostly the same and that both associations share both the management and the office from the beginning.
So you can definitely - and this was my idea at the time - think about optimizing your own structures and merging the two associations. Especially if you can hope that the resulting synergy effects will be beneficial for your own promotion of a common Europe.
If one still assumes that both associations are pursuing the same goal, then there would actually be hardly anything standing in the way of a merger. But this is where the dog is buried!
Although both associations would like to achieve a common Europe and are also firmly convinced of its necessity, the similarities end there. The actually existing differences are admittedly covered up on the one hand by the acting persons themselves and on the other hand because of the increasing disregard of what the actual meaning and purpose of the respective associations is.
Therefore, I would like to draw your attention to the differences in a nutshell. More detailed posts can be found here on this weblog, and the entire related history in my book "Europe is for everyone!”
The European federalists, who call themselves EUROPA-UNION in Germany, want one from the start democratic, federal, subsidiary, social and peaceful European state, which is also to become part of a world union. This is not only a very big project, but also very detailed in the ideas of how exactly such a state should look like.
And because there were other ideas about a common Europe in Europe right from the start, a compromise was reached as early as 1948. For everyone — except for the superstate Europeans (!) — a joint umbrella organization, the European Movement International, was founded, which has set itself the goal of campaigning in general and fundamentally for a common Europe among all citizens and promoting this idea in their thoughts and ideas manifest.
How this common Europe should ultimately look like was deliberately ignored. That is why, as early as 1948, the European federalists decided to continue using all their strength to promote their own ideas among the citizens.
In the past few decades, however, there has been an increase in "mixing" within the various European associations, with the European federalists ultimately remaining intact and the umbrella organization, the European Movement International, absorbing almost all the others. And because you weren't careful enough, they succeeded superstate Europeans — these are the European nationalists — to establish themselves in both associations and strengthen the common principles of both associations, with the aim of torpedoing the national state through the Europeans.
It is therefore imperative that one is aware of the very fine but also very large differences between the two associations. We European federalists want the European federal state, and we want to put very specific price tags on it. The European movement wants a common Europe, which could also be a European federal state.
And that is precisely why a merger of the two associations makes no sense, since it would take away those Europeans who, like the European federalists, do not have a very precise and absolutely desired idea of our common Europe, from belonging to the association, or it would force the European federalists to express their very own ideas and giving up expectations.
It therefore makes sense that all professing Europeans — not the nationalists (!) — find themselves in the European movement and that all those who are also willing to work for a federal European state should get involved with the European federalists.
