The European Federalist Papers Quotes

“A more thorough analysis of the many weaknesses and shortcomings of the confederal system of that time would make clear that today’s European Union reveals exactly the same flaws. However, somewhat different from the case in America – where it took only eleven years to understand that they had to replace the Confederation with a Federation – we in Europe have been floundering since 1950 with sticking plasters on the stinking wounds of our own European confederal system.”
― Leo Klinkers, The European Federalist Papers

“Exactly the internal and external economic, social and even military or policing challenges are incentives for Europe to cope with the increasing threats of growing competition by creating a federal Europe. The administrative enlargement, widening the governmental scale, is Europe’s pre-eminent trump card. It is highly necessary to play that trump card by creating a Federation.”
― Herbert Tombeur, The European Federalist Papers

“Where democracy – as an evident necessity – has to be organized through representation, actors coincide with groups-interests. In a representative democracy the interests of the group determine the democratic decision making. And since group interests are the natural enemy of general interests, so is representative democracy the natural enemy of democracy in the sense of popular sovereignty.”
― Leo Klinkers, The European Federalist Papers

“If the whole community takes a decision, actors and interests are identical: they coincide. In the case of popular sovereignty the people are the general interest and the general interests are the people.”
― Leo Klinkers, The European Federalist Papers

“In essence the accelerating decay of the intergovernmental system can be traced back to the fact that all attempts to change it drastically came from within the system itself. If we were to ask those lawyers and political scientists to build a Federation, it would fail again. The officials at present operating within the system are in the right place, because the system has attracted them. They feel at home. But the federal stage is not their habitat. In a federal system they do not know their way because their personal DNA is intergovernmentally charged.”
― Leo Klinkers, The European Federalist Papers

“We have to choose urgently for a change that will lead Europe towards a promising future. Investing in change requires endeavors. Merging our European powers, now divided and weak. Change in a European sense: to climb a mountain with a splendid view on the promised land and then descend to its valleys to pick the fruits. Isn’t that what we need and thus should want to achieve? Which forces us to gather courage. Investing in order to harvest.”
― Herbert Tombeur, The European Federalist Papers

“My statement is thus that we can only end this downfall of European intergovernmental decision-making by eliminating the intergovernmental operating system completely, in favor of a European Federation.”
― Leo Klinkers, The European Federalist Papers

“Do not say that this draft, analogous to the American Constitution, is alien to the European culture and philosophy, and therefore should be rejected. Those who would make such a claim are ignorant of Europe’s history. What the Americans designed at the end of the 18th century stems straight from the constitutional and institutional reflections of European philosophers of that time, including Montesquieu and Locke.”
― Leo Klinkers Herbert Tombeur, The European Federalist Papers

“Because society makes its own governmental shapes; when a governing power wants to control society from the top-down, society will assess this and will either accept it or not. If not, society will resist one way or another, openly or underground – to eventually win, always.”
― Herbert Tombeur, The European Federalist Papers

“Do not say that this draft, analogous to the American Constitution, is alien to the European culture and philosophy, and therefore should be rejected. Those who would make such a claim are ignorant of Europe’s history. What the Americans designed at the end of the 18th century stems straight from the constitutional and institutional reflections of European philosophers of that time, including Montesquieu and Locke.”
― Leo Klinkers Herbet Tombeur, The European Federalist Papers