United States of Europe: Why the Moment Has Arrived

Donald Trump’s aggressive posture on Greenland is not an anomaly. It is another episode revealing the strategic weakness - and long-standing vassalage - that the European continent has resigned itself to for nearly eighty years. When a foreign power can openly threaten to annex a European territory with minimal collective response, the problem is not the provocation itself. The problem is the structure that allows it.

Europe’s Unfinished Miracle

After World War II, Europe embarked on one of the bravest political experiments in human history - rivalled only by the creation of the United Nations. The European Union brought together peoples who had slaughtered one another for centuries under a shared framework of law, markets, and institutions.

Crucially, it did so by inventing something radically new: supranational governance - the voluntary subtraction of powers from nation-states in exchange for peace, scale, and collective strength. From the Coal and Steel Community to the single market, the euro, and the Court of Justice, the EU demonstrated that sovereignty could be pooled without being erased. It showed that borders need not be battle lines, and that cooperation could replace domination.

Power Without Power

And yet, the project was never completed.

As it stands, the EU is unable to deliver on its own promises of prosperity, cohesion, and strategic autonomy. It has the economic and demographic weight of a superpower - around 450 million people, a combined GDP of roughly €16 - 17 trillion (second only to the U.S. worldwide), and close to 15% of global trade - but not the instruments, nor the political will, to act like one.

Among all its shortcomings, it is of course easy to point out the lack of a truly representative democracy: the heads of state and government of the various member states call the shots, even selecting the executive body, the Commission, while the Parliament does not even have the power to initiate legislative processes — as well as the absence of a genuine foreign policy, including, regrettably, a common defence policy.

The results are visible everywhere: from Washington pushing Europe around on security and trade, to a botched and hesitant collective response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; from chronic commercial dependence on China to energy vulnerabilities exposed at the worst possible moments. Europe had every condition to become a decisive global actor. It simply never chose to finish the job.

A Now-or-Never Moment

We are now approaching a point of no return. Losing a European territory to U.S. pressure - by far the most likely scenario if current dynamics continue - would either hammer the final nail into the coffin of the European project or force a historic leap forward.

One path leads to slow disintegration, not unlike what the United Nations itself increasingly seems to be experiencing: a fragmentation into competing national interests, each weaker and more exposed than before to the whims of superpower politics. The other leads to the creation - by those willing, if not all member states - of a European federal state. There is no stable middle ground left.

A New Pole of Hope

A federal Europe would finally provide the scale and strength needed not only to fend off attempts by superpowers to dominate the continent, but also - if done right - to expand the European model itself: an ever larger social safety net, high quality of life, and strong environmental protection, all of which remain at the level experienced by the continent a largely unique experience in the Western world, if not worldwide.

The ability to compound policies and instruments such as sovereign debt would likely accelerate the uplifting of European regions that are still lagging behind and, by investing in local technology and strategic industries that are currently outsourced (A.I. anyone?), could revitalise areas that have long stagnated. It goes without saying that the creation of a European army could finally create the much-needed security infrastructure the content is lacking, at a fraction of the cost of what is currently spent by member states.

Beyond Europe, the implications could be global. In a world squeezed between superpowers that increasingly embody authoritarian and dictatorial tendencies, many small and mid-sized countries are forced to accept the “lesser evil” simply to survive. For example (and without discounting the remanence of imperialists flare Europe wish to have and its own disregard for international law, typical of the global north) European states have, for decades, hypocritically tolerated the bending of international law to appease U.S. interests and preserve American protection - from the genocide in Gaza to war crimes committed in other parts of the Middle East.

A united Europe could repeat the same mistakes. But my hope is that a democratic European federation could instead become a new pole of hope: a power that supports dignity, rights, and self-determination without demanding submission. Over time - or, ideally, as soon as possible - such a federation could open its membership beyond the European continent to societies that share these values and seek protection and prosperity through law rather than force.

The Real Obstacle

The main blockage to this project is internal: nationalist forces sustained and amplified by external powers. Taking my country as an example, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni appears unable to resist kowtowing to Trump, while Matteo Salvini, current interior minister, is openly enamoured with the Kremlin. Both cling to fantasies of national rebirth in a continent that has long left such realities behind.

No small European nation - France and Germany included - has the scale to be more than marginal on its own. Sovereignty without power is not sovereignty at all. It is dependency dressed up as pride.

Europe already proved it can do the impossible. It turned enemies into partners and war into law. What it has not yet proven is the courage to complete its own creation.

This is the moment to move forward: toward a democratic, accountable, federal state of Europe - capable of defending itself, supporting people at home and abroad, and finally standing upright in the world.

There is no safer option left.