ABSTRACT
Fame, in contemporary politics, is usually a prelude to debunking or, at best, neglect. Such has been the fate of the famous assertion in the Schuman declaration, that the proposed Community was to be ‘the first concrete foundation of a European federation which is indispensable to the preservation of peace’. Europhobes hate such words, the politer Eurosceptics say they are out of date, and for routine politicians they are unfashionable. For Jacques Vandamme, to the contrary, ‘la doctrine de fédéralisme…répond le mieux aux besoins des citoyens’ (cited in Lebohm, 1997). This chapter seeks to build on Vandamme’s affirmation: first by showing that a series of Intergovernmental Conferences has brought the Community, now the Union, to a more advanced pre-federal system than most people realise; secondly by arguing that the completion of the federal system is indeed necessary for the citizens; and thirdly by suggesting that this requires a method beyond the conventional IGC.
