The ideals of a Eurofederalist

Miloš Zeman said in an interview with the weekly Ekonom a few days ago that he is a „Eurofederalist“. The author of this column must say proudly that he is a Eurofederalist as well; this is what the two of us have in common.

But - what is Eurofederalism? Here in Europe, we are unable to reach an agreement even on the definition of the word, or rather have different explanations.

For example in the United Kingdom they interpret the term federalism as decentralisation. Federalism in Britain means that parliaments in Scotland or Wales were given more powers at the expense of the London-based government.

This is what we also know from Czechoslovakia. Federalism was that Slovakia had greater autonomy after 1968. Like in Britain, federalism brings certain asymmetric advantages for the smaller partners: There was a Slovak academy of sciences, but not a Czech one, just Czechoslovak one. There was the Communist Party of Slovakia, but no Czech Communist Party. Similarly, there is no specific English parliament, but there are Welsh and Scottish parliaments.

But that was a digression. Does federalism mean centralisation? To a certain extent yes, but at the same time federalism reinforces internal competition. The idea of internal competition, not the idea of centralism, is one of the pillars of the idea of federalism. At the same time, however, federalism is based on totally non…