Ken M SweeneyDec 29
Can the EU ever return to deeper political integration after the shocks of the last 15 years? To answer that, we need to stop thinking in treaties and start thinking in generations. 🧵
#EU #FutureOfEurope #EuropeanUnion #Europe #Federalism #Unity #UnitedEurope #UnitedStatesOfEurope
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
#European federalism was carried by two groups:
– an older generation shaped by war, dictatorship, and collapse
– a younger “Ryanair generation” raised inside open borders and free movement
Both were essential — and both have faded. 2)
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
The older federalists saw #integration as existential insurance. They remembered what #Europe looked like when cooperation failed. Their authority came from lived memory — and time has taken many of them away. 3)
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
The younger #federalists didn’t fear Europe falling apart. They lived integration as something normal: #Erasmus, cheap flights, cross-border work, shared culture. Europe wasn’t a project — it was an environment. 5)
Show threadKen M Sweeney
The 2007–08 #recession broke the relay between these generations. Jobs vanished, rents rose, travel became harder, and survival replaced idealism. Federalism shifted from necessity to luxury. 5)
Dec 29 at 10:53amMastodon for Android
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
Today, many of that #Ryanair generation are still pro-European — but they have careers, families, mortgages. Life is broadly good. They no longer need deeper integration, even if they like the idea. 7)
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
And this matters: states are not built by comfort. #Political unions emerge from fear, scarcity, and failure — not from systems that work “well enough”. 8)
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
The #EU didn’t collapse after 2008. It stabilised. It re-coded itself as insurance rather than destiny. That made it resilient — but it also drained the urgency required for a true European superstate. 9)
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
So can deeper #integration return? Yes — but only through necessity: a shock so large that national solutions clearly fail, or a generation that experiences precarity the EU alone can address. 10)
Show threadKen M SweeneyDec 29
Until then, the EU will likely remain what it is now: #federal in function, confederal in spirit — integrated enough to work, but not enough to inspire a new founding moment. 🔚 #FutureOfEurope #EuropeanUnion #EU26