Frequently asked questions
What a federal Europe is, what it would change and what it would not: short answers from PromethEUs, a European federalist think tank, with their sources.
PromethEUs is a European federalist think tank, registered as a French non-profit association (loi 1901) based in Issy-les-Moulineaux, that advocates a more integrated, federal and regionalist European Union that protects its citizens and stays democratic and sustainable.
It publishes signed analyses, interviews and reports on EU policy, tracks European Parliament votes, maps European news live (Europe Live) and sets out a roadmap, Vision 2033.
Read Vision 2033 →European federalism is the political movement that seeks to organise the European Union as a federation: common, democratically accountable institutions exercise the powers that states cannot handle alone, while all other powers stay with states and local authorities.
Its roots include the Ventotene Manifesto by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi (1941). The Robert Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 already presented the pooling of coal and steel as "the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace".
For PromethEUs, a federal Europe is a regionalist federation with two complementary sovereignties: the European level exercises a sovereignty of protection, the regions and local territories a lived sovereignty.
The model rejects centralisation: each power goes to the level best able to exercise it, so that every citizen knows who decides and at which level. A federal Europe does not replace identities; it protects them.
See the political architecture →No: PromethEUs' Vision 2033 explicitly rejects centralisation and gives the European level only the functions that local levels cannot carry out alone.
Everyday matters (education, health, housing, jobs, languages) should be decided as close to citizens as possible. This is the practical application of the subsidiarity principle, already written into Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union, which PromethEUs wants to be "lived" rather than theoretical.
According to PromethEUs, the European level would guarantee five protective functions that states can no longer ensure alone against outside powers:
In the PromethEUs model, territories keep everything that shapes daily life, identities and social responsibility:
Because, for PromethEUs, collective protection against outside powers is the first need that Europeans can no longer guarantee separately in a world shaped by the return of power politics.
PromethEUs proposes a "credible, interoperable and lasting" military capability: a common doctrine and a European capability plan, a coordinated defence industry with joint procurement, and the protection of borders and sensitive infrastructure. The power it seeks is defensive, deterrent and protective, neither hegemonic nor imperial.
EU law already contains a mutual assistance clause between member states in the event of armed aggression (Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union).
For PromethEUs, European sovereignty is Europeans' autonomy of decision: being able to make their own choices rather than having them imposed by outside powers.
Beyond defence, it rests on four pillars: industrial and technological autonomy (industrial policy, R&D, resilient value chains), digital sovereignty (cloud, data, cybersecurity), energy security (diversification, interconnections) and a unified diplomacy.
Subsidiarity is the principle that a decision should be taken at the level closest to citizens that can exercise it effectively, with a higher level acting only when the objectives cannot be sufficiently achieved lower down.
In EU law it is set out in Article 5(3) of the Treaty on European Union for areas outside the Union's exclusive competence. PromethEUs makes it the pivot of its model: political responsibility becomes readable because everyone can tell who acts and at which level.
Vision 2033 is the PromethEUs roadmap: one decade, from 2025 to 2033, to build a regionalist, protective and democratic federal Europe, divided into yearly phases with objectives, workstreams and deliverables.
No: PromethEUs is a think tank, registered as a non-profit association, that produces expertise and organises civic mobilisation around European proposals.
Its role, as Vision 2033 describes it, is that of an "intellectual and civic catalyst": comparative analysis of European public policy, sector studies, European citizens' initiatives and digital deliberation tools.
Every PromethEUs article is signed by its author or authors, dated, and links to its sources, listed at the end of the article.
The data tools rely on public sources: European Parliament open data for plenary votes, and European and international services (Copernicus, EMSC, NASA FIRMS…) for the Europe Live map. Datasets produced by the site can be reused (open data).
Cite the author, the title, "PromethEUs", the publication date and the page address, for example: First Last, "Article title", PromethEUs, 21 October 2026, https://prometheus-euro.eu/news?slug=…
For journalists, the media kit gathers logos, press releases and contacts.
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