FAEF
Federal Alliance of European Federalists
Covenant
of sovereign and independent movements, having as their common interest the creation of a federal Europe
Text Covenant
1. We want a truly federal Europe in the sense of the United States of Europe (USE).
2. We appeal to the militants of our movements to mobilize through common and coordinated actions, among which informing and educating the people of Europe about the true nature of federalism:
a. raising awareness about the need and urgency of achieving a federal Europe, based on a Federal Constitution, replacing the current sub-treaties of the Treaty of Lisbon and thus replacing the present intergovernmental administrating system by a democratic, constitutional and institutional federal administrating system;
b. raising awareness about the limits of the current European order to take democratically, effectively and efficiently care of people’s common interests like – for instance - European-driven defence/security/policing, foreign affairs/trade, migration/refugees/open borders, energy/climate/environment, economy/finances/single market/taxes/monetary system, social security/labour/entrepreneurship, digitalisation/privacy, agriculture/cattle breeding and some more common interests.
3. Our appeal is our answer to the growing crisis of trust in liberal democracy and the European dream. And the inability of the present EU-system to cope with external threats and internal conflicts.
4. We want a Federal Union that really knows how to protect its fellow citizens from the continuous challenges that the globalized world confronts us. A Europe that proves to be a political community and not an instrument at the exclusive service of national interests. A Europe that is not led by the nation-states’ anarchy of the national(istic), protectionist(ic) and isolationist(ic) aberrations of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
5. We acknowledge the need for a process that evolves in steps from grass root, bottom-up cooperation into a Federal Alliance of European Federalists (FAEF); grass root operating as the basic element of Althusius’ method of European federalism in 1602. The FAEF will be an Association who’s members are sovereign, autonomous and independent movements, represented in the General Assembly of the FAEF by one representative per movement, while an elected federal body is taking care of the common interests of the members, the most important common interest being the creation of the USE.
6. We endorse the first step of this process, which is: conducting – by the Promoting Team - free and open exploratory discussions with movements that might be interested in taking part of this process. We understand that this attempt to ‘federate the federalists’ should have been done already many years ago, an effort to upgrade the present tableau of single pro-Europe movements into an organizational degree that is fit to combine their objectives and means, and thus becoming more effective within the EU-arena.
7. We endorse the second step by signing this Covenant: no strings attached; no legal components; just a declaration in the sense of “Yes, we like this idea and we want to take part in supporting this process - as an organizational quantum leap - to achieve step 3.”
8. We endorse the striving for the third step of the aforementioned point 5, which is establishing the Federal Association of European Federalists (FAEF) when a considerable number of movements have signed this Covenant. From that moment on there will be the Federal Association of European Federalists (FAEF), legally founded as an Association. At that occasion, the Promoting Team, currently acting as change agents, will resign.
9. We endorse that further proceedings of this process of upgrading the organizational level of federalist-oriented movements is recorded on the website www.faef.eu.
On behalf of the Promoting Team of the future FAEF:
Lorenzo Sparviero, Mauro Casarotto, Leo Klinkers and Peter Hovens,
led by the slogan: ‘Have trust, be patient and do good’.