The question is the following: what the founding father of the union would have to say about the current state of the union. What would they say about the great forces that are aiming to create a super empire, aka the United States of Europe? In the meantime, as a result of the war related imbecilic sanctions policy, it cannot be ruled out that the union will it fall apart in the short or medium term.
My answer is that even the founding fathers were divided, as they didn’t seem to have a unified concept about the future of Europe. Moreover, the same problems characterized the early days as today’s Europe. Strong nations or the subjugation of nations under a centralized, supranational rule.
Right from the beginning - when the European Coal and Steel Community was founded
in 1951 - it split into two groups within the political and economic elite. One of the categories was made up of political and public figures who represented the supranational position, they were world citizens with very little national interest. Count Coudenhove Kalergi, Jean Monnet, Max Kohnstamm, and the communist Altiero Spinelli are just a few to mention (if we look at today’s politicians, such personals would be Jean-Claude Juncker; the current Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen; Vice President, Frans Timmermanns; Vera Jourova; Helena Dalli; Frank Engel; Guy Verhofstadt; etc.). They have envisioned world federalism and word governance, going beyond Europe. As a part of this, they wanted to create the United States of Europe, which was supposed to be one of the building blocks of their globalist concept. Consequently, their approach was not European, but rather a globalist idea that involved supranational institutions. For them, the national governments meant barriers to their goals, therefore, they promoted the termination of national sovereignty.
The other group included important leaders, politicians, prime ministers, and foreign ministers from Western European countries. They have also inclined towards federalism, however, as elected politicians, they were principally responsible for the interest of their countries. Among them, we should mention French Foreign Minister, Robert Schumann; German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer; and Italian Prime Minister, De Gasperi. For them, it soon became clear, that Monnet’s globalist direction aimed to replace national-state interests (without any transitions) with a European governance. However, they could no longer support this, as it would have restricted their own authority, moreover, they still owed accountability to their voters and the public. Despite the federalist zeitgeist, no nation with a long history or central power was prepared to dissolve into one international institution from one day to another.
Accordingly, Monnet’s dream of super-federalism didn’t come true, but rather a diverse system of federalist and sovereignist institutes was established. Today, the followers of Monnet’s globalism wish to transform this system in the spirit of federalism.
It should be noted that the plan of the United States of Europe was also pressurized by global elite circles outside of Europe. It is clear, that at the time of the founding of ESCS, as well as today, the globalist elite “wraps around” the union and aims to establish its will through strong networks. (For example, Entrepreneurs' Roundtable, European Council on Foreign Relations, fake non-governmental organizations associated with György Soros, NGOs, networks of lobbyists, consulting companies representing the interests of global networks, etc.) Accordingly, the union itself is not a sovereign entity. Its operation is not only influenced by internal political and economic forces, but also external forces (not to a small extent). We need to pay much more attention to further investigate the latter.
Subsequently, the stake of the seventy-year-old debate between federalists and sovereignists is extremely significant, as it implies the disintegration of the union, its ultimate elimination, or its preservation and reinforcement. In other words, we do not need to return to the good old days of the founding fathers (since they never existed), but we should decide between the direction of the existing federalist-sovereignist directions and form a union of strong nations. Consequently, we should not restore, but rather establish a new European alliance.
And let me end with a bon mot of my own: the union is to be a loose economic and trade alliance between sovereign states, or not to be.