European Federation Quotes

If you drive a nation to adopt procedures which run counter to its instincts, you weaken and may destroy the motive force of its action... I am speaking of the frequent suggestion that the United Kingdom should join a federation on the continent of Europe. This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do...For Britain's story and her interests lie far beyond the continent of Europe. Our thoughts move across the seas to the many communities in which our people play their part, in every corner of the world. These are our family ties. That is our life: without it we should be no more than some millions of people living in an island off the coast of Europe, in which nobody wants to take any particular interest.

There is no real peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on a basis of national sovereignty. (…) They must have larger markets. Their prosperity is impossible, unless the States of Europe form themselves in a European Federation.

I really think in the Commonwealth of Europe you should have Russia. I listed a hundred countries that would be in it and it would then be a really European United Nations.

A great European federative system alone can be favourable to the development of civilisation.

We, in the United States, are a melting-pot and, by being so, we have demonstrated that peoples can get along together irrespective of race, color or creed. Using the ‘melting-pot’ or some such catch phrase for a theme we might be able to use the Met [Metropolitan Opera Company] as an example of how Europeans can get along together in the United States and that, therefore, some sort of European Federation is entirely practicable.

We already have a federation. The 11, soon to be 12, member States adopting the euro have already given up part of their sovereignty, monetary sovereignty, and formed a monetary union, and that is the first step towards a federation.

If there is no real European federation and if Germany is restored as a strong and independent country, we must expect another attempt at German domination…. The only reasonably hopeful possibility for avoiding … this is some form of federation in Western and Central Europe.

The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation.

We will have to create an avant-garde.... We could have a Union for the enlarged Europe, and a Federation for the avant-garde.

Europe has a lot of strength. We need to pool that strength, and I am very much in favour of that - more of a deeper political union.

There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.

There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection... The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit.

My objective is that before the end of the millennium Europe should have a true federation. The Commission should become a political executive which can define essential common interests... responsible before the European Parliament and before the nation-states represented how you will, by the European Council or by a second chamber of national parliaments.