The diagnosis of a demographically ill Europe is perfectly accurate: the active base is shrinking while economic dependency — young people, retirees, inactive populations — is increasing. National social systems are being weakened as a result, and the question of their sustainability arises. However, it is precisely on this point that federalist ideas may offer a solution.

First of all, a true European federalism would make it possible to pool demographic risks. Today, although the European Union as a whole is clearly a ‘very old’ continent, population and productivity are not ageing at the same pace across all its member states. A coordinated fiscal and social policy at the European level could offset these disparities, as a federal state does between its regions.

Moreover, the pooling of systems would make it possible to invest in fertility, education and training, innovation, and immigration — essential levers to maintain the productive base.

The aim is to make the European social model sustainable and fair among EU citizens; a federal Europe could also establish a common set of social rights funded by its own resources (carbon tax, taxation of multinationals, recovery of money from tax evasion, fight against undeclared work, etc.). Indeed, the European scale is the one that corresponds to today’s real economy. Value chains, companies, and capital now circulate freely, but social and fiscal policies remain fragmented. This asymmetry creates both social dumping and a loss of efficiency.

From the point of view of economic sustainability, a federal Europe would strengthen investment capacity in productivity, healthcare, and ecological transitions, which are the real remedies to demographic stagnation: if each worker produces more and better, the imbalance between active and inactive populations becomes manageable… as does the environmental burden; we cannot think about going back to ‘producing lots of cars’! A sustainable model is needed.

Here again, European coordination increases the chances of success. Federalism does not deny economic constraints: it proposes to address them together, through organised solidarity at continental scale, rather than leaving each state to struggle alone with a challenge that is, by nature, shared.

The ‘social’ dimension is, in my view, linked to the federalist challenge, because there will be no greater unity without greater solidarity — unless one wants a European minority (those who ‘participate in Europe’) increasingly distant from the vast majority, much further away from the very idea of Europe itself. There is a need for European passion and enthusiasm in order to convince people; this is why federalism requires a realistic social dimension and responses capable of sustainably preserving a unique social model.