Francesca Tortorella The diagnosis of a demographically ill Europe is entirely accurate: the active workforce is shrinking, while economic dependency — young people, retirees and inactive populations — is increasing. National social systems are therefore becoming more fragile, raising questions about their long-term sustainability. However, it is precisely on this issue that federalist ideas could provide a solution. First of all, a genuine European federal system would make it possible to pool demographic risks. Today, although the European Union as a whole is clearly a “very old” continent, population ageing and productivity decline do not occur at the same pace in all Member States. A coordinated European fiscal and social policy could help compensate for these differences, just as a federal state redistributes resources among its regions. ...

Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history,” prophesied in the final stretch of the twentieth century, now seems to have reversed itself — by a paradoxical twist of fate — into its very opposite. We feel surrounded by unrelenting conflicts, a sensation compounded by a “globalized” world that delivers news in real time and appears to erase every distance, physical and psychological alike. Our era exists in a permanent state of crisis — whether economic, social, political, strategic, military, or humanitarian in nature. ...