The idea of a federal Europe has been around for a long time, but German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer’s recent public revival of the idea was quite interesting.
Speaking at Humboldt University in May, Fischer revitalized debate on the prospect of welding the individual nations of the European Union into a single European superstate. He spoke of placing “the last brick” into place in the Euro-edifice that initially arose out of the European Coal and Steel Community, concluded by treaty between France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries in 1951. Fischer sees this “last brick” as being the welding together of all EU nations into a single federal entity under a strengthened single European government—exercising sole executive and legislative power over all member nations under a single powerful president.
Though Fischer’s speech is no more original than the thoughts of those founding fathers of European Union, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, it nevertheless is a landmark laying down of the gauntlet to EU member and aspiring member nations—coming, as it does, only seven months before the planned conclusion of yet another treaty on European Union in December of this year.
The crux of Fischer’s speech centers on his vision of a core group of countries advancing in the fast lane toward full political union, with laggards following on when they qualify to fall in line.
Fischer attended to the question of loss of national sovereignty, which is endemic to full integration of the EU nation states, by proposing a division of sovereignty. He proposes that member nations retain sovereignty over local, domestic matters but yield all other sovereignty to an all-ruling European parliament under direction of a supreme governing president.
When Fischer’s speech is viewed in the light of recent comments made by EU enlargement commissioner, Gunter Verheugen, that EU expansion should take place by groups of countries on a “when ready” basis, and European Commission President Romano Prodi’s proposal to reduce the number of representative commissioners for each nation-state from a potential of 30 to a more manageable number, the real nature of the German-inspired intentions for EU leadership comes into focus.
The scene is being set, ultimately, for a large number of nation-states to be assembled into regional groupings, each group of nations represented in the proposed pan-European government by a single ruling administrator. This ruler would oversee the domestic sovereignty of his international grouping, yet yield the sovereign rights of those countries to the supreme Europarliament and its president on all affairs of a non-democratic nature.
One begins to see in this scenario the beginnings of the prophecies of Revelation 13:1-2 coming into vision.