Are Anti-Federalism and Republicanism the Way Forward for a United States of Europe? Lessons from American History

Today, the European Union (EU) and in particular its common currency area created in 1998, the Eurozone, is going through an economic crisis that, given its duration, can be defined as structural and enduring and is such as to put the common political project at risk. This article retraces the history of the United States of America with the purpose of studying what lessons and insights for European Union evolution can be learned from the original debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists and from its repercussions on United States federal development to date. We also deal critically with some conflicting ideas about the organization and future of Europe and present some policy proposals to relaunch the European project based on some of the lessons learned from the history of the United States. We argue that the intuitions of the Anti-Federalists and Republicans can guide us in defining a path for the future of Europe. Given the ultimately (partially) successful but gradual experience of the United States, we suggest that it is necessary to hand back to the EU member countries, after the repeated failures of the EU Stability and Growth Path and Fiscal Compact, full control of their fiscal policy to build a ‘light’ fiscal federalism