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Think Outside the Box: The Call From Young Israelis and Palestinians

Drakoulis Goudis — 2026-03-06T13:27:38Z

“Simply a generation ahead”, reads the Young European Federalists (JEF) slogan. This perfectly captures the ambition behind the Federalist Peace Forum. As its President, Moritz Hergl, declared on Monday evening while opening the roundtable with policymakers at the European Parliament, the event marked the culmination of a project more than a year in the making with young people of Israeli and Palestinian heritage drawing inspiration from European federalism to build something new.

It all began by thinking about how to create a parallel and connect the dots between Europe and the Middle East, as explained by the spokesperson from Democracy & Federalism Hub Palestine (DFHP). What began as a platform and a political declaration evolved into a movement of two organisations, the other being Federalist Future Israel, marking one of the first youth federalist movements beyond Europe.

With limited resources but considerable enthusiasm, both organisations engaged people by focusing on talking about solutions. The project was rooted in dialogue and direct communication - connecting people across divides, building bridges, and laying the foundations for something lasting. Nitsan from Federalist Future Israel described it as a visionary project aiming to build something that endures. Their message to policy-makers was clear: “we need your help, your connections, and your support”.

The Role Europe Should Play

The reception from MEPs was overwhelmingly positive. “Everyone who dares to think of alternative options is very welcome, especially if it comes from sitting together. We need out-of-the-box ideas,” said Hannah Neumann of the European Greens. In a similar spirit, Hildegard Bentele of the European People's Party (EPP) highlighted the dangers of targeted information and disinformation in the digital age.

Bentele stressed the importance of meeting in person to foster trust and create new shared spaces, while Alexandre Stutzmann, the EU Representative to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, described the initiative as a particularly creative proposal. He emphasised the importance of bringing together people from societies often driven apart by political forces. “Today's Federalist Peace Forum has shown that even in the most polarised and painful conflicts, political vision is still possible,” added Parliament Vice-President Pina Picierno of the European Socialists. “The Declaration and ideas presented by young Israeli and Palestinian federalists are not abstract exercises. They are a serious contribution to rethinking peace through equality, shared sovereignty, and democratic institutions.”

Europe's security is intrinsically linked to that of the Middle East, argued the spokesperson of DFHP. War in the region does not remain contained; it reverberates globally through the actions of the same destabilising actors. Peace in the Middle East, he stressed, is also in Europe's interest. Human dignity cannot be compartmentalised. For a free and secure Europe, Israelis and Palestinians must remain part of the conversation.

Making Europe's Voice Louder

Neumann invoked the European Union's motto, “United in Diversity”, describing it as a beautiful ideal - one that could perhaps one day resonate too in the Middle East. The EU itself was founded on cooperation, reconciliation, and the recognition that shared sovereignty can replace destructive forms of nationalism. Bentele added that Europe's own history of reconciliation offers valuable lessons for Israelis and Palestinians.

“The EU itself was born from ruins and hatred,” Picierno reflected. “It was built by a generation that chose cooperation over nationalism, law over force, and shared sovereignty over absolute power. It is our responsibility to keep this lesson alive - ensuring that peace is not only something we call for, but something we actively help design, accompany, and defend politically.”

Yet, challenges remain. “The European voice is rarely heard,” noted Dvir Ezra, a member of the Executive Board of JEF. Addressing the MEPs, he noted that “we see a fragmented foreign policy and diminishing global impact” before asking “how do we empower youth voices within European institutions?” The spokesperson of DFHP called on the European Parliament to help make their initiative sustainable. In the past, peacebuilding efforts were heavily dependent on the US. Today, he argued, there is a gap - but also an opportunity for Europe to step up.

For Picierno, continuity is essential. “These ideas must not remain confined to a single event or document. They need structured political follow-up, sustained dialogue with policymakers, and strong engagement with European civil society. The European Parliament must remain a space where voices committed to peace, democracy, and human dignity are heard and protected -especially when they challenge entrenched narratives.”

NGO Funding Remains the Elephant in the Room

In a question to Bentele on behalf of The New Federalist, I pointed to recent initiatives by the centre-right EPP, hand-in-hand with the far-right in the European Parliament, aiming to increase scrutiny on NGOs and reduce their funding. This issue was raised within the context of the broader mission of NGOs, whose core work entails fostering dialogue and bridging divides, goals whose importance Bentele had just highlighted, and the contradiction between supporting these goals while tightening the constraints on organisations which promote them.

Bentele's response was that she opposes cuts in funding to NGOs, but - at the same time - she defended the “increased scrutiny” placed on their activity on the basis of concerns over security, public trust, and confidence in institutions. She referred to allegations of antisemitism against organisations in her own country of Germany that received European funding.

The event faced significant last-minute logistical challenges, courtesy of Donald Trump's airstrikes on Iran, with participants' minds also at home with their families and concerned with how to get back to their home countries. Despite this, the Israeli and Palestinian representatives who travelled to Brussels felt their journey was worthwhile. Nitsan concluded: “I am happy and grateful for the commitment. 5 MEPs were there supporting us and helping us grow for the future”. The Federalist Peace Forum has ended, but their ambitions are only beginning.

“Hot Girls Care About Politics”

Wiktoria Wilk — 2026-03-05T11:49:36Z

There is a kind of TikTok that tells you more about European politics than most panel discussions in Brussels. A girl in her early twenties is doing her eyeliner in a too‑bright bathroom, talking about the war in Gaza, the cost of rent, and the latest far‑right scandal, while the caption reads “hot girls care about politics”. Below, strangers swap voting tips, ‘drag' parties, confess they have no idea how the European elections work, and post memes about men who think they have “main character energy” because they once read a policy paper. In that corner of the internet, politics is not a closed club for men in navy suits; it is a part of one's morning routine, group chats, and For You page. It lives between concealer and contour, sandwiched between ten‑second clips of friendship drama and cats. If you only scrolled through their feeds, the idea of an “apathetic youth” would sound like a lazy and inaccurate diagnosis.

Young Europeans worry about climate collapse, unaffordable housing, democratic backsliding, and wars that suddenly feel very close to home; they sign petitions, share donation links, call out politicians in comment sections, and show up to protests. They know the language of politics well enough to parody it. They can quote slogans, dissect speeches, and turn parliamentary gaffes into running jokes within hours. The problem is not that politics is absent from their lives, but that the institutional version of politics offered to them feels distant, humourless, and strangely uninterested in their lived realities. It is precisely at the moment when politics becomes institutional - when it turns into European election dates, ‘Spitzenkandidaten' and party families - that the energy drains away.

Youth turnout in the 2024 European elections fell compared to the 2019 European elections, with participation among under‑25s dropping by around six percentage points to roughly a third of eligible voters. In surveys, many young non‑voters describe European politics as confusing, hard to understand, or simply not designed with them in mind. The EU appears as a maze of acronyms and anonymous buildings, more spreadsheets than storylines, more compliance training than conversation. On TikTok, caring about politics can be part of the “hot girl” persona; when designed in Brussels, it often feels like homework for a class you did not choose. The EU's official communication leans on institutional logos, security‑first platform bans, and carefully scripted videos, while much of youth political life runs on irony, memes, and the most messy of honesty. In that clash of styles, a lot of genuine interest in politics leaks out from the EU.

The same young people who will spend ten minutes in a comment section arguing about the war in Gaza or climate finance will switch off the moment politics is served to them in bullet‑point press releases and trilogue briefings. “Hot girls care about politics” works as a cultural script because it does three things at once: it flatters, it jokes, and it normalises engagement. It tells you that paying attention is not only morally good, but socially desirable - part of the same aspirational lifestyle as pilates classes and expensive moisturiser. It also makes room for confusion and contradiction: you can be politically opinionated and still Google basic terms, get things wrong, and change your mind. In that ecosystem, politics is something you do with friends, in group chats and comment sections, as opposed to a specialist hobby you outsource to experts. European politics, by contrast, still struggles to cast citizens - and especially young women - as protagonists rather than as a target group. When EU institutions talk about youth, they tend to reach for the language of “consultations”, “dialogues”, and “youth strategies”, formats that quietly assume a separation between those who decide and those who are invited to give feedback. Even when the message is supportive (“we care what young people think”), the staging signals distance: glass buildings, formal panels, or staged photo‑ops with a carefully diverse group of smiling interns. It is hard to feel like the main character in a story where you mostly appear as a stakeholder in someone else's PowerPoint.

Understanding Aesthetics as a Form of Infrastructure

If the idea of the “hot girl” has made caring about politics look attractive, it is partly because it understands aesthetics as infrastructure. The eyeliner, the bathroom mirror, the shared language of memes and micro‑influencers are not superficial decorations; they are the delivery system that makes information legible and emotionally resonant. Brussels, on the other hand, still behaves as if form and style were optional extras - something you add at the end in a communications strategy, rather than the terrain on which legitimacy is won or lost. As long as that gap persists, a lot of young people will keep caring deeply about European‑level decisions while feeling that the EU itself is not really speaking to them. In the ecosystem that runs on memes about hot girls and bathroom‑mirror explainers, the creators who break through tend to be those who already have a trusted relationship with their followers, not those who suddenly pivot into politics from a corporate account.

For many young Europeans, information now arrives through people rather than institutions: a mutual follower on TikTok who posts EU explainer videos in between outfit checks, a PhD student who turns their dissertation into sixty‑second clips, a micro‑influencer who folds voter‑registration links into their “day in the life” content. The messenger matters as much as the message, because trust has become something you subscribe to, not something that comes pre‑attached to a flag or a logo. Many of those messengers occupy the hybrid space where lifestyle content meets subtle political education. Pop artists such as Chappell Roan, whose performances celebrate queer joy and trans rights and whose tours increasingly serve as fundraisers for LGBTQ+ communities; Lucy Dacus, who uses her solo work and her involvement in the band boygenius to protest anti‑trans legislation and advocate for gender‑affirming care; and Zara Larsson, who uses her platforms to amplify feminism, climate justice, and vocal anti‑ICE, pro‑migrant politics, are doing more to normalise dissent and challenge power structures than political manifestos ever will.

Around the traditional landscape of pop artists, a layer of content creators also lean into an unapologetically girly register: TikTokers such as Bethan McGinley, who combines “outfit of the day” and “get ready with me” videos with commentary on current affairs, and Lottie Lashley, an honest fashion girl whose in‑depth explorations of thrifting and trends frequently touch on class, queerness, and sustainability. These pop artists and content creators gain legitimacy less from party logos than from a sense of proximity and vulnerability: the feeling that the girl showing you her outfit is also teaching you how fashion, the workplace, and the climate crisis are shaping the day. That sense of proximity matters because politics is inseparable from culture; it lives in the mirror, the gym locker room, and the notes app where you track what you have eaten. For many young women, the pressures that shape their days are already deeply political: the price of food and contraception, the unspoken rules of gym culture, or the casual diet talk that still polices bodies in offices, seminars, and group chats.

TikTok trends like “fitspiration”, “that girl”, and “tradwife” do not just sell protein powder and Stanley cups; they package an ideology of femininity built on self‑surveillance, thinness, discipline, and cheerful submission. Increasingly, it reads like a soft‑focus gateway into fantasies of order, hierarchy and “traditional values”. But a growing corner of TikTok is busy picking apart gym videos that cater to the male gaze, dissecting “tradwife” vlogs, and explaining how the “clean girl” and “coquette” micro‑trends slide into antifeminism. Instead, they experiment with more neutral, less punishing ways of relating to food, exercise, and appearance that do not require turning self‑acceptance into a permanent performance. In that light, the girl filming her leg-day at the gym or talking through her bloating on camera is often closer to the frontlines of contemporary politics than the MEP reading from a script about “youth well‑being”, because she is the one naming how power actually feels when it lands on her body.

Treating Young People as Political Actors

The reflexive attitude of institutions is to treat young people as a communication problem rather than as political actors in their own right. The result is campaigns that are technically present on TikTok or Instagram, but feel like translations of a press release into vertical video, with the same bullet‑point mentality and risk‑averse tone. Instead of embedding young creators in policy conversations, institutions tend to rent their attention for one‑off campaigns, turning influencer partnerships into another line item in a dissemination plan rather than a redistribution of narrative power. Yet the very data that alarms Brussels also hints at a different way of doing politics. When young Europeans do vote, they are strongly motivated by education, the climate crisis, and ultimately the chance of a good life: under‑25s were far more likely than older voters to list education and the environment as reasons for turning out in 2024.

Young people are late deciders, less attached to parties, and more likely to be swayed in the weeks and even days before the election, which is precisely when For You pages become dense with political content. In other words, the institutional story that young people are simply unreachable is less convincing than the idea that institutions have been speaking a different narrative language - one that cannot compete with the immediacy, specificity, and messiness of their feeds. If pop culture has figured out that aesthetics are infrastructure, institutions could include them as part of the democratic infrastructure, rather than merely an afterthought. That would mean designing participation formats that look less like politely choreographed “youth consultations” and more like the media environments where young people already argue, joke, and learn about politics. It would mean trusting young women, queer people, and ethnic minorities not just to “help get the message out”, but to shape what counts as a political message in the first place - including topics and framings that make institutions uncomfortable.

Crucially, it would require admitting that legitimacy in 2026 is not only earned in plenary halls and press rooms, but in the bathrooms, group chats, and comment sections where “hot girls” are already doing the slow, unglamorous work of keeping each other politically conscious. But there is also a limit to what saying “hot girls” vote can fix on its own. The meme can make paying attention feel aspirational, but it cannot simplify registration procedures, fix underfunded civic education, or stop landlords from raising their rent. It can nudge someone to Google how the European elections work; it cannot guarantee that what they find will be understandable, multilingual, and actually relevant to their lives. A politics that relies on vibes alone risks turning engagement into another aesthetic performance, even as the structures you keep running up against remain stubbornly resistant to change. The more institutions outsource emotional labour to pop and youth culture, the more they risk treating engagement as a branding question rather than a distribution of power. If “hot girls care about politics” becomes just another sticker on an official campaign, stripped of its irony and edge, it will function like the staged photos with smiling interns that young people already distrust.

The point is not to sprinkle memes onto an unchanged political architecture, but to ask who gets to design the architecture in the first place. That means redistributing not just attention but agenda‑setting capacity: who decides what counts as a “youth issue”, who is invited into the room before decisions are made, and whose everyday frustrations are allowed to set the tone. Pop culture has already done the work of proving that young people are not apathetic, that they can and do talk about the war in Gaza and climate finance between eyeliner strokes and lecture breaks. The next step is not to scold them into turning that energy into turnout, but to redesign institutions so that showing up does not feel like entering a world where their humour, their timelines, and their contradictions have to be checked at the door. If politics is going to live on their For You page whether institutions like it or not, then the real question is whether European democracy is willing to be reshaped by the people who are already keeping it alive in bathrooms, comment sections and group chats - or whether it will stay a distant, navy‑blue backdrop to a much more compelling story.

Learning From How Young People Discuss Politics

There is a small, radical hope hidden in that bathroom‑mirror TikTok: the idea that democratic subjectivity can be rehearsed long before institutions are ready to recognise it. When a twenty‑year‑old explains the war in Gaza or climate finance between mascara coats, she is not just “raising awareness”; she is practising the role of someone whose analysis matters, whose feed is a site of interpretation rather than passive consumption. The comment threads under those videos - messy, repetitive, sometimes misinformed and sometimes brilliantly incisive - are clumsy rehearsals for the kind of argument that parliaments were supposed to host and have largely forgotten how to stage. If we take that seriously, then the task is not to drag young people from TikTok into “real” politics, but to admit that they have already dragged politics into the spaces they inhabit and re‑written its rules. The eyeliner, the memes, the in‑jokes about boys who quote policy papers are not distractions from the democratic process; they are experiments in building a political culture that feels livable, funny, and emotionally true.

Rather than asking how to lure the “apathetic youth” into an existing script, European institutions could start from the much more uncomfortable question the idea of the “hot girl” poses: what would our democracies look like if the people currently treated as a marketing segment - young, online, often feminine or queer - were allowed to set the tone, define the stakes, and decide which rooms are worth walking into at all? The joke, then, is that the most vibrant experiments in twenty‑first‑century citizenship are happening in places that official democracy still treats as unserious. A politics that can live alongside “get ready with me” videos and meme audios has already solved a problem Brussels keeps tripping over: how to make structural questions feel intimate without flattening them into “awareness campaigns”. It treats political talk as something you grow into with friends, mistakes, and screenshots, not as a specialist language you acquire only after passing an invisible entrance exam. In that light, “hot girls vote” is less a meme than a provocation: if even the most feminine, trivialised corners of the internet can carry serious political arguments, what excuse do institutions have for remaining so emotionally tone‑deaf?

To take that provocation seriously would mean abandoning the fantasy of the neutral, affectless citizen and admitting that people come to politics as their whole selves - angry, vain, insecure, funny, exhausted. It would require institutions to risk being laughed at and turned into memes, not because of a failure of their communications strategy but because they are finally seen as being close enough to touch. And it would mean conceding that legitimacy in an age of the For You page is not bestowed from the top down, but negotiated in thousands of tiny, everyday interactions: a shared video, a late‑night rant, a DM that says “wait, explain this to me again”. “Hot girls care about politics” is not a solution to Europe's democratic malaise and its problem with young women, but it is a diagnostic. It reveals a generation that is already fluent in the language of power, already remixing it in bathrooms and bedrooms, already refusing to choose between caring and being cool. The question is whether European democracy can bear to be rewritten in that idiom - with its jokes, its eyeliner, its refusal to separate intellect from intimacy - or whether it will remain a distant syllabus that young people periodically march against but rarely feel invited to co‑author. If the former wins, the bathroom mirror was never just a mirror; it was a rehearsal space. If the latter does, those same feeds will remember, and politics will keep happening without the institutions that chose not to listen.

As Israelis and Palestinians, We Shall Go Together to Brussels

Yair Gorni — 2026-03-04T13:04:46Z

As Israelis and Palestinians, we shall go together to Brussels. Today, we are meeting with activists and politicians in the European Parliament. Out of love for our peoples and our shared homeland, we are seeking to promote a vision for a better future. This is a vision of two states, not enemies but allies, working together within a federal framework. This is a vision to bring hope that a different reality is possible for our region.

We know that our nations will not suddenly love one another, nor do we expect the old grievances and grudges of the past to simply fade away. But if the rival vision for the home we love is one of more hatred that is paid in the price of blood, with one group claiming its land for themselves, then we must make sure that our vision of two equal partners in political union is heard.

The Need to Reshape the Two State Solution

We do not oppose the classic form of the two-state solution that has been the framework for peace since the Oslo Accords in 1993 and we are doing whatever we can to help bring it into fruition should it bring a lasting peace. However, the failure to implement it over thirty years has led us to realise that the paradigm must change in two key areas.

Firstly, a separation between Israelis on the one hand and Palestinians on the other hand is not and cannot be part of any solution - it is part of the issue; economic unity, freedom of movement, and joint security and management of natural resources needs to be part of any agreement. Secondly, any peace between Israelis and Palestinians must not just serve them, but the entire region, opening horizons for new partnerships.

There are already mechanisms within the existing proposals for the two-state solution that can serve as a foundation for a federal framework, and we seek to empower and strengthen these as a starting point for our broader objectives for a positive peace. At the same time, should the implementation of the two-state solution continue to not deliver results, then we must prepare an alternative that is based on a federalist or at least a confederalist model.

Against a Unitary State

For those who have lived through the hatred and bloodshed, we cannot wait indefinitely for an end to Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Hamas's terror in the Gaza Strip. But a unitary state across the entire land can never be the end-point for Israelis and Palestinians. Whether it is implemented as an ethnocracy on one side or the other, or as a supposed post-colonial state with equal rights, we can be certain that this would lead to a reality worse than the present.

The first would look more like French Algeria, apartheid-era South Africa, or present-day Afghanistan, and the second would look more like pre-1972 Cyprus, Somalia, or Lebanon. Either a dystopia or a state without functional government, this is not a viable long-term solution. To bring lasting peace, every solution must fulfil the self-determination of both Israelis and Palestinians and therefore it must be bi-national in nature by providing both with the right of self-governance.

Using Europe as our Example

The formation of the EU provides the most powerful example for our vision. Groups of countries where their national identities remain powerful forces, but the conflicts of the past have been moved past. This proves federalism is the only option for a just and sustainable future. One day, we hope Israel and Palestine will be seen like Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium - where we meet today - as marking the first step towards a better future in our region.

As is hoped by the European project and has already been done in some of the EU member states, this structure of joint institutions could be evolved to a fully integrated federation of Levantine member states. But as one of the leading members of Federalist Future Israel, alongside our allies and friends in the Democracy & Federalism Hub Palestine, we do not want to be seen as dreamers detached from reality. We are realists who merely understand that history will not wait for us.

The choice before us is not one of perfection and compromise, but between a shared political future and continuous, endless struggle. Federalism is not a utopia - it is a framework for coexistence. And if we are courageous enough to begin, we may yet transform this conflict into a partnership that secures dignity, freedom, and peace for all.

The British Monarchy Is Rotten Far Beyond Andrew

Jonathan Saunders — 2026-02-26T14:30:58Z

As Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the citizen formerly known as Prince, slouched in a vain, half-hearted attempt to avoid being photographed following his arrest, it was not just the remaining dignity of this odious symbol of privilege and aristocracy which disappeared, but any lasting justification for the lavish titles and admiration which are bestowed upon the so-called Royal Family. Predictably, the British establishment and its media sycophants (“kick Andrew out on the streets, what happens?”) rushed to defend the Family's complicity in his corruption, in an attempt to prevent any chance that the people may indeed come to realise that their role in our society is not to its benefit. But, perhaps, if several hundreds years too late, the people are finally learning to see the Family for the profoundly sad, self-serving institution of generational wealth that it is, even if they are not yet ready to connect the dots and come to the inevitable conclusion of this realisation.

Let us not shy away from divulging the actions of this ugly caricature of excess who believed that he could abuse people and revel in his own pleasure, with no regard whatsoever for the trafficked young women and girls that Jeffrey Epstein supplied to him as if they were merely smuggled Cuban cigars. Not a latecomer by any means to sleaze and sexual depravity, Mountbatten-Windsor was nicknamed ‘Randy Andy' and labelled a ‘professional playboy' when he was barely an adult in 1978, before being shipped off to the Navy in the hope it would make him realise the importance of serving the people his Family rules over. There have been three known women of legal age in his life since then: Koo Stark, Sarah Ferguson, and Lady Hervey. All three have been rolled out by the Family at various points of Andrew's downfall to provide him with a degree of credibility, no doubt aided by the immense wealth (and, in the case of Ferguson, the mother of his children, more housing than in anyone's wildest dreams) that they provide each of his ex-lovers with.

Such is the influence and power of the Family, that everyone who enters from outside of it becomes disgraced, either through the Faustian bargain in which they trade their morals for a stake in the privilege or, for those unwilling to do so, relentless briefings until they are dead (Lady Spencer) or unwelcome in the country (Meghan Markle). One of the arguments made by proponents of the British monarchy was that it exists in a separate realm to politics. This was both a fundamental misunderstanding of the innately political nature of diplomacy and the Family's obsession with the maintenance of every single inch of power it continues to possess. Five years after the finalising of Mountbatten-Windsor's divorce to Ferguson and three years after he began to play with Epstein, he was ‘appointed' (not that it would have been constitutionally possible to reject his candidacy) as the successor to Prince Edward as the Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

The Parallel Lives of Mountbatten-Windsor

It is here where Mountbatten-Windsor's parallel lives began: in his public life working on behalf of Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, President Ben Ali of Tunisia, President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, King Fahd and Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and a long list of monarchies and dictatorships the Family has maintained close relations with; in his private life raping the 17 year old Guiffre as documented in her posthumous memoirs, having committed suicide just under one year ago after a long legal battle sanctioned and financed by Queen Elizabeth II, and maintaining a strong personal and financial relationship with Epstein many years after his first arrest in 2006, which the Epstein files have revealed included the illegal sharing of confidential information.

Clearly not satisfied with his wealth and privilege, Mountbatten-Windsor's public and private lives began to merge together, as reported by the BBC News, through an association with gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni (revealed by Chris Bryant MP under Parliamentary privilege), the receiving of £15 million in funds proven to have been acquired through bribery for a property from Nazarbayev's son-in-law, and continuing after his resignation in 2011 to lobby for the arms industry, being included in a British delegation to Bahrain in 2014. The full amount he claimed in expenses over ten years is unknown, but an investigation revealed it was £620,000 over the course of 2010. Given his long-standing interest in young women and girls, the obvious next step for the disgraced Trade Representative was to join the Women's Interlink Foundation in 2012 and to launch his own Pitch@Palace Initiative in 2014.

Inviting entrepreneurs, including his reputable colleagues from the People's Republic of China, to take part in the whitewashing of his crimes, this charade continued until Mountbatten-Windsor was forced to step down as Chief Executive in 2019 following his infamous interview with the BBC series Newsnight, where he denied having ever met Guiffre and claimed the images were doctored because he was incapable of sweating, said he did not regret meeting Epstein because his contacts had been useful, and apologised only for “letting the side down” by association because he had just been “too honourable”. So honourable, he continued to be involved and profit from his ties through from Pitch@Palace until it was dissolved following Guiffre's suicide. And that is how we got to the 19th February 2026, with the newly 66-year old carried away from Sandringham Estate by unmarked police cars, not due to his association with Epstein, but because of his misconduct in public life.

Is that where the story ends? Can we now celebrate the triumph of the rule of law and the demise of a Prince who failed to meet the standards expected of him? If only it were so simple, but as the famous saying goes: one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel. The British monarchy is predicated on the delusion of benevolence, as if it were God's representative on Earth, which King Charles III quite literally is under law, as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Yet, Mountbatten-Windsor is just the latest of a series of Royal children who failed to live up to the standards expected of them. Far from the City of God, it is more like Sodom and Gomorrah. With a matriarch who turned a blind eye to her wayward children, the monarchy which supposedly exists to ensure justice only did so as long as the justice in question served its own interests.

A Family History of Corruption and Abuse

King Edward VIII, the first child of King George V, caused the biggest existential threat to the British monarchy since Oliver Cromwell, when he started a constitutional crisis by attempting to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson, who was in the process of a second divorce in order to marry him. A somewhat sympathetic case, given he was abused by his nanny, sent away by his father for crying too much, and had only just begun to enjoy his time in the Navy before his father forced him to go to the University of Oxford upon ascending to the throne. Unfortunately, he was also a white supremacist who wrote in his diaries of Indigenous Australians that “they are the lowest form of human beings and are the closest thing to monkeys”.

Edward VIII's womanising, always a favourite pastime of royalty, began during his affair with the Parisian prostitute Marguerite Alibert in 1917, the same year he began to have a separate affair with Lady Leveson-Gower. Despite choosing the latter, his father did not see her as suitable and he continued a remarkable list of affairs until meeting Simpson in the early 1930s when Lady Furness, one of the many married women he had an affair with, was away on holiday. His reign began and ended in 1936 when Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin informed him that the Government would resign if he married Simpson. Yet, instead of being disgraced by his abdication, the first act of King George VI was to make him the Duke of Windsor.

As the Duke of Windsor, his role involved a tour of Germany where both Simpson and himself gave the Nazi salute, an American radio broadcast calling for peace at the start of the Second World War, and the leaking of Allied war plans to defend Belgium to the Nazi regime, at which point he was made the Governor of the Bahamas, the rule of a people which was supposedly meant to be seen as a great demotion for the white supremacist. As late as December 1940, he continued to attempt to make President Roosevelt intervene on the side of the “right and logical leader of the German people”, Adolf Hitler, complaining well into his later life that the Government's anti-Mussolini stance and the malign influence of the Jews had been the real cause of the war. He ‘served' the country as the Duke of Windsor until his death in 1972, 19 years into Elizabeth II's reign.

George VI is to be commended for his contribution to the war effort in maintaining morale, for supporting the creation of the United Nations, and for relinquishing his title of the Emperor of India, although many of his actions were motivated by the necessity of stability after the constitutional crisis of 1936 and he is well-known to have supported the pro-appeasement Lord Halifax over Winston Churchill in 1940. Elizabeth II is worthy of a degree of respect for putting herself at considerable personal risk in touring countries from Ghana to Canada to Yugoslavia to China at politically contentious moments. And she was a particularly astute political actor, navigating once-popular premierships under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and surviving the crisis of 1992 when three of her four children separated from their partners and scrutiny over the royal finances forced her to accept reforms including the charging of income tax on herself, allowing her to rule until her death at the former Prince Charles's dismay.

A Country and a Family Facing a Collective Trauma

The prevailing image of Elizabeth II is that of the old woman who allowed her image to be projected parachuting into the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games or having tea with Paddington Bear, and that is an image which is difficult to remove from one's memory. But this is not the person who was at the head of the Family and it is nothing more than a false sense of nostalgia, one of a country which has no sense of its place and is clinging onto the last semblance of an Empire that once dominated the world. Just like her father and just like his father, she was a cold and calculated figure who neglected her children and meddled in their lives, not in their own interests, but in the interests of the maintenance of her power and nothing else. Mountbatten-Windsor was not an anomaly; he was a broken man who was broken by an institution which makes victims out of everyone who interacts with it. Despicable as his actions may be, he is still a victim who failed to break out of the cycle of abuse.

Yet, Prince Harry, who caused significant damage to the monarchy in 2005 when he followed the family tradition by dressing up as a Nazi, was treated with a severity not shown to him then nor to Mountbatten-Windsor even after all that has become known, simply because of a marriage to an independent-minded woman in Markle. To his credit, he at least tried to break out of the cycle of abuse, and for this, Elizabeth II sanctioned the same media attacks on Markle that made his mother's final years a living hell. And, beyond the nostalgia, beyond the legitimate achievements of her reign, this is what her place in history will be: someone who left behind a family of broken people because she failed them. Much like Thatcher and Blair, the two best politicians of her reign, she was willing to throw anyone under the bus to rule as long as she could, and she was far better at it. But like both of them, her legacy is a country that, along with her children and grandchildren, are still trying to pick up the pieces of the trauma which she has inflicted.

And for what? The monarchy has lived for decades in limbo, exerting influence over politics while having to pretend that it is apolitical. Power did not bring Elizabeth II happiness. She was infamously emotionless upon Spencer's death, pushed by Blair into a faux demonstration of remorse for a woman everyone knew she could not stand. Even the Crown itself is not enough to make all of this pomp and tradition worth it for the person who wears it, given the incredible level of jealousy that she held towards Spencer. In some ways, Mountbatten-Windsor is just the honest face of the monarchy: he got to enjoy the power while he had it with all of the money and sex that he could possibly desire. The most tragic part of this story is that it is about property and who is in possession of it more than anything else. A Freedom of Information Request in 2019 showed that more land is still owned by the aristocracy and the gentry than any other group in society: a total of 30%, compared to 18% by corporations, 17% by oligarchs and city bankers, 8.5% by the public sector, and just 5% by homeowners.

After the Second World War, the people were within sight of acquiring the same kind of power as the aristocracy and the gentry. This opportunity was allowed to slip under successive Labour governments. Still, the vast majority of Lords, who continue to block and exert influence over our democracy, most of which were privately educated and socialised with the land-owning aristocracy and gentry, are Conservatives. Still, the best jobs go to the children who went to the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, mediocre and entitled children like Boris Johnson, while youth unemployment reaches heights not seen in decades and a generation are facing the consequences of the lie that there is such a thing as social mobility. Still, even as we have the first Cabinet in the history of the United Kingdom that has more people who went to a comprehensive school than the general population, an ever-powerful civil service and decades of power being centralised in special advisors mean that they have no meaningful power.

King Charles III has the unenviable task of managing the Family that he inherited, many years after he would have wanted to, having spent years waiting in the shadows of a mother who refused to pass on the reins to him, and attempting to ensure that a Crown remains to pass on to Prince William. One cannot help but wonder if he is questioning whether he should have been careful what he wished for all along. There is a good chance he will pass it on before his death if he is able to do so without collapsing the monarchy. If he fails, William will become the Liz Truss of the British monarchy. If he succeeds, William will be perceived as a legitimate King. But a legitimacy derived from public opinion is not a real form of legitimacy. The people are growing up and realising the need for their self-determination, and no legitimate defence of monarchy, Lordship, or aristocracy exists in mainstream society anymore beyond a half-hearted conservatism that even its proponents do not truly believe. Either the monarchy and everything associated with it dies or Britain dies. Let us hope William will become the King who sacrificed his own power to save his own country.

Europeans Are Being Force Fed Like Foie Gras

Benedikte Svendsen — 2026-02-25T14:33:54Z

The image of poverty in Europe is outdated. It still conjures up visible hunger, thin bodies, and empty plates. Yet, in reality, modern deprivation has evolved and, today, it looks very different compared to what it did a century ago. It no longer always looks like absence. In fact, it increasingly looks like excess. The modern food industry in Europe has created a population fattened on cheap, ultra-processed foods.

As prices continue to inflate and wages fail to grow alongside them, Europeans are drawn more and more to food that is low in nutrients and high in calories. But when the impoverishment of the working class is pointed out, it is often dismissed on the basis that the supposedly suffering appear to be perfectly well-fed. The visibly starving working class has not disappeared because inequality has been solved. It has been replaced by a population sustained on calorie-dense, nutrient-poor products that are cheap, accessible, and relentlessly marketed. In this sense, Europe is not starving its working class. It is force-feeding them.

The Myth of Personal Responsibility

Some will argue that the foods one consumes are a matter of personal choice, and that if only one showed greater responsibility, then one would not become unhealthy or overweight. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both human rationality and the way in which we interact with the society we are a part of. It is not a case of personal failure; it is systemic design. Fresh produce, high-quality protein, and foods with minimal processing require the time and stability to prepare, the money to afford, and the accessibility of shops full of good options to choose from.

Most working-class families lack at least one of these requirements. The result is predictable. Diet-related illnesses rise, energy levels drop, and long-term health deteriorates. Individuals are not responsible for the affordability of food that is good for them, having jobs and family lives that allow them to prepare it, or the fact that shops often promote the worst foods with two-for-the-price-of-one deals and other similar schemes. The system is manufacturing dependence on ultra-processed foods, then it shames the dependent.

When these outcomes become visible, the narrative shifts. Obesity is framed as evidence of laziness or poor discipline. If bodies are larger, the logic goes, scarcity cannot be real. This argument is both cruel and convenient. It allows structural inequality to be recast as individual failure. The consequences go beyond health. Public discourse still links poverty to visible scarcity, yet modern deprivation is far more insidious.

The New Face of Deprivation

The population is being fed just enough that they are able to work long, hard hours, yet they have no energy or even desire for leisure when they are outside of the workplace. The foie gras analogy is not just provocative - it is accurate. Ducks are force-fed to maximise output, not wellbeing, and the logic is strikingly similar when lower-income communities are flooded with ultra-processed food that prioritises profit over nutrition.

These products are cheap enough to fill a stomach but poor enough to starve a body of nutrients. A society that fattens its population for profit, then mocks them for the consequences, is actively weaponising food against the people it claims to serve. There is a political function to this stigma. If poverty no longer looks like starvation, it becomes easier to deny. A person with an overweight body does not fit the traditional image of deprivation, even if their diet consists of the cheapest calories available.

In this sense, food is not just sustenance. It is a mechanism through which inequality is normalised. Cheap food absorbs economic pressure. It keeps households afloat in the short term. But it transfers the long-term cost to public health systems and to individuals whose opportunities are constrained by preventable illness. It hinders them from fulfilling their potential by making them sluggish and unable to work to retirement age, or even as early as their twenties.

For a generation already squeezed by housing crises, wage stagnation, and inflation, the cost of eating well is not just financial, but political. Cheap food is not a solution but a tool. And those who profit rarely face the consequences. Europeans deserve food that nourishes without stigmatising, a system that values health as much as convenience. Until we confront the politics of what we eat - the subsidies, marketing practices, and price structures that turn citizens into foie gras - the conversation about obesity, health, and cost of living will remain a cynical blame game.

A Different Path Is Possible

Not all systems in the world function this way. Japan, for instance, shares many structural similarities with Europe, such as dense urban living, long working hours, and high living costs. It is also a country that suffers from inequality and the consequences of it in much the same way we do, but one thing that it has not imported is our food habits. Its food environment makes healthy choices accessible and even more convenient than ultra-processed fast food.

Asian cultures often have unhealthy approaches to work and a hierarchical structure that is undesirable, but it has an environment that at the very least makes it easier to eat well. It demonstrates that obesity is not a matter of the choices the working class makes. It is a matter of the environment they inhabit. It is because the policies, market structures, and cultural norms in place make nutritious options the default rather than the exception.

Europe prides itself on social standards and public health protections. Yet its food environment tells a completely different story. A system that makes unhealthy calories the default for lower-income citizens, then mocks them for the visible consequences, is not neutral. It is political. The real question is not why large parts of the working class eat poorly. The question is why the system is stacked against them - and how long we will continue pretending that it is a matter of choice rather than design.

The Bart De Wever Guide to Eroding European Solidarity

Drakoulis Goudis — 2026-02-24T12:54:50Z

In December, the European Council finally resolved the months-long deadlock over funding for Ukraine. The decision to abandon the reparations loan model in favor of joint borrowing, raising €90 billion through common debt, was not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, from a federalist perspective, it marked a meaningful precedent: another step towards Eurobonds and another step towards fiscal union.

Yet, this outcome was overshadowed by the conduct and rhetoric of an unexpected figure: Belgium's Prime Minister, Bart De Wever. While his opposition to the Commission's plan earned applause at home and criticism abroad, both camps largely missed the core issue. The biggest development was not Belgium's demand for risk-sharing, but the openly anti-European reasoning De Wever deployed. This was a reasoning that undermines trust among member states - particularly those living under the shadow of Russian aggression.

Step One: Spread Misinformation About Your Legal Standing

Belgium's prominence in the debate is easily explained. Around €193 billion of the €210 billion in frozen Russian assets are held by Euroclear, a Brussels-based financial infrastructure firm. Had the EU opted for a reparations loan backed by these assets, Belgium would have borne a disproportionate share of the legal risk if Russia challenged the move. But media coverage often exaggerated this danger, suggesting that Russia could easily reclaim the funds and leave Belgium footing the bill.

In reality, as analysis from the Centre for European Reform has shown, Russia's chances of success in international arbitration are slim, which could be reduced further through targeted legislative changes at both a national and a European level. Even so, it is not unreasonable for Belgium to demand full mutualisation of risk. Any member state would do the same. This, however, is not where De Wever stopped.

Step Two: Repeat Russian-American Talking Points

The real cause for concern lies in De Wever's own words, notably in an interview with La Libre days before the summit:

“. . . but who really believes that Russia will lose in Ukraine? It's a fable, a complete illusion. It's not even desirable for them to lose and for instability to take hold in a country that possesses nuclear weapons. And who believes that [President] Putin will calmly accept the confiscation of Russian assets? Moscow has let us know that in the event of a seizure, Belgium and I personally will feel the effects "for eternity”. . . Russia could also confiscate certain Western assets: Euroclear has €16 billion in Russia. All Belgian factories in Russia could also be seized.”

De Wever's first deeply troubling claim was that Russia will not lose the war, dismissing such an outcome as an “illusion.” This is not realism; it is defeatism dressed up as prudence. Europe is not a neutral observer of the war in Ukraine. Russia is its adversary, Ukraine its partner.

If one believes Russia may not lose, the logical response is to strengthen European action - not to normalize a Russian victory as an acceptable scenario. For Belgium, such an outcome may appear distant and manageable. For Poland, the Baltic states, or Finland, it is existential. De Wever's reasoning exposes a narrow national lens: a willingness to accept outcomes catastrophic for others because they are survivable at home.

Even more alarming was De Wever's assertion that Europe should not even desire a Russian defeat, citing fears of instability in a nuclear-armed state. This argument closely mirrors long-standing Russian and American talking points: that nuclear powers must be accommodated to prevent escalation. Translated into policy, this logic implies that states living next to a nuclear aggressor must simply endure intimidation for the comfort of those farther away. It accepts a world in which “might is right” and nuclear weapons grant de facto impunity. For Europeans living next to Russia, this is not an abstract debate, but a question of survival.

Step Three: Hide Behind Your Own Inaction

De Wever also expressed concern about potential Russian retaliation against Belgian private interests still operating in Russia, including assets held by Euroclear and Belgian companies with factories in the country. This raises an unavoidable question: why are such companies still there at all? Treating the protection of lingering commercial interests as a strategic priority signals that Russia is not viewed as an enemy, but as a risky business partner. Companies that chose to remain active in a sanctioned aggressor state knowingly accepted that risk.

Finally, De Wever cited explicit threats from Putin - directed both at Belgium and at him personally - as justification for caution. But if European leaders require absolute safety before acting, collective security becomes meaningless. What message does this send to leaders in Kyiv, Riga, or Tallinn, who live under constant threat - not in a hypothetical sense - but every single day? If intimidation is rewarded with restraint, then Europe signals that coercion works.

Step Four: Proclaim Yourself As the “Rational” One

The troubling reasoning coming from De Wever persisted after the Council met:

“. . . if there are big interests at stake, it can clash, and a normal politician when he takes a decision, he lets go of all the emotions that were attached to it. . . they want to punish Putin by taking his money. And I understand, and certainly countries close to Russia, who live in animosity with Russia found this emotionally satisfying, the idea of taking Putin's money. But politics is not about emotion, it's a rational job.”

This posture is deeply corrosive. It casts frontline states as irrational actors who must be lectured by those who think “rationally”, delegitimises their security concerns, and reframes survival as sentimentality. Such rhetoric strikes at the heart of the European project.

A union cannot function if those most exposed to aggression are told their fears are exaggerated, their instincts unsophisticated, and their interests secondary. How are Latvia and Estonia meant to trust that their fellow Europeans will come to their defense if they become the next target of Putin, instead of advocating restraint and “rationality”? Skepticism towards European defense commitments did not arise in a vacuum and statements like these only reinforce it.

There is justified lamentation at the attachment of some Eastern European nations to the “American protector” fantasy, even now as the US is ruled by the far-right and openly admit that their values align with Russia and not Europe's liberal democracies. But trust cannot be demanded, it must be earned. And it is squandered every time “rationality” becomes a euphemism for disengagement.

Step Five: Hide Behind the 24/7 News Cycle

Europe will never manage to move forward towards a federation and face the emerging global challenges as long as the “not my problem” mindset persists in various nations who feel that some European challenges do not affect them. Euroscepticism is easy to denounce when it comes wrapped in the symbols of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany, the rebranded, Pétainist National Front, or the modern-day Falangist Vox. It is far more insidious when it appears in polished language, voiced by a mainstream leader and framed as sober statesmanship.

Coming from De Wever, this language is far more unchallenged, as reality proves: how many articles and analyses have deconstructed and criticized his statements and train of thought? Almost none. They went unnoticed, overshadowed by De Wever's silver-tongued retorts, the live coverage of the Council's last-minute change of course, and the rest of the news cycle which was dominated by a frequent visitor to Jeffrey Epstein's island.

Europe cannot move towards a federation while the “not my problem” mindset persists among those who feel insulated from shared threats. Federalism is not merely about institutions or debt instruments; it is about recognizing that Europe's security, values, and fate are indivisible. It is therefore the responsibility of federalists – and of all who believe in a Europe capable of defending itself from Narva to Nicosia and from Tbilisi to Nuuk - to call out this mindset when it appears, especially in high office. Silence allows it to harden into norm. De Wever did not simply argue for caution. He offered a glimpse of a Europe that calculates rather than commits, accommodates rather than confronts. That vision deserves not deference, but firm rejection.

“Not All Feminists Automatically See Federalism as Relevant”: Nina Höll Meets Melanie Thut

Melanie Thut, Nina Höll — 2026-02-19T13:04:28Z

Melanie Thut created the Feminist Federalist Project alongside Diletta Alese and other activists as an extension of her work as the President of JEF Germany, bridging the gap between each of the movements. Her fellow board member, Nina Höll, speaks with her in an exclusive interview for The New Federalist about the project so far, what it means for the future of feminism and federalism, and the implications of this new movement on a global scale.

Nina Höll: When you hear the term federal feminism, what does it mean to you personally?

Melanie Thut: For me, federal feminism means combining the struggle for liberation with the political structure that can actually sustain it: a federal society and a state that enshrines freedoms and rights. It is about the emancipation of humanity through dismantling hierarchical structures between people, while always thinking intersectionally and recognising the specific struggles of different groups, especially women.

On a very personal level, it brings together two of my passions, feminism and federalism, and creates something new at their intersection. I also believe the private sphere itself is federalist. Lived realities, local struggles, and personal experiences matter, and they can be transformed into a shared political project, even into a cause for a united Europe. The private sphere is federalist, making one's own struggle the cause of a united Europe.

NH: Would you say that there is already a fixed definition, or is it more of an open concept that we need to fill together?

MT: I wouldn't say that federal feminism is entirely undefined. Ursula Hirschmann already connected these ideas during her contribution to the Ventotene Manifesto and later through the Organisation des femmes pour l'Europe in 1975. Unfortunately, after she fell ill, the project lost momentum and largely went dormant.

Since then, there have been occasional initiatives, but never in a structured or sustained way. Today, fifty years later, we are in a different historical moment, one that allows for more openness, collective approaches, and shared reflection. That is why I see federal feminism as something we now need to develop together, for example through networks, dialogue, and a series of articles.

NH: How do you think federal feminism differs from “classical” feminism or other feminist movements?

MT: Federal feminism is clearly a political project rooted in participation and democracy. It combines structural change with an intersectional understanding of ongoing struggles. Rather than being a new wave of feminism, it is better understood as a new instrument, a political framework that allows feminist struggles to be carried out more effectively.

Federalism provides legal and institutional tools through the state to overcome inequalities and address injustices. It is also globally applicable and future-oriented. Feminism and federalism exist as distinct movements, but federal feminism works precisely at their intersection, where the two complement and strengthen each other.

NH: What values or principles would you see as the core of federal feminism?

MT: Nation states and patriarchal systems tend to divide societies and centralise power. In contrast, both federalism and feminism aim to distribute power more equally, enabling decentralised participation and freedom for all.

Nationalism often reinforces inequality - for example, by instrumentalising women's bodies for demographic or ideological purposes or by limiting political rights. Federal feminism opposes this by opening space for diverse identities and shared power. At its core are peace, non-violent coexistence, and the conviction that everyone should be able to live in freedom and security and fully realise their potential.

NH: Federalism thrives on diversity and cooperation. Feminism thrives on equality and empowerment. How does that fit together for you?

MT: At the heart of both approaches lies the emancipation of the individual from oppressive power structures. Federal feminism is about equal rights for all and about creating the conditions for people to live freely, peacefully, and securely. These ideas fit together very naturally because they focus on people and their well-being rather than abstract institutions.

NH: To what extent can federal thinking, such as power sharing, subsidiarity, and networking, strengthen feminist concerns?

MT: Federal thinking offers a broader way of looking at society and everyday life. It brings decision-making closer to those affected, especially at the local level, where women are often strongly networked and deeply engaged in their communities.

Federalism also encourages thinking beyond national borders - in our case, across Europe - and working together to strengthen shared causes. A European framework, for example, can help guarantee rights where national governments fail to do so.

NH: How do you experience federal feminism in your own work or within your association?

MT: Within the federalist movement, there has long been a group of people engaging with these questions, inspired by visits to Ventotene and discussions around Ursula Hirschmann and others. Last year, however, we moved from reflection to action.

Through the Feminist Federalist Project, articles in The New Federalist, public readings in Ventotene, and street actions, we are actively reviving this legacy. Our goal is to build a network and continue this work. Figures like Petra Kelly are also a strong inspiration for me personally. These late-evening conversations and reflections are what really drive me and ignite my passion and I am excited to see what comes next.

NH: Do you have an example of where federal structures have supported feminist demands or where they have been an obstacle?

MT: A strong example is the My Voice, My Choice platform, a European Citizens' Initiative advocating for safe and accessible abortion. It collected 1.2 million signatures across Europe and is still ongoing. Feminists from many countries came together, using a federal instrument to act where national governments have failed.

The initiative created enormous public visibility and shows how a European umbrella can empower feminist demands across borders. This is exactly the kind of approach we need more of, ideally anchored in a truly federal Europe.

NH: What elements should a handbook of federal feminism definitely contain?

MT: I'm not sure a handbook is the right format. Rather than defining a new, fixed feminist doctrine, I see federal feminism as an ongoing exploration of intersections and shared struggles. It is not a separate wave of feminism to be studied in isolation, but a space where common battles can emerge and be examined together.

Reflection, like what we are doing in this article series, is extremely valuable. Federal feminism can be fruitful, but not all feminists automatically see it as relevant, especially if they do not recognise a clear political project behind it. That tension is worth discussing openly.

NH: Federal structures are sometimes cumbersome. How can feminist concerns still be advanced dynamically and effectively?

MT: They can be advanced through strong instruments of citizen participation and through direct, continuous dialogue with civil society across different political levels. Creating public awareness is key, as is ensuring that federal feminism remains inclusive and genuinely representative of diverse perspectives, including intersectional, migrant, and queer voices.

NH: Could federal feminism be a model that has an impact beyond Europe?

MT: Absolutely. We can already learn a great deal from feminist movements outside Europe, such as those in Rojava. There, a confederal system has been established among different ethnic groups, including Kurds, creating a multi-ethnic political structure that actively includes minorities.

We have engaged with these ideas through discussions within the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian Federalist Peace Forum, and they show that federal feminism has global relevance and potential.

Mario Draghi Is Right to Call the EU a Confederation

Achilles Tsirgis — 2026-02-18T15:10:39Z

Ask people what the EU is and you will get vastly differing answers: certain are normative, along the lines of “the EU is the only entity that has achieved prosperity at such a large scale”, and others are more functional: “the EU is an organisation of ever-increasing delegation between multiple levels”.

Respectively, some citizens prefer to keep their answers more general, e.g., “the EU is more than just an international organisation”, while others are reductionist: “the EU is not just a project of economic integration, but it does not represent a full political union”.

Recognising this discord, Europe has branded itself as a sui generis - or unique - entity. In other words, it has agreed to park the question and defer it to a later date. By doing so, it has acknowledged that it is only partially sovereign. To be sovereign means to be understood as such by citizens, other entities, and, most importantly, by yourself.

An entity that cannot answer its existential question of what it is in a clear, articulate manner remains ontologically incomplete. For such purposes, being “‘more than just an international organisation”, or any of the other answers, simply does not cut it.

The Importance of Speaking Clearly

This is precisely the argument that European federalists have been making for decades. Now, the former President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, while speaking to the Katholike Universiteit Leuven, has finally vocalised a crucial truth: the EU is a confederation, nothing more, and nothing less. If it is to remain relevant, it must make the final step of its evolution.

Calling the EU precisely what it is in a concise and understandable way achieves three things: it creates a bridge between the US's federal structure and what Europe could have, it outlines that federalism is ultimately an “opt-in” structure, and it reframes federalism from a critique to a mainstream political theory.

Being sui generis implicitly means accepting that, although we can use history as a canvas, our circumstances are ultimately unique. Calling ourselves a confederation, however, allows us to point at the US as an example of how, in due time and with a lot of commitment, vision, and courage, internal divisions notwithstanding, a federal structure was born. By borrowing from this historical legacy, we can show the blueprint exists.

Furthermore, naming the confederation as such allows one to sidestep the false dilemma between uniformity and fragmentation. The truth of international cooperation is that once an institution is created, it fundamentally alters the incentives for participation - not just for those inside, but also for those that initially chose to abstain. At the core of the question of federalising lies the existential question of survival.

There Is No Better Time Than Now

This is ultimately the bitter reality of a continent that only has two types of states: those that are small, and those that have not yet realised they are small. But unlike populist movements, this mechanism of opt-in means that federalism is not a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, but a dynamic, inclusive system that will always accept those who are willing to fight for it.

The old international order is now defunct. The post-Cold War security architecture, premised on American military protection and multilateral trade rules, has evaporated. The US, under its current posture, explicitly sees European political fragmentation as serving its interests. The idea that Russia only threatens Eastern Europe is naïve, for it threatens all regions of Europe alike. China continues a growth model that includes offloading costs and controlling supply chains, at the geopolitical expense of a sovereign Europe.

The confederal structure has exhausted its utility. For decades, the loose coordination of member states was just enough for integration to progress at the pace that it did. The single market produced prosperity, NATO provided security, the dollar's hegemony created a stable international environment.

Unfortunately, each of these pillars has either disintegrated or is barely hanging on by a thread. The EU cannot negotiate effectively with the US or China as a confederation. It cannot coordinate military responses to hybrid threats, defend critical infrastructure, or invest at continental scale in frontier technologies.

Call It by Its Name (and the Rest Will Follow)

For decades, leaders have paid rhetorical homage to federalism, while systematically avoiding any discussion of substance. In all EU integration handbooks, federalism is reserved to a handful of pages, usually in the form of an interesting but detached criticism, an artifact of a peculiar minority. The talks of an “ever closer union" might be romantic, but they also mask the EU's institutional paralysis.

If we accept the EU is currently a confederation, then federalism is not an extreme leap, but the natural evolution of an existing structure that has reached its functional limits. After all, moving from confederation to federation linguistically involves removing the “con-” prefix. The question then shifts from “should we dramatically reimagine Europe?” to "what conditions prevent our confederation from becoming a federation?”

This reframes the federalist, who has for a long time been seen as a critical theorist or, worse, a utopian within the European project, into a pragmatist, a problem-solver, and a boots-on-the-ground policymaker. Ask around Europe, and I can guarantee these are the same traits European citizens want to see in European leadership.

Write For Us

2026-02-18T14:41:00Z

The Editorial Board of The New Federalist primarily publish articles from our team of around twenty regular contributors. They come from across Europe and the rest of the world, with backgrounds in all different areas inside of politics and other sectors. Although we are a volunteer-based organisation, we have a large following and readership which will be able to give you experience and the training necessary to begin a career in journalism. We hire new writers (including those focussing on translations) periodically to ensure that we are maintaining the quality and quantity of reporting that people have come to expect from us. We are not currently receiving applications.

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About Us

2026-02-18T14:41:00Z

The New Federalist is Europe's leading current affairs publication, offering a platform for the finest up-and-coming voices across the EU and the rest of the world to provide cutting-edge, thought-provoking analysis of the issues and challenges that are facing us. Edited by Antonios Tashejian and Jonathan Saunders, it publishes multiple articles per week from people that are at the heart of the fight against populism and the rising tide of authoritarianism in their own countries. Believing in the importance of open debate and engaging with ideas from across different political traditions, it is a home for all who cherish the European project and federalist values.

Originally a print magazine published by the Young European Federalists for over two decades, The New Federalist moved online at the end of 2005 and has continued to evolve along with our continent. Today, it is editorially independent, but it remains affiliated with the movement and exists as both a friend and a bridge between it and the wider public. It has expanded into a French publication, Le Taurillon, an Italian publication, Eurobull, and a German publication, Treffpunkteuropa, who it publishes translations from when relevant to a global audience. In 2026, it is expanding into an audio edition to meet the next generation of federalists where they are.

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