The Early European “Federalism”: Ambiguities of Talks About How to Walk Toward a Political Union

Abstract

The European institutions constitute an incomplete – as incomplete as any constitutional contract – agency contract. Incompleteness means that the agents, the European institutions, benefit from important asymmetries of information and therefore behave as their own principal. They do not behave as they are told to but choose their own objectives and means of action. In this chapter, we analyze the historical origins of such incompleteness. We show that it results from, and as a consequence, is reinforced by the hesitations of the founders of the European institutions about the nature of a European federation . These ambiguities are crucial for a double reason: not only do they influence the nature of the tasks delegated to the European institutions but they also impact the way they can be controlled. We analyze a set ofdiscourses and official texts and show that the term “federal” bears various meanings, ranging from centralized federalism to decentralized confederalism.