On 15 June, the EU formally opened its first negotiating cluster with Ukraine and Moldova — a genuine milestone, warmly welcomed by every European institution. The previous week, Hungary's new government had finally lifted Orbán's long-standing veto, unblocking a process that had been stuck for years. Yet within days, the summit of EU leaders on 18 and 19 June in Brussels showed, with almost perfect timing, why the underlying question refuses to go away: Ukraine and the Western Balkans want to join the European Union. It is a legitimate and courageous choice, often made at enormous cost. But they deserve an honest answer to a simple question: what exactly would they be joining today?

Altiero Spinelli, one of the fathers of Europe who wrote from his prison in Ventotene a manifesto calling for a democratic European federation as the only way to overcome aggressive nationalism and war in 1941, grasped the problem decades ago: political integration does not automatically follow from economic integration, whatever Jean Monnet may have hoped with his gradualist, functionalist approach. The result is plain to see: a Europe that has built significant economic and cultural ties, but never a real democratic and common government. And without a government, the decisions that matter keep getting blocked. 'The European federation,' Spinelli wrote, 'was the sober proposal to create a democratic European power.' That is where we need to return, without fearing the “F” word..

A Union that knows its flaws but cannot fix them

The EU's structural problems are well known to everyone, but few are ready to do what it takes to fix them. The debate always runs into the same wall: the unanimity rule. Changing the rules requires everyone's consent, including those who benefit from keeping things as they are. This paradox has been gnawing at Europe for thirty years, and the June summit was its latest, almost textbook illustration.

The first problem is unanimity in foreign policy, taxation and defence. EU powerlessness is under everybody’s eye in the major crisis, starting from not being able to support the Palestinians and Lebanese peoples against the criminal attacks of the government of Israel: the EU could not even agree to suspend its association agreement with Israel, which explicitly requires respect for human rights. That paralysis has helped sustain the impunity with which the Israeli government acts.

Luxembourg has for years blocked a common corporate tax base that would stop multinationals shifting profits to tax havens inside the EU. Ireland blocks the digital levy on big tech platforms. We still have no single European statute for companies and associations. Hungary held the entire Union hostage for years, a corrupt government exploiting deliberately weak procedures to block sanctions on Russia in exchange for billions. Just as talks with Kyiv on enlargement were starting, a case erupted that says more about the state of the Union than any analysis could. Bloomberg and the Financial Times revealed that the chief of staff to European Council President António Costa had held two confidential calls in May with a senior official close to Putin, opening a diplomatic back-channel to Moscow without consulting anyone. The story dominated the 18–19 June summit, and what came out of it was not agreement but open fracture. Several leaders said they had not even been informed. Belgium, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia and Bulgaria backed Costa's initiative; Poland, the Baltic and Nordic states, Denmark and the Netherlands rejected it, not just on procedure, but on substance: for them, now is not the moment to be talking to Moscow at all. Some would rather route any dialogue through the E3 format, meaning Germany, France and the UK, which already has its own back-channel to the Kremlin, yet another fragment of informal diplomacy outside the common institutions. After two days of summit, the fundamental question still had no answer: who has the political authority to speak for Europe with Russia? While the G7 in Evian closed with a unified Western message on pressure toward Moscow, the EU was arguing about who should sit at the table. Twenty-eight years after Maastricht, Europe has still not worked that out.

There is also a culture of seeking consensus that infects even areas where a qualified majority would be enough. Migration has been for years  the most painful example, with decisions proposed by the EP and the Commission that were not even put on the agenda of the Council, because of lack of consensus even if it was not necessary to decide. This lack of positive action favored a more and more securitarian but still inefficient management of migration and less and less space for integration and positive measures.  On 12 June, the very controversial Migration and Asylum Pact entered into force and three days later, the European Parliament voted 418 to 218 to adopt the Return Regulation, a sweeping overhaul of deportation rules that includes offshore return hubs and extended detention. The vote was accompanied by extraordinary scenes: right-wing MEPs standing to chant 'send them back' while those on the left responded with 'shame on you'. Yet despite having just adopted this legislation, EU leaders at the June summit postponed their strategic discussion on migration to October a signal that governments do not feel ready to confront the deep divisions over how the system will actually work, at a moment when only eleven of twenty-seven member states were fully connected to the Eurodac database that underpins the whole framework. A new abism of this deriva was reached this week with the absolutely shameful meeting hosted by the Commission with 5 representatives of the Afghan Taliban government, which is not recognized by any EU member states, to discuss about sending Afghans refugees back to a country defined as the “Tomb of human rights”.  

On rule of law, the mechanism of Article 7 of the Treaty — which requires unanimity minus the accused state — allowed Poland and Hungary to shield each other for years, rendering the only formal defence of democratic standards effectively useless. With enlargement and no reform, the opportunities for this kind of mutual protection will multiply.

The second problem is the budget. The EU spends around 1% of European GDP; the US federal government spends over 28%. Every national government arrives at the negotiating table asking how much it can take home or how little it can pay — treating the budget as a cash machine rather than a tool for shared investment no single state could sustain alone. The solution is not asking member states to contribute more: that road leads to exhausting bargaining where every euro becomes leverage. What is needed is a budget funded by genuine European own resources, a carbon levy, a financial transaction tax, a digital tax on major platforms, revenue that flows directly to the EU rather than through national capitals. Here too, everything requires unanimity. The Multiannual Financial Framework is decided by the Council, and the European Parliament is merely consulted on own resources and can say just yes or no on the final proposal. The only institution elected by citizens sits on the margins of the decisions about how the Union is financed.

At the June summit, MFF negotiations produced the clearest illustration of the impasse: Germany called the Cypriot presidency's negotiating box 'clearly unacceptable,' the frugal northern countries demanded horizontal cuts, while France, Italy and Poland called for abolishing the rebates those same countries enjoy. Luxembourg's deputy prime minister put it frankly: in the end, the leaders would meet until late at night to haggle and reach a deal. The whole thing was kicked to October. Meanwhile, the Draghi report estimates that internal barriers within the single market are equivalent to tariffs of 45% in manufacturing and over 100% in services. And one year after that report, only 11% of its proposals had been implemented, and often not its best parts. His main message is indeed that we need to integrate much more our political and economic instruments; and not that we need to deregulate and “simplify” at full speed.

The third problem is the institutional balance, which keeps tilting toward national governments in the Council, reducing the Commission to something closer to a secretariat. The European Parliament is still the product of twenty-seven separate national elections rather than a genuine European debate. Even the reform toward transnational lists is blocked: it also requires unanimity in the Council.

A mistake we made before

In the 1990s, when Austria, Finland and Sweden joined, and again in 2004 with ten Central European countries, the same conversation opened every time: before enlarging, we must reform. The European Parliament tried — it came close to blocking the process — but ultimately gave way when heads of government descended on Strasbourg and applied sufficient pressure. The Treaties were amended repeatedly, from Maastricht to Lisbon, yet the structural problems stayed intact. The Union's impotence in the face of recent crises tells us that those who insisted on political union first were right. And the opening of negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova makes that reform more urgent, not less. What is needed is a new constitutional treaty: as Pier Virgilio Dastoli, president of the Italian European Movement, explains, a text that establishes a genuine federal community, a government accountable to Parliament, shared legislative power, the removal of the veto, European own resources; and a Treaty that enters into force through a pan-European referendum, an idea Spinelli proposed as far back as 1986.

Winning back the dream

None of this can happen, however, without genuinely winning back European citizens. Eurobarometer surveys consistently confirm that European public opinion exists and is sturdier than politics tends to assume. A Union that works, that decides, that makes a tangible difference to people's lives is the best answer to the sovereignist and populist forces that have never actually solved anything and continue to poison our societies. Conservatives, liberals and progressives can and must find genuine common ground. The rule of law is not a left-wing cause: it is the precondition for any business to operate in a fair market and for any citizen to get justice regardless of where they live. The fight against climate change is not a luxury for idealists: it is about food security, economic stability and the quality of life for everyone, including future generations. Protecting fundamental rights — freedom, dignity, protection from discrimination — is about the real freedom of people living inside the Union and the health of its democracies, not about external image. Pushing back against the dominance of American tech platforms is not anti-capitalism: it is about protecting the sovereignty of citizens and businesses over their own data. Taxing concentrated wealth is not forced redistribution: it is a condition for societies not to collapse under the weight of resentment and populism. Those who work on any of these things often do so in separate worlds, viewing the EU with suspicion. But without a Europe capable of acting, none of it produces lasting results.

A thousand days to build the mandate

The push to reopen the constitutional reform process will not come from national governments. And unlike in the past, it will not come from the current European Parliament either. The EPP now plays both sides — allying at times with socialists and greens, at times with the far right — feeding the support of nationalist forces that have no interest in a stronger, more democratic Union, and that could use growing influence to unravel it rather than build it.

The push must come from citizens. From a participatory process that crosses ideological lines and builds a real mandate for the Parliament to be elected in 2029 — not a watered-down treaty revision negotiated behind closed doors, but a genuine constituent mandate, like the one Spinelli attempted in 1984, and the one Mitterrand called 'a union among those who will.' A pressure capable of shaping politics, media and public opinion: as happened with the Green Deal, when science had documented the climate emergency, movements brought it into the streets, the media made it impossible to ignore, and politics had to respond.

This is what the Italian European Movement is proposing with its 'Target 1000' campaign: a thousand days to build convergence among civil societies, movements, European parties and the candidate countries themselves. Because reforming the Union is not something done for them — it is something built together. The milestones are not arbitrary: December 2026, the anniversary of the Laeken Declaration that launched the Convention on the Future of Europe; March 2027, the seventieth anniversary of the Treaties of Rome; May 2028, the Congress of Europe. Three moments to build, step by step, the pressure that arrives at the 2029 elections with one clear demand: a European Parliament with a constituent mandate, capable of writing the founding text that Spinelli spent his life working toward.

Spinelli was right: political integration does not automatically follow from economic integration. If anything, experience shows the reverse is also true: without real political integration, even the economy falters. What is needed is a deliberate, founding act that creates a new democratic European power. A thousand days to start building it.