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With the French Doctrines series we open the magazine’s pages to the leading figures shaping the presidential election. Their positions do not commit the independent editorial staff of the magazine.
Great ambitions draw their strength from the clarity of their statement. Let us state it plainly: we must build the United States of Europe.
For too long, we have refused to embark collectively on projects that surpass us, allowing administrative and normative dust to settle on our aspirations.
In a world that is regulated, tranquil, and balanced, one might think of the “end of history” and settle for harvesting, with a certain languor, the fruits of progress. We do not live in that world. We no longer live there.
From the Age of Nation-States to the Age of Continent-Powers
The world has changed its grammar. The international order built around nation-states yields to a world of continent-powers, the only ones capable of weighing in at the scale where the balance of technological, industrial, and military power is decided today. This is the deepest upheaval of the past decades, and Europe finds itself attacked on three fronts. Our adversaries have intent, strategy, and means; they count on our divisions, and even more on our weariness to challenge the course of history.
Russia strikes at our security. Ruled with an iron fist by a regime that despises our democratic model, it continues its war against Ukraine, bombarding cities and civilian infrastructure, with the aim of threatening the entire continent. Its drones now overfly the Union, its meddling and cyberattacks seek to disrupt our societies and our elections. In Leipzig, it even struck an airport.
China is waging a full-scale attack on our economy and our industry. It exacts the price of our past arrogance: for decades we transferred our technologies and relocated production, convinced we would always retain invention. This condescension has cost us dear — the Chinese have trained, invested, learned, and now surpass us in decisive sectors. They are now striking back: first through industrial overproduction — one in four Chinese factories exports at a loss, a deliberate strategy to drive our industries into bankruptcy; then by capturing the attention of our children through algorithms we do not control, at the cost of their addictions and mental health problems. Attacking the intelligence of our youth is to attack Europe’s future.
Finally, the United States strike at us too: trade wars, constant military pressure, extraterritorial reach of their law under the threat of cutting us off from the dollar, and artificial intelligence shaping our economy without our having a say in its rules. These levers are only instruments of a deeper war, against our values. I was struck by the speech of the American vice president in Munich in February 2025: a charge against European democracies, a challenge to our ability to decide freely. And what did we do? Little, or almost nothing: five months later, we accepted, without protest, at Turnberry, a trade agreement that sacrificed our interests to avoid angering Washington. Let’s face the reality: with Trump, and likely with his successors, servility never pays. What a contrast, as Europe receives Canada’s prime minister, between its stubborn defense of its people against the United States and what we had to accept in July 2025.
All these continent-powers have understood that our division is their lifeblood; “divide to rule” has become the motto of their policy toward the Union. That is why they inflame European nationalism with every tweet and fuel the fantasy of Europe’s disappearance under a flood of migration: as long as we point to an internal enemy, they can quietly flood our roads with their cars, our computers with their AI models, and our skies with their satellites.
Added to these enemies who no longer even bother masking their intent is a single, capital-less, flagless threat: climate chaos, which scorches our forests, saps our soils, and cracks the walls of our homes — the daily reality for farmers who lose their harvests, for villages deprived of water, for the elderly who suffocate in their apartments. This is no distant prospect; it is a test that demands decisions worthy of the challenge.
Current events show that Europe has no choice but to wield strength and to stand united. Since February 28, the United States has been waging war against Iran on its own, without consulting us. In response, Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the planet’s oil and gas flows — and it remains closed six months later. INSEE has just lowered its growth forecast for France from 0.7% to 0.4%, explicitly citing this closure; gas prices have risen for the second time in two months, and talk now centers on diesel at three euros. Washington did not weigh the price of gasoline at our pumps before striking — why would it have? A continent-power acts in its own interests, that is how it is recognized. The United States are net energy exporters; we import 97% of our oil. Our interests diverged, and we are almost alone in not having drawn the consequences. What voice do we have in this matter? None, or almost none: no European leader weighs sufficiently, alone, to secure an end to this war. Meanwhile, the bill arrives at our doorstep, with the anger mounting as one must choose between filling one’s tank and filling one’s shopping cart. I know what is likely to be proposed to us, on the far right as on the far left: a check funded by debt. It is treating one dependency by worsening another — a postponement paid by our children, not a solution. We need short-term responses to address the emergency, but a presidential campaign must also look higher: this is a structural power-based answer we need, and this is what I propose with the United States of Europe — to allow our continent to be more than a space, to become a real power.
For power is not an abstract word: power is freedom. It is within a united Europe that we will build our energy independence and the electrification of our ways of life; it is at this scale, and only at this scale, that we will be sufficiently innovative and productive to enable a substantial rise in our wages. Look at the United States: one in two households earns more than $7,290 per month, and the poverty rate is at its historic low — the first beneficiaries of American power are households. We can, we must, follow the same path. But today, faced with force, we present the face of dispersion.
A Europe That Hinders Itself
Europe is fragmented, divided — it moves forward carrying the weights it has tied to its own feet. A single market, yet companies must navigate a maze to move from one country to another. A common currency, yet funding channels remain fragmented. Shared industrial interests, yet states continue to compete. On many issues, other powers do not even need to divide us: we do the job for them. Europe’s internal fragmentation in terms of customs duties amounts to about 45% on our goods and 110% on our services: we tax ourselves far more than what the United States threatens to tax us. We handicap ourselves — that is the core problem, the main obstacle to our prosperity and our power.
I want to be honest: the European Union of twenty-seven has achieved considerable successes, and I will not let anyone erase them. The Common Agricultural Policy, the single market, the euro are historic accomplishments. At every crisis, Europe has shown it can draw on its own resources for a rebound: monetary and banking autonomy recovered after 2008, a joint vaccination strategy during the Covid crisis, the first common debt to finance the recovery, steadfast support for Ukraine, a unanimous refusal when Donald Trump threatened to invade Greenland, at the Davos Forum. This “no” owes much to the action of President Emmanuel Macron, who dared to bring topics such as European sovereignty, common strategic interests, European procurement, European defense, and border carbon taxes out of taboo—and who established himself as the primary European leader.
But recognizing these successes does not prevent us from seeing their limits, and I say this with conviction: Europe of twenty-seven has reached its limits. It can no longer keep pace with history. We cannot go further with the current system, nor weigh if we want to preserve everything as it is. On essential decisions, unanimity allows a single government to block all others; the balance of powers — and hence responsibilities — is split between a Commission that is not fully legitimate, a Parliament that is not powerful enough, and a Council trapped by unanimity. The Union has had, for two years now, with the Draghi report, a blueprint for its own resurgence. Some plans have been set in motion — Compass for competitiveness, Pact for a clean industry, Union of savings and investment, proposal for a European Fund for Competitiveness — and they move in the right direction. But they move too slowly: only 30% of the recommendations have been implemented, and the heart of what must be built — financial power, the single market for capital and energy — remains largely unfinished.
In the end, this system yields nothing but frustration and anger: the knowledge of what should be done, without ever being able to do it. I believe there are only two political choices: the old Frexit nightmare, or a new dream — that of the United States of Europe.
An Old Dream That Never Needed a Homeland
The idea I carry is not new: it is the old European dream, and I came to awake it.
Our European dream draws on two sources: Greco-Roman heritage, which gave us democracy and law, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, which taught us the equal dignity of every human being. These two sources converged in the Enlightenment, which illuminated all of Europe — a dream without a single homeland, because it encompassed them all.
We see it already in the Renaissance, when ideas circulated freely across the continent, up to Voltaire, who was formed across Europe without ever feeling foreign. It is Victor Hugo who, in 1849, gave it a name: the “United States of Europe,” a union in which each nation would retain its own identity while merging into a higher fraternity.
Our grandparents revived this dream amid the ruins of war: Schuman and Monnet, in 1950, fused coal and steel, turning old rivalries into a path of peace. Our parents continued the work with the common market and Maastricht’s single currency.
Now it is our generation’s turn to complete the third step of this history: to commonize the economy itself, to free Europe from the nationalist forces that are steering it toward decline, and to pick up the dream where our fathers left off. Do not fear building the United States of Europe.
What the United States of Europe Are: New Frontiers and an Economic and Ecological Federalism
Let us be precise. The United States of Europe are not the creation of a single country erasing existing nations: it is an economic and ecological fusion among a core group of European countries. Where Europe has built peace and where the Union has produced standards, the United States of Europe must build our power. Their objective: to venture to conquer a dozen frontiers that will secure our prosperity in the fields of health, AI and quantum computing, access to space, decarbonized energy and transport, armaments, sovereignty of our payment systems, protection of our cognitive independence, and academic excellence.
If we succeed, the United States of Europe will become the world’s leading power. I am not proposing another distant institution detached from people’s lives: I believe that only the United States of Europe will be able to provide concrete answers to the fundamental problems faced by French people and Europeans.
To achieve this, a true economic, technological, and ecological federalism must be created, capable of lifting the barriers that prevent our economies from truly merging. We often believe our economies are already integrated: that is not the case. We are up to the gunnel—too connected to be fully autonomous, not connected enough to be truly powerful. Therefore I propose the total removal of economic borders within the United States of Europe, and a novel emergency ecological policy. I have identified twenty-one barriers to remove: convergence of our taxes, a common labor law, the fusion of our banks and telecommunications operators, issuance of common debt, a joint budget, total unification of our agricultural and economic standards, single business law — corporations, contracts, bankruptcies, intellectual property.
Concretely, a company should be able to operate within this space as naturally as today it grows from one French region to another. Today, when it sets up in Europe, it must navigate twenty-seven labor laws, twenty-seven business laws, twenty-seven tax systems; open twenty-seven bank accounts, subscribe to twenty-seven phone plans.
The heart of this project is simplification — this will be the compass of the United States of Europe. Where the Union gave the impression of producing too many rules, the United States of Europe will prove that simplicity and prosperity go hand in hand.
We will complete the banking union and the union of our capital markets. People tell us Europe lags in giants for lack of money: this is not true. Europeans rank among the world’s savers; the money is there. What is missing is the path from savings to our companies, because it remains locked in twenty-seven separate compartments, twenty-seven tax regimes, twenty-seven regulators — while the Americans have only one. As a result, the German insurer that could fund the Spanish business prefers buying American Treasury bonds, simpler. We export our money to finance the American economy. In September, Mistral raised three billion euros, the largest tech operation in European history; six months earlier, OpenAI raised 122 billion dollars at once — thirty-five times more. Amazon alone wrote a check fourteen times larger than everything Mistral gathered. Our researchers and engineers are equally capable: they lack funding. That is why I propose the union of our capital markets — a single regulator, a single custodian, a European savings product, the same everywhere. The day when raising three billion ceases to be a record but becomes a routine operation, we will have our giants, financed by Europeans’ savings, for the employment of their children and for our sovereignty.
We will also pursue a unique industrial policy — sector-by-sector planning, coordinated investments, public procurement capable of growing our companies, a clear preference for European-made goods — applied first to the defense industry. The United States of Europe will free itself from the obsession with pure competition to do what the United States and China did before us: plan, invest massively in research and in our most promising enterprises, then give them access to the world’s largest market and to massive public orders. Trade policy must also evolve: the Union would retain the lead to negotiate new agreements with our allies — such as CETA with Canada — and become the interlocutor for all our partners to organize commercial peace, from Japan to India, from Korea to New Zealand and Australia. But in the face of a proven assault from China or the United States, the United States of Europe would have a weapon of commercial deterrence, capable of reacting faster and stronger than with twenty-seven, and of imposing our own vision of international trade. We will defend ourselves, and finally impose our power.
To carry these policies, we will grant the United States of Europe the means to make its decisions: a common budget, shared resources, a Treasury capable of issuing common debt to finance our long-term investments. With the Union, we built the single market. With the euro, the single currency. I propose to, with the United States of Europe, forge a single economy.
But the United States of Europe will be as much an ecological power as an economic one, and I hold this conviction deeply. The eco-continent is the only scale capable of meeting this challenge. The United States of Europe will thus decide its climate trajectory and the means to pursue it: European ecological planning, energy networks organized collectively, nuclear and renewables united within a single effort, funding for interconnections, storage, and the decarbonization of our industries. In a continent short on natural resources, securing our supply lines will be a priority, so that Chinese raw materials do not become the Russian gas of tomorrow; we will diversify our suppliers and become the world’s largest circular economy — our waste will become our primary raw material. Our common debt will also finance our adaptation to the already underway disruption: resilient agriculture, insulated housing and public services, protection of our water resources, shores, and forests. We must move away from the logic of setting a European objective and then sending every country, every company, every household back to its own means to achieve it: a common ambition requires common means, and ecology must become a lever of our power rather than a mere overlay of national constraints.
The Method: A Core, a Treaty, a Referendum
This project, I will drive from day one of my term. My first mission will be to form a core group of European countries and convince them that the United States of Europe is the only viable path. We will extend our hand to the founding members — Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg — then to Spain, Portugal, the Nordic countries, Poland, all essential to Europe’s future. I hope one day the United Kingdom will rejoin this venture if it freely chooses to do so. I do not claim that all these countries are ready: I propose to open this path to them. No matter how many are the first signatories — eight, ten — provided this core is united, loyal, and powerful. It will be the vanguard of the United States of Europe.
I will go to these leaders in person, and tell them this: let us lay the first stone. Let us write together the treaty that will fuse our economies and unite us in our fight against climate disruption — the Treaty of Economic Prosperity and Ecological Emergency — which will organize this first step of the United States of Europe. For it is this economic federalism that will be its first cornerstone, just as, long ago, the pooling of coal and steel was the first stone of the political union, much more ambitious than we know today.
Some will say this is a project for a century. It is false: the United States of Europe can come to life in less than ten years. The Paris Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community came into force seven years after the end of World War II; the Maastricht Treaty negotiations lasted barely fourteen months; the Schengen Agreement was signed twelve months after the Fontainebleau European Council. Once European leaders agree on what they want to share, the process can move quickly — and I believe the existential crisis Europe faces will drive its leaders toward it: the German model, based on triple dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, exports to China, and the American military umbrella, is structurally shaken by the flood of Chinese cars into its market; the French model is at the breaking point, and it is not the only one. I have spoken with my European neighbors: in the secret of our discussions, they share the same conclusion as I do, and I have built, in almost every European country, a network of allies who think, like me, that without union we are doomed to fade away.
From day one of my mandate, I will open negotiations with all partners who could join the United States of Europe. But no negotiation day should be wasted: we will use immediately everything the current treaties permit, within the framework of enhanced cooperation, which allows a small group of countries to move faster when the Union stalls at twenty-seven.
And if, despite this, governments hesitate, defer, let themselves be swayed by fear of grand projects, then we must go directly to the people. I propose to create the United States of Europe by a European referendum: a simultaneous vote in all the countries that would join. Governments pass, peoples remain. If the peoples choose the United States of Europe, that choice will be binding.
A Democratic Governance, to End the Europe of Summits
The governance of the United States of Europe must be democratic: we must put an end to Europe of summits. In the long run, a parliament composed of Europe-wide representatives from each nation, and a leader — a president, a Commission president, whatever the title — elected by universal suffrage, at the first genuinely pan-European election in our history. But the urgency is not to recreate institutions: it is to move forward, to be effective, and to lay the foundations of the project that Europe and our country need.
Responding to Those Who No Longer Believe
Some will say that the United States of Europe are a desirable horizon but offer no reply to daily anxieties. I have shown why I think the opposite: historical precedents show that this project can succeed in less than ten years, once political will exists — and the current existential crisis facing almost all national models makes that will more likely, not less. Times of structural crisis historically push people to their best, and at times to their worst; I bet on the best.
Others will claim that this project threatens our identity, that deeper integration would erase our country. I find this fear understandable and unfounded: you would have to believe we are truly weak for an economic and ecological union to destroy centuries of history. I love France, I love it, and I refuse its decline — which is precisely why I want it stronger, more prosperous, within the United States of Europe. Sovereign powers will remain in the hands of the States: command of our armed forces, the decision to deploy our troops, diplomacy, internal security, justice — each state will keep them. French deterrence will remain French, and we will even bolster our role by becoming the new European nuclear umbrella: the American umbrella has proven unreliable, so let us adopt the French one. Our nations will keep their language, their culture, their institutions; France will continue to be France, with its voice, its history, and its freedom — but it will have a new economic strength to give life to these principles. A common power will only be legitimate if citizens retain control over it: that is why I propose founding it by a referendum, not by an accord among chancelleries.
What We Have to Decide
I know what such a proposal represents in a presidential campaign. It would be easier to talk about a few tweaks, to promise greater leverage without ever specifying what we are willing to share. I am making another choice: I want this campaign to decide our future, and I am a candidate to propose the project for a generation — the United States of Europe.
It is not an improvised idea. It arises from discussions with European leaders, experts, philosophers, jurists, economists, business leaders, and all of them told me the same thing: this is what France needs.
I am acutely aware of the risk this choice entails: we will need to persuade, to negotiate, to overcome entrenched interests and old habits. I accept it, because I believe it is the path to our prosperity and to our freedom in the world to come. But I also fully recognize the risk of not naming it at all: the risk of continuing as before, of watching investments go elsewhere, of losing control over our technologies, of discovering too late that our choices have become others’ decisions. In the face of American, Chinese, and Russian powers, I believe the United States of Europe is our best chance.
We, in turn, face a decision: pass on to our youth an Europe that has lost command of its future, or an Europe that has managed to recover, in the gravity of the moment, the strength to begin something grand.
Freedom is the stake.
Power is the means.
The United States of Europe, the path.