A Europe of Small Nations
The following is syndicated from the Substack ‘Paneuropa’ with the permission of the author.
“The gap between an Auvergnat and a Basque, a native of Limousin and a Breton, is as big as between a Spaniard and a Slav, an Ostrogoth and a Welshman.” — Jean Giraudoux
In the ninth chapter of his book “Towards a Federal Europe”, the Breton patriot Yann Fouéré cites this hyperbolic statement to open up his argument for “the region-state”. He was a critic of the centralising bureaucracy that accompanied the nation-state and instead believed in a “human-size” Europe that replaced it with organic, decentralised regions, free to pursue their own futures within the European federation.
Fouéré is a forgotten figure outside of Breton nationalism, but I share his vision and wish to present my own argument for a system of regional states within Europe, carrying the torch of subsidiarity that the Christian Democratic fathers of post-war Europe were so committed to.
Firstly, why do we oppose the nation-state? Ironically, for the same reasons that eurosceptic nationalists oppose Europe, the nation-state is centralising in nature and impedes on the rights and identities of smaller peoples within itself. One only needs to look at France, whose modern identity is founded upon a chauvinistic assault on Bretons, Occitans, and Savoyards, demanding their submission to the republican French identity. The nation-state is exactly what the nationalist fears Europe to be: a centralist regime established upon an artificially constructed identity.
So, what should replace the nation-state? I envisage a civilisational Europe — many cultures coming together to form an organic whole, a mosaic. In the realm of administration, I propose that a federal Europe should throw out the nation-state system and establish new subdivisions with borders drawn at various levels to empower and grant autonomy to Europe’s organic communities.
I do not wish to spend time advocating a specific design for European subdivision borders, but rather I will discuss the case of Brittany, as Fouéré was a Breton and also because its diversity allows for a fuller exploration of different issues. Let us hypothesise a European federation with different levels of government.
At the very top, there would be the federal government, based in Brussels. This level of government would be in charge of constitutional affairs, currency, foreign policy, defence, and so forth. Some would like it to have more powers, but I would prefer for a limited government at Brussels that, at the most, only sets a very broad framework for lower levels of government to legislate within.
Below this, we would have the “regional-state”, in this case, Brittany. The Breton government would have powers to set its own social policies — healthcare, welfare, education, and so on would be determined in Brittany. It is not so relevant anymore, but Brittany was once the bastion of political Catholicism in republican France. Had such a system been in place a century ago, Brittany could have maintained its religious schools whilst secular Paris abolished them. The primary advantage of the regional-state system is that it would allow for a flourishing pluralism that the centralising tendencies of the nation-state reject.
But, subsidiarity does not stop at the level of the regional state. These regional states should be further divided into provinces, which in turn should be divided into municipalities. These provinces and municipalities should be granted powers over different affairs where it makes the most sense to organise them at their levels — provision of services, infrastructure management, business rates, planning laws, refuse collection, and so on.
One of my primary concerns is culture, and it is why I have drawn these three tiers. Brittany is culturally French now, but in many parts of the region, there are speakers of Gallo, a "dialect" of French or a separate "language" depending on who you ask, and Breton, the native Celtic language of Brittany. My hope for the decentralisation is that it would allow a project of national renewal, in which the minority nations of each regional state could lobby to ensure the protection of their own heritage without a distant bureaucracy determining that it is “unpatriotic” to do so.
Brittany is typically divided between "Lower Brittany" in the west, where Breton is spoken, and "Upper Brittany" in the east, where Romance languages such as standard French and Gallo are drawn.
The regional government of Brittany should preside over and encourage the provincial and municipal governments to respect and contribute to the regeneration of these languages and the cultures that spring from them. A regional education curriculum should be drawn up that all Bretons follow, but modifications should be made to provide for the education of locals in Breton or Gallo, and to encourage the teaching of these languages where they are prevalent.
There will be some who reject this project of separatist decentralisation on the grounds that it threatens “national unity” or is just inefficient. To the first charge, I have no response. It is down to you whether you consider these regions to be integral parts of your nation or not. I do not advocate for the erasure of French contribution to Brittany or an expulsion of the French from Brittany, and this extends to other communities where separatist decentralisation would apply.
To the second charge, I will reject it. The decentralisation of political and administrative affairs does not need to lead to inefficiency. Poorly planned decentralisation will lead to inefficiencies, but so will poorly planned centralisations. In the economic realm, the nature of a federation would mean that economic activities could be carried out between regions without much of an issue, just as they are today within the nation-state. Indeed, interregional treaties could be signed between regional states to promote economic cooperation.
Some might question what the difference between the “nation-state” and “regional-state” even is. As I have displayed, the regional state would share most of the functions of the nation-state today. However, there are two key distinctions. First is the issue of sovereignty. I reject national sovereignty and place the regional state firmly within the framework of a supranational civilisation. Sovereignty lies with Europe, not its constituent regions.
Secondly, the essence of the nation-state is different from that of the regional state. The latter is artificial and centralising, the former is organic and decentralising. The primary purpose of the nation-state was to enhance the administration of distant regions by retracting their rights and imposing a foreign culture on them. The regional state would not do this. Like the federal government, it should have a limited role, with powers being delegated to as local a level as they can be, while respecting and promoting local interests, identities, and culture.
There are a wide range of benefits to this, but I think that the economic and political empowerment that would flow from it are the most important. An individual with a strong local, regional, and European identity would feel a stronger need to contribute at every level. They would concern themselves with local affairs, the economic situation in their region, and the security of Europe as a whole.
Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi recognised the obsolescence of the European nation-state back in the 1920s and 1930s. A century later, we have still not caught on. The reconstitution of Europe as a grand rejection of the nation-state is the most important, albeit controversial, step that we can take to rejuvenate our civilisation.