isnt the eu basically a less federalist version of the usa? how is it then that the usa claims its more free? the individual state members in the EU have more freedom than individual states.
someone explain this to me please
someone explain this to me please
And what good does it do? The EU cannot speak in a single voice - there is no foreign minister, no defense minister, no whatever minister.
Like the EU foreign function: you have a person claiming to be the EU voice, and then you have the foreign ministers of every EU member that can just say whatever they want if what the EU voice says is contrary to their political game in their own country. Same for the other functions.
Being less federalist is not better, it is worse. The EU does not speak in a single voice in any domain.
Nor can Switzerland. And still it is one of the best country world wide both in term of living and economically.
Distributed federal power like Switzerland trades quick decision making for resilience.
If it might look up 'messy' on the surface, it is in fact a quality. A very valuable one in fact: because it is exactly what prevent fucked up like Trump to happen in the EU.
But the EU foreign minister can be contradicted by basically any country president/prime minister or their foreign ministers if it says something that is not aligned with every other EU member.
Then you are misinformed.
Because it happens continuously.
Canton executive argumenting again "conseil fédéral".
Local Syndic (Mayor) arguing against Canton decision.
Local parlement trying to address or delay legislation or arguing against Berne ones.
Just open a random news paper.
This is democracy, like it or not.
In your example, the mayor can criticize the canton decision, but he cannot do anything about it. That's the difference.
The EU is in some ways closer to a confederation, but with various "hacks" - in the form of various treaties - to try to work around the problems that led the US to abandon it in favour of a federal model.
It's largely down to very different levels of willingness to integrate more, and various levels of opposition to the kind of constitutional changes that would be required for a federal model.
The EU is organized more similar to the US under the Articles of Confederation.
The first American government (Articles of Confederation) gave State governments almost unlimited power e.g. they could print their own money. It did not grant freedom to the people in any meaningful way. States were free to abuse this power both against their own citizens and, more importantly, the other member States. This created many practical problems.
The second and current American government (Constitution) learned lessons from this experience. It removed a limited set of key powers from the States and gave it to the Federal government such as the creation of currency. It also forced all States to interact with each other on the same terms, with strict oversight from the Federal government. Additionally, it explicitly granted rights to the people rather than their State governments, since the States had demonstrated they could not be trusted to do the right thing. These changes forced the States to play nicely with each other and treat their people better.
These changes were a large improvement. Almost every law an American experiences is State law, because States have much more freedom to create laws. The Federal government can only make laws from a short list. Both State and Federal governments are strictly prohibited from creating many kinds of laws.
In the US, freedom is for the people, not for the member States. The Federal government has even less freedom than the member States to make law.
I don't see how anyone can make this claim in 2026 and not expect to be laughed out of the room? In practice, freedom is for sale; it's not available to the people nor the citizens.