Here are the links to Four Questions to the Candidates in view of the European Elections in different languages:

EUROPAWAHL 2009: VIER FRAGEN AN DIE KANDIDATEN ZUM EUROPÄISCHEN PARLAMENT
http://www.euraction.org/kern/press_rel/4QuestEP09de.pdf

EUROPEAN ELECTION 2009: FOUR QUESTIONS TO THE CANDIDATES
http://www.euraction.org/kern/press_rel/4QuestEP09.pdf

ELECTIONS EUROPEENNES 2009: QUATRE QUESTIONS AUX CANDIDATS
http://www.euraction.org/kern/press_rel/4QuestEP09fr.pdf

QUATTRO DOMANDE AI CANDIDATI ALLE ELEZIONI EUROPEE
http://www.alternativaeuropea.org/attivita/VolEurEl09it.pdf

These questions have been prepared and translated into different languages by the European federalists active in the Committee for a European Federal State in different regional and local sections.
Feel free to use and circulate them.

Is an effective debate on the problem of building a federal core beginning?
Reading this news coming from France (see below) it seems that it is so. Lets' work on it

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<<PARIS (Reuters) - L'Union européenne doit avancer à des rythmes différents, sous la houlette de la zone euro qui serait son "leader d'entraînement", a dit lundi François Bayrou.
Le dirigeant centriste, qui est crédité de 12% des voix dans un récent sondage, réclame une "Europe du premier cercle" bâtie sur les pays de la zone euro.
"Nous sommes pour qu'il y ait une Europe du premier cercle, une Europe active qui réunit les pays de la zone euro (...) Nous avons seize pays qui ont une monnaie en partage. Ils ont une responsabilité particulière de leader d'entraînement", a-t-il déclaré lors d'une conférence de presse à Paris.
"Cette Europe doit bien évidemment être ouverte, cela ne doit pas être une Europe de l'exclusion", a-t-il ajouté.
Si cette "Europe du premier cercle" avait existé lors du sommet du G20, début avril, François Bayrou veut croire que la lutte contre les paradis fiscaux en serait sortie renforcée et non affaiblie, comme il estime qu'elle l'a été.
A Londres, "on a écrit la liste des paradis fiscaux avec une gomme", a-t-il déploré, effaçant "l'un après l'autre les paradis à l'intérieur même des pays qui se présentaient comme vertueux".
Face à ce "grand immobilisme, si la zone euro existait elle serait un leader d'exigence dans cette lutte contre les paradis fiscaux. Elle doit devenir une avant-garde", a souligné François Bayrou, qui veut également accélérer la politique d'harmonisation fiscale au sein de cette zone euro.
Il a dénoncé une certaine forme de "démission" des Etats qui font ou laissent faire de la "braderie fiscale" et "vont piquer des entreprises dans les autres pays".
PS ET UMP RAILLÉS
Marielle de Sarnez, tête de liste du MoDem en Ile-de-France et "animatrice" de la campagne nationale pour les européennes, a également plaidé pour un "nouveau modèle européen économique social et durable".
"Le levier de réponse n'est pas national, il faut un plan de relance et un grand emprunt européen", a-t-elle déclaré.
"Les pères fondateurs disaient toujours qu'il fallait faire l'Europe des petits pas. Je crois exactement l'inverse, il faut faire l'Europe des grands pas", a-t-elle souligné.
A six semaines d'un scrutin européen crucial pour sa formation, François Bayrou a noté un changement notable chez les électeurs français.
En pleine crise financière et économique, "une révolution a eu lieu dans l'esprit des Français qui placent l'Europe au rayon des espoirs alors qu'hier elle était rangée au rayon des contraintes", a-t-il estimé.
Le président du MoDem, qui a organisé au moins trois événements nationaux pour lancer sa campagne européenne, a renvoyé dos-à-dos le Parti socialiste, où les listes composées par Martine Aubry ont fait grincer des dents, et l'UMP, qui peine à présenter des listes électorales complètes.
"Nous avons composé nos listes au terme d'une démarche démocratique avec consultation des adhérents et nous faisons campagne sur le sujet européen", a ironisé François Bayrou.
Il y aura un "message national" adressé au gouvernement lors de ce scrutin, a-t-il convenu, mais le MoDem n'appelle pas au "vote sanction" comme les socialistes français. Laure Bretton, édité par Yves Clarisse>>

In his comment (When Europe starts to melt at the edges, Financial Times 26-1-09), Gideon Rachman informs his readers that “even pro-European think-tanks, such as the Centre for European Reform (CER) are speculating that Europe’s single currency, which currently includes 16 EU countries, could break up under the strain”.

And indeed in the CER’s essay on “The Euro at Ten: Is Its Future Secure?” (January 2009), edited by Simon Tilford, one can read that: a) “accelerated political integration within the eurozone and a move to some form of fiscal federalism – is the least likely”; b) “a bail-out of the affected member-states … is unlikely”; c) “the most likely outcome is that the hardest-hit countries will be forced into wrenching fiscal adjustment and that Germany and others with large external surpluses will take modest steps to rebalance their economies”.

Well, all that means that there are no European political chances or that the European institutions are of no importance to deal with the economic crisis.
This CER’s essay has revisited the arguments made in another report entitled, ‘Will the eurozone crack?’ (2006). Unfortunately it ignores that the framework for saving the European currency and economy remains that of the relaunch of the project to build a European federal State among some EU member States.

That is, this report seems to ignore that the Dollar -  and the US economy -  or the Renmimbi – and the Chinese economy -  live and exert their power in the institutional framework of concrete and effective States.

In an interview with Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank and the Financial Times (FT) conducted by Lionel Barber (Wednesday, 10 December 2008 in Frankfurt), Mr Trichet has declared: “We don’t have a federal government. We don’t have a federal budget. If we unravel the Stability and Growth Pact we won’t rebuild it afterwards. It would have been unravelled. And what would I say then to American friends telling me, ‘you put the cart before the horse - you don’t have a federal budget or a federal government - but you have a single currency’? I understand that from the outside our setup might seem a little surprising, but taking everything into account, the credibility of the euro area, the fact that there has been a quid pro quo at the birth of the euro area in terms of the institutional framework, our setup is very solid.”
So, Mr Trichet is well aware of the nature of the contradictions of having a single currency without proper institutional bodies. And yet he, as most of the Europeanists, hardly seems to have the courage and clear-sightedness to make proposals to extricate the Eurozone from the situation in which it is currently ensnared. The Eurozone member State are bound sooner or later to find themselves faced with a dramatic choice: either to give up their sovereignty or to renounce monetary union. If they will decide to give up their sovereignty, they will have to make a revolutionary leap forward: the Eurozone member States (or at least the most important ones among them) should cease to exist as sovereign entities so as to allow a new European federal state to be born which will, in its turn, exercise the prerogative of sovereignty. On the contrary, if they will renounce to monetary union, they’ll be nake and powerless vis à vis the rest of the world.

Quite interesting (as usual) this post in Quatremer's blog on Le « non » irlandais multiplie les eurodéputés.
A European miracle, a blogger commented!

In a long and interesting interview in Die Zeit (26/11/08), philosopher Jürgen Habermas talked to Thomas Assheuer about the necessity of an international world order. Unfortunately Habermas doesn’t go beyond the proposal of a“closer cooperation” among the main European nation States, however he perfectly describe the flaws of the present European (and world) situation. Here are some excerpts from this talk (to read more).

<< Life after bankruptcy, Die Zeit, talks with Jürgen Habermas .........

What role does Europe play in your scenario?

JH - Not the one it has in fact played in the crisis. It is not clear to me why the recent crisis management of the European Union is being praised so highly. Gordon Brown was able to bring the American finance minister Paulsen to reinterpret the laboriously negotiated bailout with his memorable decision because he brought the most important players in the Eurozone on board through the mediation of the French president and against the initial resistance of Angela Merkel and her minister of finance Peer Steinbrück. You need only examine this negotiation process and its outcome more closely. For it was the three most powerful among the nation-states united in the EU who agreed as sovereign actors to coordinate their different measures which happened to point in the same direction. In spite of the presence of Messrs Juncker and Barroso, the way this classical international agreement came about had almost nothing to do with a joint political will-formation of the European Union. The New York Times duly registered, not without a hint of malice, the Europeans' inability to agree upon a joint economic policy.

How do you account for that?

JH - The present course of the crisis is making the flaw in the construction of the European Union manifest: every country is responding with its own economic measures. Because the competences in the Union, simplifying somewhat, are divided in such a way that Brussels and the European Court of Justice implement the economic freedoms whereas the resulting external costs are palmed off on the member states, there is at present no joint will-formation at the level of economic policy. The most prominent member states are even divided over the principles governing how much state and how much market is desirable in the first place. Moreover each country is conducting its own foreign policy, Germany first and foremost. The Berlin Republic, for all its quiet diplomacy, is forgetting the lessons that the old Federal Republic drew from history. The government is exploiting the extended room for manoeuvre in foreign policy it has gained since 1989-90 and is falling back into the familiar pattern of national power politics between states, though the latter have long since shrunk to the format of minor princedoms.

But what could these princedoms do? What would be the next step?

JH - Are you asking me for my wish list? Since under the present conditions I regard graduated integration or different speeds of unification as the only possible scenario for overcoming the present stagnation, Sarkozy's proposal for an economic government of the Eurozone can serve as a starting point. This does not mean that we would have to accept the statist background assumptions and protectionist intentions of its sponsor. Procedures and political results are two different things. The "closer cooperation" in the field of economic policy would have to be followed by "closer cooperation" in foreign policy. And neither could be conducted any longer through backroom deals behind the backs of the populations.>>

The French Ambassador to the United Kingdom, M. Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, has declared to the Financial Times that, as regards European defence, the EU, and in particular France and Great Britain, have not to create new institutions, but to show the capability to intervene in specific operations. “It is not the point of having a European army or navy”, the Ambassador declared, but simply to put together the (technical, human and financial) means to be military credible, on the of the Franco-British cooperation relaunched a few years ago with the Saint Malo agreement (his FT interview).

As regards the financial crisis, according to Finland’s foreign minister Alexander Stubb “the European countries are more united today than one year ago” and have shown that they can play a pivotal role to reform the International institutions (his FT interview).

According to M. Gourdalt-Montagne and to Mr. Stubb it seems that everything is going in the right direction to promote a more effective European role at the world level. What a wonderful Europe!
But is it true?

As regards the military aspects how will react the European countries when the new US administration will ask them to put into effect the requests President Obama advanced during his electoral travel through Europe: “It’s time to strengthen Nato by asking more of our allies”? They are already getting a little nervous about the prospect of direct talks between Iran and the new administration of Barack Obama, which will put in a corner the European diplomacy.
As regards the economic and financial crisis, we can quote few lines of an FT article: “..not everything is rosy in the eurozone. As is shown by the increasing spreads between the yields on government bonds of Greece, Italy and other countries over those of Germany, financial markets do not treat the area as a single entity. Investors are well aware that the EU, unlike the US, is not a federal state and has no central fiscal mechanism to transfer funds from a stable, prosperous country to a country in trouble” (November 20, Stumbling to stability, by Tony Barber).

So, that’s the problem: EU is not a federal State. Should we wait for the Financial Times to let the people know this unconvenient truth? Couldn’t we say anyhing about how to build such a State and which countries (national governments, political classes) have the main responsibility to take the initiative to build it? What about an idea ... (see the APPEAL TO EUROPE’S SIX FOUNDER MEMBERS
FOR A EUROPEAN FEDERAL STATE).

Two news have come from the Czech Republic.

The first one on November 26th, announced that The Czech Constitutional Court has ruled that the European Union's reform treaty conforms with Czech law, allowing parliament to proceed with ratification.

The second one on November 27th informed that the upper chamber of the Czech Parliament on Thursday approved a deal with Washington to accept a U.S. missile defense installation. The deal still needs approval by the lower chamber, where the vote is expected to be close because the governing coalition has too few seats to guarantee passage. That vote is not expected before the end of the year.

"It is good news for us, Europe and our NATO allies," Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said. This comment is emblematical of the present European situation. A situation in which the national governments, parliaments and political classes believe they can indefinitely go on running with the hare (the reform of the European Union) and hunting with the hounds (the US missiles). How long can this contradictory policy last?

Pan-European referendum 'impossible,' expert says.
Well, it is not a matter of being or not being an expert to say this, but simply a matter of common sense!

Dans Le Monde du 7 novembre 2008, Thomas Ferenczi s’interroge sur le futur de "Le couple franco-allemand", et réfléchit sur une étude pour la nouvelle Fondation européenne d'études progressistes, affiliée au Parti socialiste européen, où l'historien Jacques-Pierre Gougeon s'inquiète du " dynamisme perdu " de la relation entre les deux pays. M. Gougeon estime que les difficultés du couple franco-allemand ne sont pas un " phénomène sporadique ", mais témoignent d'un " processus d'éloignement " engagé au lendemain de la réunification allemande et nettement visible au sommet de Nice en décembre 2000. Même si les disputes se terminent par des compromis, elles ne peuvent pas rester sans effet sur le fonctionnement de l'Union européenne, l'ensemble franco-allemand constituant une " masse critique ", avec 48,8 % du produit intérieur brut de la zone euro, 36 % du financement du budget européen, 33 % de la population.
Les malentendus entre la France et l’Allemagne sont sans doute profonds. Ils tiennent, selon M. Gougeon, à la modification du rapport de force entre la France et l'Allemagne depuis la réunification. Selon Thomas Ferenczi, à just titre, ce climat de suspicion pèse sur les politiques européennes et il considère que l'Europe franco-allemande appartient au passé. Si on pense l'Union à vingt-sept, Thomas Ferenczi a raison. Mais quand on considère la necessité de bâtir un premier noyau d'Etat fédéral, l’action et l’initiative communs de la couple franco-allemande demeurent essentiels. C'est pour ça qu'il faut toujours rappeler les responsabilités politiques et historiques de l'Allemagne et de la France pour creér une véritable Fédération européenne à partir d’un noyau des pays. Mais qui, en dehors des fédéralistes européens, peut faire cela?