The Economic Tasks of the Federation

From an economic point of view, European federation means the assignment to the federal authority of some economic tasks defined on an exclusive basis in the document constituting the federation, defined, that is, in such a way that the federal authority has the power to attend only to the tasks included in the list, all the other tasks not on the list remaining within the competence of the individual federated states. It is useful, therefore, with a view to attenuating the suspicions and fears of large bodies of opinion or of strong interest groups, to reduce the number of tasks assigned to the federation at the beginning to the indispensable minimum. With time, experience and growing popular consensus will allow the list of tasks to be expanded, in accordance with the formalities prescribed for the approval of amendments to the federal constitution; formalities which will certainly not be easy to observe: a special majority, greater than half the votes of the two chambers of the federal parliament, a special majority of the federated states expressed through an ad hoc procedure. If the obstacles to approval of the amendments are overcome, this will be because the expansion of the tasks of the federal authority will have become part of the consciousness of the great majority of the citizens of the federation and of most of the federated states, persuaded of the benefits obtained in the light of experience.