It was 1951, when a little group of European states got together in a mainly economic alliance after the Second World War and founded the basement of something that would change the political and social situation in our world forever: The European Union. Yesterday, nearly 80 years later, the most powerful men and women, coming as representatives of all Member States, decided to make an announcement that certainly would become the most momentous and important in the existence of the Union. After countless debates and disagreements between politicians over many years, we are finally able to say that the former European Union has become a unitary state, called The United States of Europe.

Obviously, the whole world’s attention is focused on the USE and the newly stated capital Vienna now. Mainly the affected citizens seem to have a huge amount of open questions considering the future and the official statement that’s been published in all newspapers over the country, and although most people turn out to be optimistic and enthusiastic, you can’t overhear the voices filled with doubt and anxiety that become louder from day to day.

To form ourselves an opinion, we met up with the renowned expert Dr. Max Adams, who is the head of the Frankfurter Zukunftsrat and who’s been in the final debates of whether founding the USE or not. After him, it was “just a matter of time” until politicians would come up with the idea of creating a unitary state and he also mentions that he’s always been a big supporter of nearly every plan of this kind: “In the past years, the amount of problems that the EU had to deal with became bigger and bigger and, since at least half of these could be solved by founding a unitary state, it was the most likely thing for them to do”. This justification might seem even too short and simple to be true, however, Dr. Adams is without any doubt right concerning a few points.

If you pick out some of the biggest crisis that the European Union had to go trough in the last decades, like the world wide economic brake down, you can see that we would actually have had better chances to get things under control if the unitary state had existed already much longer.

Furthermore, one of the most decisive positive aspects that the USE certainly brings with it is the newly created consciousness of being a European in society, which gives this country with an enormous population of 550 million citizens even more power than it already has. This newly gained huge amount of influence can’t only be used on an economic level to our advantage, but also on a military one, which could give the politicians of our country the ability to bring peace to dangerous zones. Also, dramatic and unneeded civil wars that every now and then disturbed the peaceful ambience in the EU belong to the past now, which represents the original idea of the union in the best possible way.

Sadly, all these positive points can’t completely block out the negative ones: To build up a stable and independent state, politicians need the participation of every citizen, following, a strike or any similar protest of bigger size could be fatal and a possible danger. Obviously, taxes as well as laws will have to be the same for everybody after a while, so it will be unavoidable to support needy citizens from the former poorer countries like Greece or Bulgaria in the first couple of years, to assure that it’ll be possible for them to more or less adjust to the lifestyle of a former Austrian for example. This is followed by higher taxes for people from the upper class, which is a very fair and democratic system but certainly isn’t appreciated by everybody.

In the official statement that was published only a few hours ago, it is confirmed that the presidents of the former Member States will lead the USE until the elections in July. These around 28 men and women don’t only have to be aware of the huge amount of responsibility that they have, but also work day and night to make sure that the United States of Europe will be able to fully exist in a couple of months.

To sum up, the last two days belong to the most important ones in our century and by founding this incredible state, one certainly did place a milestone in history. Although no one can be completely sure about how things are going to turn out yet, we without any doubt did already put a huge amount of effort into the improvement of our situation. All together, every single one of us can be proud to call him- or herself a European.
Benedict Winkler, Theresianum Wien, June 8th, 2030