A pro-government pundit characterises a new call for a federal Europe as a desperate reaction to Brexit, which runs against the dominant trend in European politics.

In Figyelő, Tamás Lánczi (the newly appointed editor in chief, who is also a leading analyst of the pro-government Századvég think tank) thinks federalists are trying to gamble big in order to transcend the problems European integration is facing. The speakers of the parliaments of Italy, Germany and Luxemburg issued a joint open letter calling for even closer co-operation, in the form of a United States of Europe. Lánczi recalls that 10 years ago, on the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty which founded the European Economic Community, member countries called for closer cooperation among  member states. This eventually led to the Lisbon treaty. This is how the Union reorganised its decision-making to adapt it to the presence of a dozen new members. The decade that has passed since then, the analyst continues, has brought enormous changes that have promoted trends towards disintegration rather than closer unity. The current institutions of the European Union, he suggests, have in fact failed to properly react to economic crises, stagnation, the migration crisis and the conflict with Russia. A series of referenda in member countries, like the one in the Netherlands against the free trade agreement between the Union and Ukraine; the Brexit vote, the Hungarian quota referendum, or again the one that rejected the constitutional reforms planned in Italy have been eloquent expressions of dissatisfaction with the way Europe is being run, he believes. The forces of dissatisfaction that have been getting stronger are all opposed to a closer union let alone to a federal pan-European state, Lánczi concludes.