A proposed constitutional framework for a federated Europe, issued in New York in 1944
A Constitutional Text Rather Than a Manifesto
The Draft Constitution of the United States of Europe is what its title announces: the text of a proposed constitution for a federated Europe, cast in the form of a constitutional document rather than an argument, appeal, or treatise. It was issued in New York in 1944 under the joint auspices of the Pan-European Conference and the Research Seminar for European Federation of New York University, and was brought out there by the Research Seminar for European Federation. The published text is short — twenty-two pages followed by one unnumbered page. Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894–1972), the founder of the Pan-European movement, is credited with the draft, which carries the conference and seminar as issuing bodies.
Giving European Unity an Institutional Shape
The work’s central purpose is to move the demand for European unification out of the realm of aspiration and into the realm of institutional design. Rather than calling for cooperation or declaring federalist principles, it sets out a constitutional framework for a European state — a “United States of Europe” — and thereby commits itself to the concrete questions that any such project must answer: what the union would be as a state, and how it would be organised internally. This is how the document has been treated in later scholarship, which approaches it as a theoretical foundation for European federation and reads it as a contribution to the debate over the possibility of a European state and the structure it would require. The draft’s significance lies less in advocacy than in specification: it supplies a worked-out constitutional proposal that others could examine, adapt, or challenge.
Measured Against the Realities of Integration
Because the draft commits itself to institutional detail, it lends itself to being tested rather than merely admired. Heiko Bubholz’s master’s thesis, devoted specifically to Coudenhove-Kalergi’s draft constitution of the United States of Europe, treats the text as the theoretical groundwork of a European federation and weighs it against the actual state of European integration, including the problems confronting the European Union and the question of whether theories of the state can be applied to a project like the EU. The thesis’s framing makes the stakes explicit: considerations of a European state and its internal organisation are one thing in principle, but they must also be assessed for practicability and applicability. It invokes Ronald Mackay’s observation that statements about a new Europe need not always imply the creation of a new government for Europe, but that aspiration must find practical expression or remain fruitless — a remark that captures precisely the gap the draft constitution was written to close.
A Blueprint That Invites Scrutiny
Read in this light, the document occupies a distinct place among federalist writings: it is a proposal offered for examination rather than a polemic, and its value to later discussion has been as a reference point against which the feasibility of a federal Europe could be argued. The very brevity of the published text — a short constitutional sketch issued amid the institutional apparatus of the Pan-European Conference and a university research seminar — underlines its character as a working draft meant to be taken up, criticised, and refined rather than simply endorsed.
Bubholz’s work appears under the full title Theoretical foundation of an European Federation: Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi’s draft constitution of the United States of Europe. Publisher descriptions identify it as a thesis (M.A.) from 2002 in the subject Politics—Topic: European Union, grade 1.0, language English. Readings records 125 entries in the bibliography. Blackwell’s lists a paperback published 12 September 2007 by Bod Third Party Titles under the Grin Verlag imprint, with ISBN 9783638799263; it gives 146 pages, weight 200g, height 210mm, width 148mm, and spine width 9mm. Perlego lists an eBook PDF edition of 144 pages, English, published by GRIN Verlag in 2007, listed as edition 0, with eBook ISBN 9783638798730, and indicates availability in PDF and/or ePUB format.
The Library Record of the Draft
The Knihovny.cz record gives the draft’s document type as “Knihy” (books) and records a copy at Knihovna Masarykova ústavu a Archivu AV ČR, v. v. i. – Knihovna vědeckého útvaru Masarykův ústav AV ČR, with the shelfmark W1976; access is noted under “Zakonzervovaný fond.”
