Autonomy

How can Europe introduce greater autonomy and wellbeing to its energy systems?

Rather than insisting on external limits, environmentalists should call for society to make its own.

Catalonia is a region with its own distinct culture and language and has long been seeking greater political autonomy. With opinion polls now showing a large majority of Catalans support self-government, and with the rise of other independence movements around Europe, pressure is mounting on Spain to deliver reform.

Belgian federalism and European federalism have reached the end of an epoch. Both have to be reinvented. To achieve this we must start from our shared interests and recognise the interdependence that links us. Environmentalists who have always been passionate federalists have to be the motors of this reinvention.

Federalism in Spain is singularly paradoxical. Although federalism seems, a priori, the most logical politico-juridical solution for a territorial reality as diverse as that of Spain, in fact, it has been and continues to be rejected as much by the main political parties—the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) and the People’s Party (PP)—as by the nationalist parties.