In May 2000, the German minister of foreign affairs, Joschka Fischer, presented his personal views on the form that European integration would ultimately take. His proposal to gradually establish a European "Federation" sparked off a fierce debate on the Community?s future political structure. This analysis provides a comparative overview of reactions by several leading European politicians to the proposal, which assumes on the one hand the creation of a "center of gravity" in order to give impetus to Community progress, and on the other, the implementation of an unprecedented sharing of sovereignty between the member states and the proposed new entity.