Rule 1 — We Choose
In earlier chapters, we walked through the building together. We saw its foundations, its walls, and its cracks. We saw how the structure no longer works as intended. Decisions that affect everyone are taken far away from the people who live inside the building. Responsibility is spread thin. Power is blurred. When something goes wrong, nobody can clearly be held to account.
Before we can repair anything else, we must answer a simple but fundamental question: who chooses who is in charge of the building? Rule 1 addresses exactly that. It is about restoring a direct, visible, and shared act of choice at the heart of Europe.
Situation As-Is
Imagine a large apartment building with dozens of apartments. The inhabitants live their daily lives inside their own homes. They care about safety, heating, maintenance, and the long-term value of the building. Yet, when it comes to choosing who manages the building itself, they do not get a direct say.
Today, the European building works like this. Citizens vote in national elections. Those national governments then negotiate among themselves to decide who leads the European institutions. The inhabitants do not choose the building manager. The interior contractors choose an exterior subcontractor on their behalf.
This creates several structural problems.
First, responsibility is indirect. When the roof leaks or the façade crumbles, inhabitants are told to blame “Europe.” But Europe, as they experience it, is not something they ever chose directly. The people in charge were appointed through backroom negotiations, political trade-offs, and national balances. No one was clearly hired by the inhabitants themselves.
Second, power is fragmented. The executive power of the building is spread across multiple institutions, each with limited authority and unclear leadership. There is no single figure who can say: “I am responsible for how this building functions.” Decisions require constant coordination between interior contractors, each defending their own apartment’s interests.
Third, elections feel disconnected. Citizens are asked to vote, but their vote does not clearly translate into leadership at the European level. They choose interior decorators, not the property manager. Over time, this erodes trust. People stop believing that participation changes anything at the building level.
In short, the building is governed by people who were never directly chosen by those who live in it.
The Rule
Rule 1 breaks this pattern at its core.
Europeans directly choose who holds power: one equal vote for a president who chooses and leads the executive power, one equal vote for representatives who shapes the legislative power, and the candidates with the most votes win.
This rule does not add complexity. It removes it.
In building terms, the inhabitants collectively choose two things.
First, they choose the building’s chief executive: a president. This person is not the representative of a country, an apartment, or an interior contractor. They are hired directly by the inhabitants to run the building as a whole. They choose and lead the executive team, just as a property manager hires specialists for security, maintenance, energy, and long-term planning.
Second, the inhabitants choose representatives who shape the building’s rules. These representatives form the legislative power. Their role is not to defend individual apartments but to decide, together and in public, how the shared spaces are governed.
Each person gets one equal vote. A vote in a small apartment counts the same as a vote in a large one. The building belongs to all who live in it, and so does the choice of leadership.
And the outcome is clear. The candidates with the most votes win. No post-election bargaining. No opaque compromises. No reinterpretation of the result behind closed doors.
This rule turns elections from a symbolic gesture into a direct act of collective ownership.
Situation To-Be
Now imagine the same building after Rule 1 is applied.
Once every election cycle, the inhabitants know exactly what they are voting for. They are not choosing intermediaries who will later negotiate power among themselves. They are choosing the people who will actually run the building.
The president stands before the inhabitants with a clear mandate. Everyone knows how they got the job. Everyone knows who chose them. Their authority does not come from interior contractors but from the inhabitants directly. This changes how they act. They are accountable to the people who live in the building, not to the governments of individual apartments.
The executive power becomes coherent. The president chooses a team that can actually act, plan, and execute. When a decision is made, it is clear who made it. When something fails, it is clear who must answer.
At the same time, the legislative representatives debate and decide the rules of the building in the open. Their legitimacy is equally direct. They do not owe their seat to national party deals but to the inhabitants themselves.
This changes the political culture of the building. Campaigns are no longer about national pride or fear of losing control. They are about shared problems and shared solutions. Heating, security, energy independence, infrastructure, digital systems, external threats—these are building-wide issues, and they are debated as such.
Most importantly, the inhabitants begin to recognize themselves in the building again. They may disagree with decisions, but they can no longer say: “I did not choose this.” The line between choice, power, and responsibility becomes visible.
Rule 1 does not magically fix all problems. But it fixes the entrance door. It establishes who hands over the keys. Without that, no renovation can ever truly succeed.
Rule 1 is not about ideology. It is about structure. A shared building cannot function if its inhabitants do not directly choose who runs it. As long as power flows indirectly, accountability dissolves and trust erodes.
By choosing directly, Europeans stop being passive tenants in a building managed by others. They become collective owners who hire their leadership openly and transparently.
This is the first repair. It does not yet strengthen the walls or modernize the systems. But it ensures that the people holding the tools were chosen by those who live inside. Only then does it make sense to talk about empowerment, resources, and oversight.
Before we fix how Europe acts, we must first fix how Europe chooses.