The federalism of the European Union has not been fully understood or acknowledged. It is the product of a de facto federalisation that has developed well beyond the bounds of the federal state in the classical sense. Recognizing this fact requires that one not be content with the conventional terms in which the Union’s players formulate their explicit intentions for it (as, for example, via those registered in legal documents). Rather, it is essential to take into consideration all of the federalising forces at work here, as well as side effects which, although perhaps unanticipated, are nonetheless wholly characteristic of European integration. From this inquiry it becomes evident that the EU’s federalism, produced in and by its member states, has transformed itself into a federalism by and for individuals which has upended the conventional definition of democracy. More broadly, it also becomes apparent that the paradigm of the state is opposed in a conceptual sense to federalist logic in such a way as to render problematic the very category of federal state.