Just as the term ‘constitution’ in 2005 diverted attention from the purpose of a treaty that was essentially codifying existing European legal texts, the term ‘federalism’ can unnecessarily inflame, divide, and polarize, when its ‘pragmatic’ nature should draw just as much attention.
It's true. Those referendums were basically undone by this single word. Which is already much less scary than the F-word. After decades of peace and comfort Europeans have just become very conservative.
Asymmetric initiatives like he suggests are probably the only way forward at this point. As I understand it there's already a mechanism in the EU treaty for it.