Reforming E.U. Governance: On the States’ Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest is the privileging of the interest of a part, by that part, over a conflicting broader interest, such as the public good. In exploiting such a conflict, a part of a whole puts the part’s own interest, and therefore benefit, above those of the whole to which the part belongs. A state government in the E.U., for example, could veto governance reforms of the federal government because the state would benefit in some way, even just in terms of retaining its portion of governmental sovereignty, even though the E.U. itself would be harmed. Exploiting a conflict of interest is selfishness in governance. The underlying assumption is that the part is greater than the whole. Aristotle warns of such misordered concupiscence, which is the placing of a smaller good above a higher good.

In October, 2026, the European Commission—the E.U.’s executive branch—introduced far-reaching proposals to the E.U.’s governance system with an eye to the accession of a slew of new states being likely in the years to come. Marta Kos, the Enlargement Commissioner, said at the time, “The main question has been: is the EU fit for another enlargement?”[1] I contend that the answer to this question depends on whether the officials of the state governments were willing to resist the temptation to exploit their personal and institutional conflicts of interest, for the proposed reform would transfer more governmental sovereignty from the states to the Union. No one who loves power gives it up easily. The countries in the U.S. at its outset “bit the bullet” in agreeing to give the Union some limited (enumerated) powers (or competencies) by giving them up. The war had ended, so united military action was not the motive; rather, the Americans had realized that the confederal Articles of Confederation (1781-1798) had not worked because the states were still fully sovereign and thus any one could block federal legislation. Unlike the U.S., the E.U. has been federal rather than confederal—dual rather than full state sovereignty—since its founding in 1993. Even though there had been amendments since 1993, the disproportional, obstructive amount of governmental sovereignty of the states as of 2026 was arguably counter to the effective governance at the federal level. By comparison, the disproportional sovereignty of the American members thirty-three years after 1798 was similarly problematic. The E.U.’s plight in 2026 was similar to that, rather than to the shift from the Articles of Confederation to the adoption of a federal government in the U.S. in 1789 because the E.U. has had dual (i.e., state and federal) governmental sovereignties since 1993. 

The specific reforms may be different, but the E.U. and U.S. are indeed comparable. Labeling E.U. states as “members” and the E.U. itself as if it were a “bloc” have been used as obvious tricks to obscure and outright deny the comparison rather than merely to appease Euroskeptics as if they would suddenly have temper tantrums were the E.U. explicitly labeled as a federal (not even confederal!) political union of states. While at Yale, I spoke to the E.U. ambassador to the U.S. on this point; she was concerned about the impact that use of the correct labels would have on Viktor Orban in the E.U. state of Hungary. I told her that she was overestimating what he would do, and enervating the E.U. (especially expectations regarding what the E.U. could do) in the process by allowing Euronews and other media companies to incorrectly use “bloc” to refer to the E.U. I have zero influence.

In October, 2026, among the Commission’s proposed reforms was the “idea of extending qualified majority voting . . . particularly in foreign and security policy, where a veto [by one state] can undermine the EU’s ability to project geopolitical weight abroad.”[2] The political power in 27 states all sailing in the same direction in a Union is one of the main benefits of the E.U. itself, so retaining the veto of the states in the European Council and the Council of Ministers has enervated the E.U., as if tying one of its arms behind its back. Unfortunately, the proposal itself is lame because the Commission was proposing merely to identify “areas where so-called passerelle clauses could be activated, allowing the [European] Council to move from unamimity to qualified majority. Activating those clauses, however, itself requires unanimity,” meaning that one state could veto the change on any legislative or policy proposal to which the passerelle clauses apply.[3] When something is so obviously stupid, the expression, “you can’t make this up” applies—meaning no one would imagine such pathetic stupidity to be possible for a human being. The reason for the lame proposal is doubtless the refusal of governors of the states to give up the power of the veto even though even at 27 states, the E.U. already needed qualified majority rule on foreign and defense domains. The refusal is essentially the exploitation of a conflict of interest, both in terms of personal and state power.

Similarly, the proposal by 11 states in September 2026 “to explore curbing obstructive foreign policy vetoes on the basis of sincere cooperation, notably through greater use of constructive abstention,” is lame.[4] Were he still the governor of the E.U. state of Hungary, Viktor Orban would have laughed at pressure to merely abstain rather than wield his state’s veto. The proposal ignores the nature of raw political power and thus should not even have been proposed.

The Commission’s proposal to curb the state veto on 150 steps in the accession process, and the proposal “to make more use of enhanced cooperation, which lets at least nine member states pursue deeper integration on matters of crucial or strategic interest where blockages exist” are more realistic.[5] Allowing the veto only at the very beginning and at the end of a potential state’s accession process makes so much sense that allowing the veto on each of the 150 steps points to the excessive attachment to power at the state level at the expense of governance and administration at the federal level. The conflicts of interest described above could thus be expected, and yet the Von der Leyen administration could be said to be sidestepping rather than confronting the reality of likely exploitation at the expense of the Union.

Another way of seeing the excessive attachment to power at the state level is by looking at the insistence by the states that each one have a commissioner. Even though the Lisbon Amendment to the E.U.’s Basic Law states that the Commission should have a number of commissioners equal to two-thirds of the states, chosen by “strictly equal rotation” that reflects the interstate diversity in the Union, “the European Council unanimously decided to keep one commissioner per member state . . .”[6] Small states in particular have resisted losing a commissioner, but the underlying reason has more to do with state governments being too desirous of power at the federal level, ironically at the expense of federal legislative and executive activity.

The chances of the reforms passing, given the rather obvious self-interests of state officials and their respective legislatures, were expected to be low even by officials in the Commission when the proposals were announced. “Some things are drafted to be killed,” one E.U. official told Euronews.[7] Lest the state officials be viewed as exorbitantly selfish people childishly refusing to give up any more power, it should be remembered that the process by which the federal level in the U.S. gained power at the expense of the member states in the nineteenth century spanned decades, and extended most notably in the New Deal federal social programs during the Great Depression in the 1930s, so perhaps it is too much to ask the E.U. states to give up their vetoes and their right to their own commissioner within the span of a few years in the mid-2020s under the urgency of enlargement. In other words, perhaps the E.U.’s planned enlargement was proceeding too fast; maybe the matter of adding more states should have been held off until proposals to reduce the application of the state veto mechanism could politically surmount the conflicts of interest existing at the state level, for even with 27 states, the veto in the European Council and the Council of Ministers was already an obstruction, especially on foreign policy and the ability of the E.U. to provide a united defense of the E.U. during Russia’s multi-year invasion of Ukraine.

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1. Luca Dertuzzi, “EU Commission Throws Down the Gauntlet to Member States,” Euronews.com, 6 October 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

U.S. President Trump Pressures the G7 to Release Oil Reserves

Is democracy more susceptible to being run by large corporations or to mob-rule? I contend that the police and military power of the U.S. eviscerates the risk of a mob of people making much headway against a government. That same power can be used by American governments to enforce policies that are in the financial interests of companies. In fact, some retail companies hire weaponized police employees to enforce not only municipal law (against shoplifting), but also company policies, as if they constituted law and therefore legitimate a police response rather than action by a security guard. To be sure, even security guards act sometimes as if they were police officers, and too many consumers fall for the presumptive ploy to intimidate. Security-guard companies even uniform their respective employees to look like police, even SWAT, officers, as if impersonating a police officer were not a crime. In terms of the American political economy, elected representatives of the American governments looked the other way in whether to invoke anti-trust law to break up large American companies even as gasoline and food prices soared—in the case of food, from 2020 when the pandemic enabled grocery stores to price-gouge, and in the case of gasoline, especially in 2026 when Iran was choking off the Strait of Hormuz. Those representatives as well as the media companies were silent on not only the need for market competition in consolidated industries, but also the excessive power of large corporations—even multi-national corporations, which are not loyal to any country—over elected representatives and their respective appointees. In too many cases, the companies being regulated actually write the law for Congressional committees—an obvious conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the American voters are typically titillated by superficial matters, essentially tricked, as if being oriented to symptoms were crucial to voting. The tricks can include ploys even by a sitting U.S. president to make the economy look better just before an election.

For example, on October 2, 2026, countries in the G7 “agreed to release up to 100 barrels of oil from strategic reserves over four months in a coordinated effort to bring down soaring energy prices, with a particular focus on diesel.”[1] The E.U.’s executive branch “pushed back against what it described as US ‘threats’ to force [the G7] to act.”[2] In particular, the E.U. objected to President Trump’s threat of “a possible US diesel export ban.”[3] That threat worked. As of the following day, G7 countries “had so far released 325 million barrels of oil and oil-derivative products from strategic reserves, from the 400 million barrels promised in March.”[4] Why the apparent urgency? I contend that the upcoming U.S. Congressional elections in early November had a lot to do with President Trump’s motivation, for poll after poll showed that many voters were upset about the cost-push price increases in gasoline and food. Voters with such angst would doubtlessly vote for candidates in the Democratic group, rather than in Trump’s Republican group. So, the president had strong political motive to get gas prices down as soon as possible.

Although the rapid release of 325 million barrels so suggests both urgency and the G7’s compliance in line with Trump’s political interests, the G7 countries had discretion as to when to release both the 325 million barrels and the 100 barrels agreed to on October 2^nd. This means that Trump’s political objective could to some extent be scuttled from abroad by G7 countries holding off as many barrels as possible until after the Congressional elections. That such a strategy is laudable can be grasped by analyzing the ethics of the Trump’s ploy.

It would certainly be no compliment to voters in America were they to change their minds in voting simply by a last-minute drop in gas prices. The ploy itself disrespects voters because it is premised on the assumption that they can easily be tricked into voting for the status quo simply because of a brief (and probably temporary) increase in the purchasing power of American consumers from lower gasoline prices. I submit that at least voters who are college-educated are capable of ignoring such expedient political ploys.

It is less probable that even an educated electorate would vote at least in part from having conducted an analysis of structural political-economic factors, such as the price-setting power of monopolies and even oligopolies. A monopolistic company has overwhelming market-share in an industry, whereas oligopolistic industries are characterized by having a few large producers. Both Trump administrations consistently refused to apply anti-trust law to break up the mega-sized American oil companies, the two large companies dominating the agricultural seed market, and the large grocery-store chains (companies). The consolidation of both the agriculture, grocery, and oil industries in the U.S. is at the expense of market competition, and thus possibly lower prices. Whereas in the Gilded Age, Americans were well aware of anti-trust law, such as was used to break up Standard Oil, such law was seemingly non-existent after the Coronavirus epidemic when grocers felt no downward market pressure to lower prices. Similarly, when Iran was squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, the American media was silent on what effects the application of anti-trust law to the few, large American oil companies could have in diversifying supply chains so the U.S. could be less reliant on the Strait, and perhaps then less motivated to bomb Iran. A person looking just past one’s nose rather than farther is more likely to fall while walking.

After the Coronavirus pandemic, American media companies, elected representatives, and even their respective appointees were obsessed with the superficial symptom labeled “inflation,” as if monetary policy were the only thing that could be applied. Price-setting by an oligopoly of a few large companies, and cost-push inflation whether from the price-setting or issues with supply chains, are not due to excessive (relative to GNP) monetary supply. “Inflation” does not distinguish these very different things.

To the extent that large corporations, whether monopolies or in an oligopolistic industry, have too much financial and therefore political power over members of Congress and the U.S. president, the refusal of the U.S. Justice Department to enforce anti-trust law so as to render as many industries as competitive markets is no surprise because corporations are financially oriented to maximizing their market-share. Being able set prices so as to gain what is called monopoly rents is the dream of any CEO, especially if the bonus component of compensation increases with higher profit. So even beyond there being too few competitive markets in the U.S. due to the failure of the U.S. Government to apply anti-trust laws is the even more intractable problem of there being a plutocracy (i.e., rule by private wealth) usurping the democracy. If a representative democracy is not strong enough to counter these tendencies that operate at the expense of the American consumer, then it may be that democracy is more susceptible to plutocracy than to mob-rule; both Plato and Aristotle contend that mob-rule is the bad side of democracy. Trump’s expedient ploy, based on the premise that a short-term, last-minute, drop in the price of gasoline, is two degrees of separation from a policy that goes after the more endemic, structural, problems in the U.S. political economy.

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1. Marta Pacheco, “G7 Agrees 100 Million-Barrel Emergency Oil Release amid US Pressure over Diesel,” Euronews.com, 2 October 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Simon Ormiston, “IEA Says 325 Million Barrels of Emergency Oil Release, with 75 Million Still to Come,” Euronews.com, 3 October 2026.

On Britain’s Possible Accession after Seceding from the Union

Secession is a nasty business. Both Britain and South Carolina learned that lesson. Whereas the American member-state failed to secede from the U.S., Britain succeeded in seceding from the E.U. The parallelism presented here is no accident, for just as the U.S. federal system has been charactered by dual sovereignty—both the Union and the members having at least some governmental sovereignty—so too does the E.U.’s federal system. In deciding whether or not they want Britain to become an E.U. state again, the British ought to keep this fact in mind. 

Calling states “members” makes no difference to the divided sovereignty; in neither the E.U. nor the U.S. are the states fully sovereign, and neither the E.U. nor the U.S. itself is fully sovereign at the expense of any sovereignty remaining in the so-called members (i.e., states). In contrast, to refer to countries that belong to an international organization such as NATO or the UN as “member-states” just compounds the category mistakes that have been oriented to the false assertion that the E.U. and U.S. are qualitatively different rather than of the same (empire-scale) level and political genus (modern federalism of dual sovereignty). Just as sovereign countries formed the E.U., such countries formed the U.S., which at first was nothing more than a military alliance, and then a confederation of sovereign countries, and finally, from 1789, a federal system characterized by dual sovereignty. 

That feature of (early) modern federalism was salient for the British voters who voted to secede from the Union. In fact, their refusal to accept the E.U. having any governmental sovereignty was hardly absent from their judgment to vote in favor of their state seceding from the Union. Such a fundamental divide—between the actual sovereignty held by the E.U. and the Euroskeptic denial that such sovereignty even exists—is more important than other “pros” and “cons” that the British voters considered in voting on secession. So it is unfortunate that after Britain seceded, the question of whether the state should once again become a state has been dominated by “pros” and “cons” without giving much attention to the more fundamental matter of sovereignty.

In late September, 2026, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham “told a Labour Party conference that he would present ‘options’” concerning the relationship between the former E.U. state and the European Union.[1] He told his group’s delegates, “We could stay as we are. We could look at what George Osborne has said about a customs union, we could look at what the Liberal Democrats said about the (EU) single market, or we could go all the way.”[2] He went on to say, “We have to look at what is doable and what would be the problem is (sic) and cons of each.”[3] That is to say, they would have to look at the problems associated with each option. Such a practical, piecemeal approach ignores the more fundamental problem that existed when Britain was state: namely, getting the E.U. itself wrong, meaning mis-categorizing it in its basic, or constitutional, law, as if it were, as the former prime minister, David Cameron once said, “a network to which Britain happens to belong.” International networks, or “blocs,” do not have supreme courts that can overrule state courts, a parliament whose representatives are elected by federal (i.e., E.U.) citizens, and an executive branch. Blocs do not have three branches of government that individually and together, constituting a government, have at least some sovereignty.

Fundamentally understanding what the E.U. is politically is incompatible with being in the Union. This incompatibility dwarfs the particular advantages and disadvantages of various options. That is to say, if Britain is to become a state in the Union again, acceptance of the dual sovereignty enshrined in the E.U.’s basic law should be requisite by the British government and a majority of the electorate voting in a referendum. A house divided cannot stand, especially if each state retains a veto in the European Council and the Council of Ministers; the UK could “enforce” its erroneous disavowal of any E.U. sovereignty by holding federal legislative and executive action hostage. Put another way, if a majority of the British, as well as the British legislature, approaches the E.U. as if it were an international organization or bloc, the E.U. would be executing a self-inflicted wound by allowing Britain’s accession as a state. Obviously, other options, such as a customs union, would be fine, but to be a state, the UK would need to accept the fact of dual sovereignty.  

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1. Mared Gwyn Jones, “UK’s Burnham Floats Going ‘All the Way’ and Rejoining the EU,” Euronews.com, 30 September 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

On E.U. States Negotiating the E.U. Budget

Having state governments at the front in putting together a federal budget is problematic for several reasons. Those governments can easily form ideologically clashing groups that result in stalemate at the expense of the federal level. That states have a built-in political interest in safeguarding their own turf means not only that they would tend in a positive sense to ward off too much federal encroachment at the expense of the states and federal-state balance necessary for the check-and-balance function of federalism, but also that the states could exploit a structural conflict of interest to deny the federal governmental institutions adequate sovereignty and money to act effectively in the common or general interest as represented by the union rather than any one state or subset of states. The lack of progression of negotiations in the Council of Ministers in 2026 on the upcoming seven-year federal budget demonstrate that perhaps the European Parliament rather than the Council of Ministers should come up with the budget and sent to the European Council for passage.

In late September, 2026, state officials (European affairs ministers) met “for another round of negotiations . . . Despite a shared ambition to reach a deal by the end of the year, negotiations [appeared] to have stalled, with significant differences still unresolved.”[1] The stalling due to significant differences, including on E.U. taxation, was not new. The E.U. Commissioner for the Budget, Piotr Serafin, observed at the time, “this is my fourth [Multiannual Financial Framework] negotiations, so I have to admit that some of the discussions come with a sense of déjà vu. Many positions are quite predictable, as they have been consistently repeated over the last decades.”[2] The longstanding intransigence suggests that ideological differences, which tend to be intractable, were in the mix. One benefit of being in a political union is that federal institutions can bridge over divisions that are “dug in” at the state level, essentially breaking the “log jams” (i.e., entrenched tree branches in the water blocking the flow of a river).

Besides being able to overcome divisions between states, the federal level does not contain state-level jealousy of an active federal government; the conflict of interest that, if exploited by state governments to “starve” the federal institutions of federal tax revenue or adequate money to spend, does not exist in the European Parliament because the representatives thereof are directly elected by E.U. citizens rather than appointed by state governments. In fact, such direct federal election renders the Parliament a fitting institution to construct a federal budget—more so than the Council of (state) Ministers. This is particularly so because of the existence of federal taxes not contributed by the state governments as by quota, for instance. For their part, the state governments could have their “up or down” say in voting by qualified-majority vote in the European Council on a budget that has been passed by the Parliament. As for the Commission, its recommendations would be heard at the committee level in the Parliament in the crafting of the federal budget.

More generally, the state governments arguably have too much influence at the federal level. Some direct involvement, rather than even by elected senators who represent the states but not necessarily their respective governments as in the U.S., is prudent as a check against too much federal encroachment on the states as has happened in the U.S., but too much direct involvement by state governments at the federal level can enable the exploitation of institutional or structural conflicts of interest—such as from jealousy of the power of federal officials and institutions. Even at 27 states, the E.U. has suffered from want of federal authority due to the power of the state governments to invoke a veto in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Retaining the veto as more states are added to the Union would itself suggest that the state governments have too much obstructive power at the federal level. Put another way, a conflict of interest exists in depending on state governments to give up their veto power at the federal level. Generally speaking, the existence of structural conflicts of interest in a federal system is not a good thing for any federal system; such conflicts should be unwound both institutionally and in terms of processes (e.g. voting in the Council of Ministers).

The U.S. is hardly free of such conflicts. That justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are appointed by one federal institution and confirmed in office by another federal institution and yet those justices go on to hear disputes between the federal government and a state (or states) represents a conflict of interest; it is like having one football team appoint the referee, and then would anyone be surprised when 90 percent of the rulings during the games involving that team are in favor of it? The vast majority of federalism cases before the U.S. Supreme Court have been decided in favor of the federal level. No surprise. What is surprising is that this blatant conflict of interest has been virtually invisible in spite of the percentage of federalism cases having been won at the expense of the states. In the E.U., a similar insight regarding having the Council of Ministers and the European Council so salient in the construction and passage of the federal budget would make for a more perfect Union.  

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1. Eleonora Vasques, “EU Budget Talks Face Deadlock Despite Push for Year-End Deal,” Euronews.com, 22 September, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Misalignment of U.S. Fiscal Policy and the Federal Debt

In September, 2026, U.S. President Trump announced his intent to have the U.S. Government send $5000 to every American, which would cost that government about a trillion dollars, in the event that Trump’s Republican group retains control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in 2027 after the upcoming “midterm” election. The attempt to sway the electorates to vote for Republican federal representatives and senators paid no heed to the $40.2 trillion debt of the U.S. Government. Even characterizing the proposed payments as “dividends” ignored the fact that the money would have to be paid for, either by federal taxes, tariffs, or issuing more Treasury bonds (i.e., federal debt). It was not as if the payments would go out from money that the government already had. Such electioneering so misaligned from prudent fiscal policy amid such a high public debt raises the question of whether a government “of the People” can govern responsibly rather than merely in line with instant gratification.

At his Republican “Midterm” convention in September, 2026, President Trump said, “If we win, we’re going to get you $5,000. So that’s it. Very simple.”[1] Actually, it is not so simple. Republican candidates for Congressional office had good reason to “sidestep the idea.”[2] Firstly, financing the “dividends” by issuing additional Treasury bonds would add $1 trillion to the extant $40.2 trillion federal debt, unless additional taxes would be enacted to pay for the $5000 checks to every American. The yields on Treasury bonds were already rising, making it more expensive for people and businesses, as well as the U.S. Government, to borrow money, and putting downward pressure on the stock market, making it more difficult for corporations to raise capital. Although the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and the relatively high inflation were factors behind the increasing bond yields, the fact that the public was holding about $32 trillion of the U.S. Government’s debt suggests that yields had to rise in order for so much debt to attract bond holders, for as bond prices decline, bond yields rise. So although AP News reported at the time that the rise in bond yields “has accelerated recently because inflation has remained stubbornly high for years,” the need of the U.S. Treasury department to attract investors as the amount of outstanding Treasuries bloats should not be ignored.[3] Even the media was slighting the economic headwind from the $40.2 trillion public federal debt.

The problem of bloated public debt—not counting those of the member states!—had also been absent during the 2024 presidential election campaign “season” in 2023. Neither of the main candidates for the office meant to safeguard the viability of the U.S. Government needed to respond to concerns raised by the electorates in the member-states, which indicates that perhaps a government “by the people” can sidestep, or even be inherently inclined to obviate hard fiscal-policy choices even amid a public debt that is greater than the annual economic output. Neither Trump nor Harris were pressured by voters or journalists to address whether, or how, to reduce the massive debt-load; hence Trump, once elected, felt free of political constraint to urge Congress to extend his tax cuts rather than to raise taxes and dedicate the proceeds to reducing the debt. Even as California produced a balanced budget in 2026, the U.S. federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2026 reached about $2 trillion as of August, 2026 according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s $2 trillion added to the U.S. Government’s debt in that fiscal year alone. The fiscal imbalance is starling, hence so too is the proposal of $5,000 for every American. 

While it may be tempting to blame the president exclusively, such blame in a government “by the People” ultimately accrues to the citizenry itself. Jefferson and Adams agreed not on much, but that a viable republic really needs an educated and virtuous citizenry was assumed by both men, and thus this article of faith can be said to be nonpartisan, and thus patriotic in nature. Virtuous people take heed of being too much in debt as a instance of public irresponsibility, whereas profligate, selfish people are happy to send the bill to future generations without heeding even baleful economic indicators such as rising debt yields.  

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1. Mike Catalini, “Trump Pushes His $5000 ‘Dividend’ Pledge If GOP Wins Midterms,” APnews.com, September 18, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Stan Choe, “Wall Street Drifts Lower as Bond Yields Rise and Oil Prices Swing,” APnews.com, September 18, 2026.

President Von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address: Outsourcing the E.U.'s Strength

E.U. President Von der Leyen’s 2026 State of the Union address can be characterized as a bricolage of concerns “all over the map,” with proposed significant outsourcing of responsibilities to the international level. A notable opportunity cost that goes along with her approach is the political benefit that could have been gained by alternatively focusing on internal reforms to the E.U.’s governance structure and processes. Outsourcing internationally adds to this cost of a missed opportunity to sell internal reforms by making the E.U.’s federal level look weak. Even referring to the E.U. as a “bloc” and proposing an “associate membership” for Canada saps rather than strengthens the European Union.

Rather than proposing that qualified-majority voting apply to foreign policy and defense, President Von der Leyen “proposed a brand-new mechanism fashioned on NATO’s Article 4 that member states would trigger in the event of a hybrid attack.”[1] She thus ignored the E.U. itself, addressing instead the relationship between the E.U. states and the international alliance. By implication, the E.U. itself is weakened rather than strengthened. This is ironic, for she also said, “And in the cold fragility of today’s world, only Europe can provide true sovereignty to Europeans.”[2] Voiding the veto power of the state governments in the European Council and the Council of Ministers on defense would go towards providing such true sovereignty at the federal level; outsourcing to NATO would not.

Similarly, the president “offered to create a tailor-made status of ‘associate membership’ to bring Canada even closer to the bloc.”[3] Such a “status” would undermine the equality between Canada and the E.U. that is implied and thus proper for “an ‘alliance for the future’ to deepen EU-Canada cooperation in such areas of economic security, intelligent manufacturing, cutting-age technology, defence, energy, critical minerals and batteries, as well as the Arctic region.”[4] Canada’s tension with the U.S. on tariffs and the E.U.’s interest in retaining Greenland provide the subtext behind the proposed deepening of “EU-Canada cooperation,” but the president overreached in suggesting that cooperation itself should or does entail any sort of membership, and as if the E.U. were a bloc rather than a political union of states, and the word “membership” does not apply to states. In short, cooperating with another country is not to say that it is or should be a member or state, and in fact being a part even with an associate status is inconsistent with the equality that is implied in “E.U.-Canada cooperation.” Ironically, rather than the E.U. coming up on top as having Canada as a possible associate member, the E.U. is weakened because in having members the union is self-relegated as if it were merely an international bloc of countries like BRICS.

Thirdly, even though President Von der Leyen “framed the summer of 2026 as the ‘summer of truth’” in terms of “wildfires, retreating glaciers, water shortages, crop losses and extreme heat that have wrecked havoc” in the E.U., with the continent warming twice as much as the globe as a whole, her response was to be a European Heatwave Plan, which would “address early-warning systems, health preparedness, urban adaptation, and protection for vulnerable groups.”[5] Federal legislation bearing on the states could have been proposed that goes far beyond mere preparedness. Again, she was unwittingly enervating the Union by putting the states out in front, in the driver’s seat as it were.

With the military threat from a belligerent Russian president to the east, climate change from above, and a distancing U.S. administration to the west, and the prospect of the accession of additional states at home, the E.U. could no longer afford the veto mechanism that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán had so abused with impunity at the cost of the common good of the E.U., but the State of the Union speech did not include the rather obvious reform to qualified-majority voting on all competencies. Furthermore, no substantial federal legislation was proposed in defense (even of Ukraine), foreign policy, and to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions throughout the E.U. Such a reform, which gives the E.U. some more governmental sovereignty even at the expense of that of the state governments, could put the E.U. in a strengthened position internationally such that the Union could pressure the U.S. administration to ease up on Canada in terms of tariffs. A strengthened E.U. could arguably be better for Canada than getting an associate membership status in a Union misconstrued (and thus internally weakened) as an international organization.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro and Marta Pacheco, “State of the Union: Five Takeaways from Ursula von der Leyen’s Speech,” Euronews.com, 16 September, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The AfD Group Surges in a Regional Election in the E.U. State of Germany

Both the U.S. and E.U. mandate that their respective states be republics (i.e., representative democracies), and thus assuming an autocratic government is prohibited. When the governor of the state of Hungary restricted freedom of the press and judicial independence, the E.U. pushed back until Viktor Orbán lost reelection in 2026. Later that year, when the AfD (far right) group won in a region of the state of Germany, the state’s chancellor publicly voiced concern regarding the group’s attitude toward democracy. Viewing the governor as the bastion of constraint on such a trend ignores the E.U. entirely and treats Germany as still fully sovereign rather than being a state in the federal Union, which also has authority to protect democracy even if that authority was shown to be too weak with regard to Orbán’s rule in Hungary.

In early September, 2026, the “anti-immigration AfD group won the election in the Saxony-Anhalt region of the state of Germany “by a landslide, taking 43.8% of the vote. The CDU came in a distant second with 17.2%.”[1] Compared with the region’s election in 2021 “the AfD more than doubled its vote share, while the CDU saw its share halved.”[2] Merkel’s decision to open the state to immigrants from vastly different cultures than that of the E.U. had come home to roust, electorally; she could have predicted such a counter-reaction, given the cultural conservativism that has been so very salient in that E.U. state, as well as in Austria, another socially conservative state.

In the regional election, “60% of voters had chosen parties that call democracy into question.”[3] Merz, the state’s governor, said at the time that his state “needs fundamental reforms,” and yet he had hardly been a charismatic leader for substantial change.[4] Indeed, he lamented “the government’s failure to communicate policies in a sufficiently emotive and compelling way.”[5] Such policies hardly constituted “fundamental reforms” even though he “saw a society ‘longing for disruption’ and ‘fundamental change.’”[6] The victory of the AfD group doubtlessly had something to do with the built-up pressure from the dissatisfaction. Looking to the state government as a check against excesses in the AfD group can thus be regarded as problematic. Fortunately, Germany is an E.U. state. That a state in a federal system can itself have a federal system is perfectly consistent with historical federal theory, as discussed theoretically by Althusius, interestingly a German jurisprud, in his treatise, Political Digest (1603). Just because a state has a federal system does not mean that it cannot itself be a state in a federal system. Large U.S. states that are internally diverse in their respective regions could benefit by this point, as such states could benefit from adopting federal systems. Texas, New York, Illinois, and most obviously California could benefit greatly.

In analyzing the victory of the AfD group, I am deliberately taking a federal perspective from the vantage point of the E.U., which like its states is semi-sovereign politically, and thus constitutes a “political union” (of the same genus as the United States). Both unions represent “empire-scale” federal republics of republics—wheels within a wheel, to borrow from Kenneth Wheare’s text, Federal Government. To be viable, all of the wheels must be democratic rather than autocratic; otherwise, states without political freedom would tend to unilaterally nullify federal law from being valid within such states.

Once federal law is ignored, a federal union of state is in real trouble because the practice could easily spread to become a norm. This is doubtless why U.S. President Jackson sent troops to South Carolina in 1831 after its government enacted a law nullifying any federal law contrary to the state’s political or economic interests. The issue then was an agricultural tariff that had recently been enacted by the federal government. Jackson got both the tariff and the Nullification Act revoked, and thus safeguarded the system of federalism.

The E.U. too has sought to counter efforts by states to ignore federal law, and to eclipse democracy and freedom of the press and judiciary as well. Although Merz emphasized after the regional election that the AfD group would “have to follow the line set” by the state government, he omitted the fact that the group would also have to follow the line set by the European Union. This is a significant omission, especially given the governor’s political weakness at the state level. Just as the Commission withheld federal funds from the state of Hungary during Orbán’s autocratic rule, such funds would be held back from a state governed by the AfD were that group to eviscerate rule of law, freedom of the press, and judicial independence there. To be sure, the (excessive) involvement of the state governments at the federal level via the European Council and the Council of Ministers and the state veto itself enervate the enforcement by the Commission, but this is not to say that the state governments are the only ones capable of safeguarding democracy. State officials ignore the E.U. at their own peril; such a stance, which in American parlance has been referred to as “state rights” and in European terms is commonly known as the “Euroskeptic” ideology, needlessly opens Europe up to dictatorship once again. We need only look back less than a century to see examples of fascist dictatorship in what would become the European Union. Even in the twenty-first century, Europeans can hardly afford to ignore the E.U.’s safeguards even though they are needlessly weak in enforcement due to the state veto mechanism (i.e., a conflict of interest) at the federal level.

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1. Laura Freischmann, “Merz ‘Deeply Shocked’ After Major Afd Win in Saxony-Ahhalt,” Euronews.com 7 September, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

A State Representing the E.U. at the G20

From August 29 through September 1, 2026, the G20 met in North Carolina in the U.S.; the E.U. was represented by one of its states, Ireland, because it was charged with chairing the sessions of the European Council of Ministers, which in turn plays a legislative role, as does the European Parliament, whereas the European Commission is the E.U.’s executive branch. Such international meetings as those of the G20 are attended by officials from executive rather than legislative branches of government. Accordingly, the economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, along with President von der Leyen should have been representing the E.U. at the meeting.

To label Ireland as holding the presidency of the E.U. for the second half of 2026 is utterly misleading. In actuality, state-level ministers of Ireland were chairing sessions of the European Council of Ministers, which is just one of several federal institutions of the European Union. The president of the E.U.’s executive branch could more accurately be referred to as the president of the E.U. itself, just as the head of the U.S.’s executive branch is styled as the president of the United States. Unlike the U.S., the E.U. went to excess in coining presidents throughout the federal level.

Within the false label of the Irish presidency of the E.U., even though Tánaiste Harris was the finance minister of the E.U. state of Ireland, his role at the federal level was legislative in chairing sessions of the Council of Ministers in which federal laws, rules, and directives were formulated and voted on. Because executive rather than legislative officials attend the G20, Dombrovskis, along with Von der Leyen, should have taken Harris’s place.

The oversight in sending a federal legislative official to the G20 meeting stems from the broader problem of the over-emphasis of the states at the federal level. In the U.S., the member-states are represented in the U.S. Senate, and even so only indirectly through popularly-elected delegates, which are called senators, rather than directly by state officials from the states’ respective executive branches. Whereas the U.S. states are only represented at the federal level in the U.S. Senate, E.U. states are represented at the E.U. level in both the European Council and the Council of Ministers. The most obvious reason for the additional role for the states is fear of encroachment by the E.U. on the prerogatives of the states, and all the Europeans had to do was to look over at the consolidating power over decades of the U.S. at the expense of its states. The concern is thus justified, but the founders of the E.U. may have gone too far.

For one thing, the economic and geopolitical interests of a state are not necessarily the same as those of the union that includes the state. So, a conflict of interest was possible in that, besides representing the E.U., Harris was scheduled to “hold bilateral meetings” with officials from the G20 countries (which are not “member states” as the G20 does not have a federal governmental system).[1] The word bilateral signals that the discussions were between Ireland, which is not in the G20, and the executive-branch officials of the G20 countries, so Harris would be pursuing Irish rather than European interests in those discussions. Aside from the fact that his presence at the G20 was to represent the E.U., it was not fair to other countries not in the G20 that Ireland was able to have bilateral talks at the meeting. It would be much simpler were the E.U. represented at international meetings by federal officials in the Commission. In short, the influence of the state governments at the federal level in the E.U. had become excessive.

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1. “Simon Harris to Represent EU at G20 Finance Meeting in North Carolina,” Europe Says, 31 August, 2026.

Freedom Blocked at the “Freedom 250” Grand Prix

The Indy Car Series event, held on August 23, 2026 in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by delegates from the British colonies then officially in rebellion, ironically gave people visiting or living in the federal capitol a visceral experience of freedom blocked by governmental police and military authority. For not only the Mall, but also the entire route of the race was blocked by military and local police during the race such that public viewing was blocked. Entire city blocks separated the route from where tourists and local residents alike could drive and walk. Whether the federal government excessively pushed security at the expense of Americans being able to view the race without the luck of a lottery draw in advance for a ticket to be able to see the race at the Mall (roughly, between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument) is one question; the irony of being in such a visual, even overwhelming, militaristic police-city during a celebration of political freedom is more definite.

The public could not access the race route, or even get close enough to see the cars passing. That the entire race course, rather than just the designated fan areas on or near the Mall, was blocked raises the obvious question of why even to have a race if people are blocked from watching it. To be sure, free general-admission tickets were issued by lottery in advance but this process did not allow people in the city on the day of the race to spontaneously see the race, and the fact that a lottery had to be resorted to means that the demand for tickets exceeded the supply, which in turn may have been artificially restricted by security proponents in the government. Around the route, even surrounding streets were blocked off even from foot traffic. Even some museums near the Mall required a Grand Prix ticket for entry. High temporary fences along the Mall between it and the museums kept even people going to the latter to even glimpse the race.

To be sure, blocking visuals of the viewing stands, where ticketed seats were not free, could be justified on security grounds because President Trump was present there, but that rationale does not justify blocking the entire route, especially given the legitimate countervailing public interest to attend a celebration of the Declaration of Independence. In other words, a strong public interest existed but was wholly denied.

The sheer mass of local police, including their cars with emergency lights on, and the militias from the member states, including formidable military trucks, was arguably visually so oppressive as to be a turn-off to freedom-loving Americans. In other words, even if access to the route but not the viewing stands were possible, the experience of so many uniformed people with guns could be enough for a preference to leave the city that day.

Moreover, seeing so much military and police could prompt people to wonder just how much freedom still existed in the United States. The visuals could perhaps be likened to how daily life in Berlin in Nazi Germany may have looked. The presence of the military may have been especially startling to Americans not used to how much Washington, D.C. had changed since the twentieth century.

On the governmental side, the penchant for security can take on a life of its own, such that proponents unknowingly lapse in the sort of healthy judgment that is capable of balancing security interests with others. Such balance goes by the wayside as a republic transitions itself into a police state, and the change can be so gradual that reversal is almost impossible. Like a frog in a pot of water that is gradually being heated, citizens of a republic may not notice even that a transition has been underway. To be sure, American tourists in Washington on August 23, 2026 may have been stunned by the fresh sight of so many military troops, trucks, police employees, and police cars so concentrated blocks from the route and even farther into the city itself.

History may record the transition from the Roman republic to the Roman Empire as sudden, but in the daily life of the Romans, the increased visuals of weaponized troops may have been gradual. Perhaps some educated tourists in Washington during the race may have thought of what Rome may have been like when gladiator contests were going on in the coliseum—celebrations of Roman political power accompanied by a formidable military presence in the vicinity, given the typical attendance of the emperor at the games. Americans could benefit from the insight that even if their empire is a “city on a hill,” as President Reagan referred to the U.S., it is not immune from the rise and fall of empires that has gone on throughout history. A domestic presence of military forces even in the midst of a lot of local police present may be an indication that a republic is in transition to something else, and this transition could be part of the more general decline of empires.

The U.S. Federal Debt Hits $40 Trillion

The U.S. GNP in 2025 had been $30.77 trillion (nominal). Even though that represents a real growth rate of 2.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the total dollar-amount of economic output of the bloc was almost $10 trillion lower than the total federal debt, and this does not count the respective debts of the member-states. In fiscal year 2025, the net-interest paid on the federal debt amounted to $970 billion, which translates into nearly 20 percent of the federal government’s revenue and exceeded the $917 billion in defense spending. The milestone of $40 trillion in federal debt, reached on August 19, 2026, can thus be put into perspective at the federal level of government. It is no wonder that Europeans had been raising concerns regarding the issuance of federal debt by which the E.U. could aid Ukraine militarily. Things can get out of hand, fiscally, at a federal level.

The Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, along with the increases in both social and military spending over those decades, can be cited as having exasperated the federal debt. The words of Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, regarding the approach of the second Trump administration in “slashing waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending while accelerating economic growth to get America’s debt-to-GDP ratio trending in the right direction” can be regarded as insufficient, given the huge size of the federal debt.[1] By insufficient, I mean to suggest that an orientation to waste and abuse in the context of extended tax-cuts and an increasing defense budget does not take the amount of debt seriously enough. Even the orientation to the debt-to-GDP ratio leaves out the intragovernmental implications of the debt in terms of spending on interest, for example. Furthermore, GDP is only loosely related to whether any of the debt might get paid off. The electorates would have to elect representatives who in turn would be inclined to spend more tax revenue, even probably increasing taxation, to retire some of the debt. Democracy itself may be inherently oriented to the mentality of spend now by debt and pay (off the debt) later, given the instinct of instant gratification. Electing representatives who are oriented instead to tax cuts and cutting wasteful government spending can be viewed as a manifestation of that very instinct because the orientation can function as a subterfuge. In short, economic output does not translate directly into paying off a public debt; electorates do, and more than the changes in their wages and salaries, it is their political judgment (and values, especially in terms of responsibility itself) that is decisive on whether an extant debt gets paid off. To be sure, the relation of the total amount of public debt to a year’s total economic output is an indication of how long (and how much) it would take for taxpayers to be able to pay off the debt, given their taxable incomes, but the sheer enormity of amount of the accumulated debt and its relationship to the total amount of the government’s annual budget are crucial indicators of whether fiscal policy has become too unbalanced to be tolerated, politically.

This is not to say that being $40 trillion in federal debt does not matter in macroeconomic terms (i.e., to the American economy). Experts were already saying in 2026 that the U.S. debt was “already affecting Americans’ pocketbooks by raising borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lowering wages from businesses that [had] less money available to invest, and creating more expensive goods and services.”[2] Accordingly, Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank oriented to fiscal policy, said, “If we want to improve our living standards, today and for the next generation, now is the time for lawmakers to put our nation on a more affordable and sustainable path.”[3] To be sure, besides being focused on the nation, and thus not looking at its federal system (i.e., how much public debt was being held by the member-states), Peterson was also discounting the financial drag that is involved in using (and even increasing) federal revenue to pay off debt rather than spend tax dollars in ways that would boost economic growth.

I submit that the extent of the imbalance between the revenues and expenses of the U.S. federal government is itself worthy of attention, for such a large debt means that even the Keynesian policy of having deficits during recessions that would be paid off during periods of economic growth—again, as if GDP were decisive—has been exploited such that deficits have become the norm whether in times of boom or bust. The human instinct for instant gratification can and should be effectively countered both in the psyche and in legislative bodies by the use of reason, unless of course Plato’s theory of a just republic is utterly unrealistic. Reasoning, whether at the ballot box or in a legislature, that is oriented to government (and the very republic!) as a going concern rather than as effectively bankrupt can and ethically should act as a restraint on the passions to spend without having to immediately pay. Even if the majority of voters in an electorate are just fine with government spending without sufficient revenue (taxation), elected representatives can legitimately push back without being accused of double-crossing or betraying their constituents. This is one reason why U.S. senators have a six-year term; even the Electoral College, as it was intended in the Convention, was to be a device by which a federal president could be elected for the good of the country rather than from the momentary passions of the citizens of a member-state. The U.S. House was intentionally designed to be more reflective of an electorate’s momentary passions, but the devise of representation itself mitigates this reflection to some extent, even in spite of the term of office being only two years. The size of the federal debt may indicate that such safeguards within the complex architecture of the U.S. Government have not been efficacious. In other words, the federal government itself may have gotten severely out of balance in terms of electoral politics and governance.

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1. Fatima Hussein, “The US National Debt Now Stands at $40 Trillion,” APnews.com, August 20, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.