The paradigm used by a former
state can undermine any negotiations between it and a federal government. Even
the reference to a federal government, if contrary to such a
paradigm, can subtly undercut relations. The typical focus on the matters to be
negotiated, such as new trade relations, easily miss the negative impact of a
biased paradigm that is more based in Euroskeptic states’ rights (i.e.,
anti-federalism) that on the actual relation being between a former state and
the European Union.
In 1964, even before the E.U.
came into effect in 1993, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) handed down a
landmark decision in Costa v. ENEL declaring E.U. law
superior over state law, and the ECJ supreme in interpreting E.U. law,
including its basic law (which acts as a constitution). The E.U. saw the
federal-level sovereignty expand into two “pillars” besides the renamed EEC.
Even so, while in office as prime minister of the British state, David Cameron
referred to the E.U. federal system as instead one of the networks to which
Britain happens to belong. A network, such as NATO, does not hold any
sovereignty. A network is not a federal system, and yet the E.U. is a federal
system of dual sovereignty (i.e., held both by the state governments and the
federal government, or “institutions”). Nor is a “bloc” a federal system, and
yet even after secession British government officials (and their media)
steadfastly used the loose term in spite of the fact that the E.U. covers more
than trade and even economic policy and has legislative, executive, and
judicial branches, as is typical for a government. Even remaining states have
perpetuated the misleading term. Deutsche Welle, based in the state of Germany,
notes in one article that without a trade deal, “the UK could face a so-called
cliff-edge scenario which would effectively cut trade with the bloc.”[1] Cambridge
Dictionary defines bloc as “a group of countries or
people that have similar political interests.” Incredibly, even though the E.U.
even at its inception included two non-economic “pillars,” the dictionary lists
as one example, “The European Union is a powerful trading/trade bloc.” So too,
were the former Eastern/Communist bloc countries even though they had not
formed a federal government and they were not even republics (i.e., states) in
the former U.S.S.R.
So the Truman Doctrine of the
U.S., which pledged that the U.S. would help any country in the Americas resist
the encroachments of communism rendered all the countries in the Americas a
bloc due to the common political interest. So too, Western European countries
constituted a bloc in having a shared political interest opposing the communist
bloc in Eastern Europe (as well as the U.S.S.R.). To apply the
term bloc to a federal system undermines it because the term
reduces it (of any sovereignty) into a mere common political interest.
Even just in thinking of the E.U.
as a bloc, the British trade negotiators in 2020 were understating the status
of the political union and ignoring its portion of sovereignty over its
remaining states and in relations with governments around the world, including
that of the UK. Even while it was an E.U. state, the UK government bristled at
the reality that the federal institutions held some
sovereignty in the federal system (the states holding the rest, as is the case
in the U.S.)—yes, as in the case of the United States. Perhaps this comparison
is precisely why the British government has intractably held onto the fiction
that the E.U. is a mere bloc rather than a federal system with, yes, a federal
government.
In the Deutsche Welle article,
Michael Clauss, an official with the German government, warns that it is not
possible for Britain to have “full sovereignty and at the same time full access
to the EU’s internal market” in a trade deal with the European Union.[2] I
submit that as a state, the UK wanted just that, and thus butted heads with the
political/governmental reality that E.U. states were semi-sovereign as they had
ceded some governmental sovereignty to the federal governmental institutions
(i.e., government). Even in refusing to refer to a federal government,
using institutions instead, officials of state governments
generally have tried to deny that the E.U.’s executive, legislative, and
judicial branches together constitute a government, as if basic law had not
been established and judicially interpreted by the E.U.’s highest court. No
federal government, no federal governmental sovereignty. Of course, even a
collection of institutions at the E.U. level could have sovereignty; even the
voting system of qualified majority voting means that a state government could
find itself having to implement an E.U. directive.
The refusal to admit that the
E.U. has some governmental sovereignty even in carrying on trade negotiations
has left it open for Euroskeptics to refer to the E.U. as an international organization
akin to NATO or the UN, neither of which have a government or sovereignty. The
British government officials can say that the former state can enjoy full
sovereignty yet still have full trading benefits.
Yet in spite of the qualitative
differences between the UK and international organizations, the world,
including former and current E.U. states, accepted the convenient analogy of
“Brexit” to a divorce. The Deutsche Welle article, for example, observes,
“Brexit supporters in the UK have grown frustrated with delays that have been
plaguing the divorce proceedings since the Brexit referendum in June
2016.”[3] A divorce implies to commensurate parties, but it breaches logic
to say that a state in a federal system is equivalent to the whole instead of the
other parts thereof. Don’t tell Kant, but ideology can warp even logic and
facts of reason.
Does secession render a state equivalent to a union of states?
We are supposed to believe that
an international organization without its own sovereignty and a nation-state
got a divorce, and, furthermore, that the nation-state can nonetheless expect
to continue to get trading benefits that members get. A sovereign government
can expect to get such results in negotiating with a mere international
organization, and yet the divorce analogy implies that the two parties are equivalent
(even though a state is not equivalent to a union of such states, or even
former states). That the media in Europe and elsewhere (e.g., The New York
Times) have allowed themselves to be manipulated by such twisted, self-serving
ideological “logic,” which belies the strength of the E.U., suggests that the
stamp of officialdom can be without a viable foundation.
1. “Germany Urges UK to Be ‘More Realistic’ on Brexit,”
DW.com, June 4, 2020 (accessed same day).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
