European integration has proceeded in fits and starts since Robert Shuman proposed the European Coal and Steel Cooperative in 1950 so Europe could keep an eye on Germany’s military in the wake of World War II. Euroatom and the European Economic Community came in 1957, and the EC, which consisted of the three organizations, existed until 1993. Since then, the European Union too has progressed step-wise, with some steps backwards, such as when Britain seceded from the Union. Whereas the U.S. made the leap from a supranational alliance, the Articles of Confederation, to a federal government all at once in 1789, the way of the E.U. in terms of dual sovereignty and adding states has been incremental. Perhaps throughout its 31 year history, as of its federal election in 2024, the E.U. was being pulled in two directions. Some forces have led the E.U. to gain competencies over time, whereas other forces could be described as “states’ rights,” anti-federalist, or Euroskeptic tendencies. If dominant, those forces would ultimately lead to the dissolution of the federal union, whereas the former forces would lead to its consolidation. After thirty years, the U.S. too was more subject to the centripetal forces than those for ever closer union. From the subsequent history of the U.S., it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether the E.U. too will lean so close too to political (and economic) consolidation too by the time that union is over 200 years old. Like Europeans today, the Americans of the 1820s would never have dreamed that the federal level would be so dominate over the states, which were still regarded as countries.
That more sovereignty to go to the E.U. on defense was being debated in the weeks before the E.U. election in 2024, with the E.U.’s People’s Party, a proponent of the E.U. defense being expanded to include air defense, being projected to win in the European Parliament, and Russia’s Putin still invading Ukraine and making threats against Europe, even the governments of the largest E.U. states were supporting the additional transfer of governmental sovereignty to the federal government in order to protect the E.U. from its eastern menace. It is significant that whereas the U.S. began as a military alliance of thirteen sovereign countries, the E.U.’s antecedents were economic in nature (even though the E.U.’s pillars extended beyond the economic domain). Even so, it could have been predicted in 1993 that the E.U. would eventually handle both defense and interstate commerce, as those are typically handled at the empire-level in empire-scale unions. This was so in the British Empire, for example, and the U.S. federal government inherited the imperial-level powers of the British king.
It is important to resist the easy conclusion that the E.U. was poised in 2024 to take a step towards ever closer union, for the E.U. was also subject to forces to the contrary. According to the Euronews Super Polls, one thing looked certain a week before the E.U. election: “after the 6-9 June elections, the European Parliament will have a clear right-wing majority.”[1] That majority would be keener on having the state governments get back some of the governmental functions (i.e., governmental sovereignty) that had been delegated to the federal government incrementally since 1993.
It is important to take account of the role of international forces on the two contending political forces in the E.U. that bear on its degree of integration. I have already alluded to Putin’s Russia as prompting concern by E.U. citizens for more federal competencies in defense (e.g., an air defense). The American government’s support of Israel as it continued to ignore and violate the “cease and desist” rulings of the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice, was undoubtedly causing Europeans to question a global order in which the U.S. would continue to be relied on as the global “police.” European values in favor of international law would not be protected by relying on the Americans. The possibility of the former U.S. president, Don Trump, returning to office meant that an American administration could actually enable and even strengthen the positions of Putin of Russia and Netanyahu of Israel was not lost on E.U. citizens as they prepared to vote in early June, 2024. The E.U. not only being able to defend itself militarily but also have military sway in the global order could naturally result from these forces from abroad.
Going in the other direction, away from increasing E.U. competencies, or enumerated powers in Ameri-speak, the failure of the E.U. to handle the mass immigration from Africa was feeding into the increasing popularity of the “right-wing” European parties in the Parliament. How could the E.U. handle more exclusive competencies if it could not handle its existing functions? More to the point, stubborn anti-federalist, or “nationalist,” resistance to doing away with the veto in the European Council ironically fed the E.U.’s functional difficulties with its extant competencies. Just as the veto in the U.S.’s Articles of Confederation stymied the American Continental Army against the British Empire, so too the refusal of E.U. state governments to agree that more E.U. competencies must be decided by qualified-majority voting rather than unanimity has resulted in a less-than-functional federal government. In the wake of Israel’s refusal to abide by the verdicts of the International Court of Justice (even though the UN founded Israel!) for an immediate cessation of the invasion of Gaza, that the E.U. had to rely on state governments on whether to recognize Palestine is a real testament to the inutility of the veto at the federal level (e.g. in the Council of Ministers, as well as the European Council).[2] In words used for American basketball, the federal recognition of Palestine should have been “a slam dunk.” That it was not signals that something is very wrong with the E.U.’s federal system, and in particular with how decisions are taken at its federal level.
So, heading into their federal election in June, 2024, E.U. citizens were subject to conflicting forces, and thus to opposing political movements, some for and others against ever closer union. My point is that contending forces and questions of federal-level functionality have existed throughout the post-World War II period of European integration. Fits and starts, rather than all at once. Even in the U.S., the shift from a system in which the state governments held most of the sovereignty to one in which the federal institutions do has been gradual. The difference is perhaps that Europeans do it piecemeal formally in terms of basic law, whereas the progression has been more by case law in the U.S. Essentially, this means that Europeans have had to decide on what Americans call constitutional amendments more often—amendments (i.e., changes to basic law) that are more significant for the federal system as a whole than the American amendments (after the Bill of Rights) have been. This is why the impact of contemporary international forces is so relevant to the E.U. as a still-changing federal system of dual sovereignty (i.e., not confederal, as in the Articles and the EC).
2. Skip Worden, “Euroskeptic Federalism Obstructing the E.U.’s Recognition of Palestine,” The Worden Report: International Relations, May 27, 2024.
