On 16 June, 2026, the European
Parliament rejected the European Council’s proposed budget for the E.U. not
only because of the proposal’s €32.8 billion budget-cut, which would reduce the
six-year 2028-2034 federal budget even below that which the Commission had
proposed, but also because the Council had refused to address the issue of federal-sources
of revenue, which was made increasingly salient by the increasing need of funds
at the federal level. In seeking to keep the federal institutions dependent on money
supplied by the states, the Council, which like the U.S. Senate represents
states, can be viewed exploiting a conflict of interest at the expense of the
ability of the E.U. to operate even within its given mandates. Put another way,
the requirement that the Parliament pass any proposed budget can be viewed as a
check on the state-centric Council’s proclivity to put the interest of the
parts above the whole—the individual states above the Union.
Although the proposed federal
budget by the Council represented a political compromise between states that
wanted “substantial cuts” and other states that “asked for an increase of the
budget for agriculture and regional funds,” enough of the Parliament’s representatives
elected by E.U. citizens, rather than appointed by state governments, deemed the
Council’s proposal as insufficient.[1]
Those representatives were oriented to adequately funding extant federal
programs rather than doing the bidding even of their own states. This translates
into an orientation to the common good that is implied in collection action
(i.e., the whole) rather than to the interests of parts. Because the €2 trillion
proposal by the Commission had already been rejected as insufficient by the Parliament,
the Council’s even lower figure can be interpreted as perplexing unless the
states were making a statement that any federal branch is apt to overstate
the E.U.’s funding needs so the Parliament’s rejection of the Commission’s
proposal could and should be ignored.
Consistent with the alleged
proclivity of federal governmental institutions to over-state the E.U.’s needed
funding was the refusal of the Council “to touch the issue of the budgetary
correction mechanisms known as rebates, revenues coming from taxes at the
E.U. level, known as own resources, and the principle of making the budget
conditional on the rule of law.”[2]
Refusing to increase the E.U.’s own access to revenue independent of funds
contributed (and thus controlled by) the state governments was essentially
a decision to maintain power over the federal institutions and thus render the
Union subservient to the states. At the time, MEP Carla Tavares told the press,
“We need to make progress on own resources. . . . It is difficult to achieve a
strong and renewed budget with cuts and without new own resources.”[3]
In other words, the common good as funded federally would be diminished by the
refusal of the state-centric Council to even consider new sources of own resources
at the federal level. The distinctly state-level interest in maintaining (inordinate)
power in the federal system was operating at the expense of the whole. The
self-interested decision of the states in the Council to refuse to make budget-outlays
conditional on rule-of-law being upheld in a given state also evinces an
institutional (or structural) conflict of interest because using the budget so
state governments do not disassemble rule-of-law provisions is in the interest
of the whole (i.e., the European Union). One state government being able to
backslide could easily domino across state-lines, and as all of the delegates
at the U.S. federal Convention thought in 1787, allowing dictators at the state
level would be incompatible with a democratic Union. So, the refusal of the
Council to address the matter of conditionality can be viewed as putting the
Union at risk. Fortunately, the members of Parliament were foremost oriented to
the good of the Union rather than to protecting state prerogatives even at the
expense of the Union.
One of the benefits of
federalism is that the federal and state levels can act as checks on each other
so as to preserve liberty against the threat of tyranny. The Parliament’s role in
being a check on the use of the Council by the state governments to put the interests
of the state government officials and their respective governments above the
interests of the whole is thus vital in safeguarding the E.U.’s federal system
and thus the E.U. itself. Moreover, putting the interests of parts above the
whole of which they are parts is never a good idea, for the interests of a
whole are not identical to the aggregate of the interests of the parts; the whole
is more than the sum of its parts.
2. Ibid, italics added for emphasis.
3. Ibid.
