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.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
