The E.U. Investigates an Online Travel-Reservation Company: Consumer Protection in Hospitality

The case, or rationale, for government regulation and oversight of the “hospitality” industry (e.g., hotels, booking companies, etc.) is not merely made on the basis of monopoly or oligarchy in the industry at the expense of market competition, but also on issues concerning business ethics and managerial competence at not only hotel companies (as well as with franchisees), but also separate travel-reservation companies. The European Commission was therefore on solid ground in launching an investigation into a online travel-reservation company in 2026.

To be sure, running a hotel, with customers staying at such short intervals, is admittedly difficult, given the need for constant coordinating amid the comings and goings. This is no excuse, however, for dysfunctional management, such as in hiring incompetent or “misaligned” employees in the first place, and later retaining such hires as are discovered to have task or attitude deficiencies. Furthermore, the hotel/motel industry’s franchise model seems particularly prone to franchisees whose obsession on reducing expenses by trifling with amenities goes on as if the customers, or “guests,” do not pick up on the underlying pettiness and greed. Ending the “complimentary” breakfast at 9 a.m., for example, as some Marriot hotels were doing at the time to reduce the number of customers being able to make it in time is unethical if done to reduce expenses on the food. So too is the practice in hotel house-keeping departments to conveniently interpret the placement of a “Do Not Disturb” sign on room doors as meaning that housekeeping service is not wanted that day, even in the afternoon. Housekeepers can reduce their workload by such a convenient assumption with impunity, and lying about whether a sign is on a room’s door can be easily used to reduce a workload even more. Even in how reservations made not directly through the hotel’s company, but, rather, online using a travel-reservation service/company to get lower rates, front-desk managers of hotels are known to relegate those “cheaper” reservations to inferior rooms, such as ones near elevators and not having views. To be sure, a case can indeed be made that customers who pay higher rates warrant better rooms, or at least preference in choosing rooms, but the typical prejudice of hotel managers against “third party” reservations as being inferior can easily translate into such customers, or “guests,” feeling inferior as victims of prejudice. In short, the profit-motive is alive and well in the hospitality industry, where even extending a reservation must contend with the contractual mindset of hotel companies wherein rate for each additional night is to be maximized by demand and supply; daily expediency trumps investing in repeat business by building a customer basis and even customer loyalty. In short, loyalty does not compute in a daily revenue-maximizing, transactions-oriented managerial mentality. At least in the U.S., that mentality really got going once people could shop online for rates in the 2000s or 2010s. In short, the case for government oversight of the “hospitality” industry is an easy one to make, especially since the advent of computer technology used by the industry. The E.U.’s investigation of Booking.com, an online travel-reservations company, announced in October, 2026 should therefore not come as a surprise.

The E.U.’s “investigation into online travel platform Booking.com” came amid “concerns that it has failed to adequately address fake listings and phishing scams.”[1] A phishing scam is one in which personal/financial information of customers is extracted for nefarious purposes such as identity theft. E.U. federal authorities accused the management of Booking.com of having “underestimated the impact of fraud and unlicensed accommodation on its platform and has not done enough to prevent users’ data from being exploited by scammers.”[2] The E.U. commissioner for technology, Henna Virkkunen, said at the time that E.U. citizens “should be able to book their holidays without fear of being scammed.”[3] Additionally, the Commission was taking a look at Booking.com “because it did not clearly label as ads those listings whose providers paid for a higher ranking in search results shown to users.”[4] This charge shifts the focus from the providers using Booking.com to that company’s own management. Together, the opportunity of collusion at the expense of the “users” is high enough that government oversight was justified.

Another American travel-reservation online platform, that which was run by Super.com, was also ripe for investigation because that company operated at the time in travel, financial tech, and savings company—all of which came under the Super+ membership. How the company’s hybrid prepaid Mastercard, useful for cashback and credit-building, and the cash advances feature of the savings feature related to the travel-platform could have been examined by regulators for possible structural conflicts of interest. Even just within the travel platform itself, the company could have been accused of false advertising because once a potential customer clicks on an advertised rate, a new page comes to the fore (“checking for rates”) and often times a new, higher rate appears as the only option. In other words, one rate may be shown when a customer is deciding whether to use Super.com, Travelocity, or Priceline, but once the rate shown by Super.com is clicked, Super.com’s algorithm checks for rates! This process is inherently unethical because the initial rate shown on a list of rates shown by other travel-platform companies is shown as the rate that Super.com is offering; there should not be any need for that company’s algorithm to then check for rates, and even worse, for a higher rate to then be presented as the lowest possible in using Super.com. 

The advent of computer technology in the making of hotel reservations has heightened rather than diminished the need for government oversight and regulation. The profit-motive clearly plays a significant role in the writing of the algorithms, and this should come as absolutely no surprise because companies are profit-making machines and are thus oriented to their own financial interest. In a hotel room, a card that urges customers to reuse a bath towel because “we care about the environment” can and should be taken as a subterfuge; the motive behind the sign is exclusively to reduce the expense that the hotel pays for its linen and towels to be laundered. The appeal to caring can even be looked at as mendacious, or at least as raising the specter that a management is fine with misleading customers. An organizational culture of unethical conduct at the expense of customers can indeed be glimpsed by such small “red-flags.” “Hospitality” managements can indeed be very petty—going so far as to dilute orange juice and reduce the thickness of waffle-makers, for example, so as to reduce the costs of the foodstuffs to the hotels. Hotel and especially motel managers and franchisees can be incredibly selfishly and greedily shortsighted at the expense of repeat business. That is, the hospitality industry is rife with exploits that can and should be of interest to government officials who are oriented to consumer protection rather to the financial interests of (regulated) companies or industries whose political-campaign donations to elected representatives and candidates for such public offices can be very persuasive both in legislatures and regulatory agencies. The associated theory is called regulatory capture. In investigating Booking.com, the E.U.’s executive branch may have been resisting that, though it is possible that a more politically-connected competitor of Booking.com had been pushing for the investigation in what is known as the strategic use of regulation to gain market share and even heighten the barriers to entry by potential competitors. An effective regulatory apparatus should both investigate companies and ensure that markets remain competitive rather than become oligopolistic or monopolies.

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1, Greta Ruffino, “EU probes Whether Booking.com Is Doing Enough to Tackle Fake Listings and Phishing Scams,” Euronews.com, 21 October 2026.
2, Ibid.
3, Ibid.
4. Ibid.

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.

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.

The European Civil Protection Pool: Insufficient for the E.U.'s Civil Protection Mechanism

The European Civil Protection Pool (ECPP) was established in 2013 to provide emergency response personnel and equipment to combat natural and man-made disasters in Europe. The Pool is the central component of the E.U. Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM). However, the ECPP depends on voluntary contributions from the state governments and even extends beyond the E.U. to include ten European sovereign states. The reliance on voluntary contributions, as well as the distended coverage beyond the E.U. have a weakening impact on the ability of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, to respond to raging forest fires, as were out of control in several southern states during the summer of 2026. Heat-wave after heat-wave plus decades of those states allowing deadwood to accumulate in the forests (the same error had also exacerbated the massive 1988 fire in Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks in Wyoming) provided a “perfect storm” for raging fires by July. Even the Commission’s emphasis on prevention had not been enough, given the reliance on the states, literally to have enough brush and dead trees culled prior to the hot summer. I contend that the Commission having to rely on the states (and even ten other countries!) to contribute personnel and equipment in the ECPP program, which is in line with the Commission’s typical coordinative approach, is out of step with the E.U.’s actual federal system of dual sovereignty because a mere coordinating role fits what Althusius, in his 1603 text, Political Digest, calls non-plena foedus (non-full federalism: all governmental sovereignty is at the state level).

With hundreds of thousands being “forced to evacuate their homes as flames spread across several regions” of the E.U., questions were being raised in late July, 2026 “over whether Europe’s crisis management systems [were] adapting fast enough.”[1] In two E.U. states alone, more than 120,000 hectares had burned. Even though E.U. President Von der Leyen wrote at the time, “My thoughts are with the firefighters who bravely battle the flames and with all those [people who have been] evacuated,”[2] her first administration had put the emphasis on preventing rather than fighting fires under the assumption that if the fires are prevented, then not much effort and money would be needed to combat fires once they are underway. The problem, however, was not limited to a faulty policy-orientation at the federal level. Crucially, the European Civil Protection Pool in the UCPM relied on voluntary contributions from the states, and even other countries beyond the purview of the Commission! To be sure, several states, along with Turkey, sent firefighters and equipment to the fires, but not soon enough for the fires to have been extinguished when they were small. That the massive scale of the fires could have been anticipated as a result of climate change lays even more culpability on the Commission both in regard to its emphasis on prevention and its unwillingness to propose a federal firefighting force of personnel and equipment under the direct authority of the Commission.

In the early U.S., the Articles of Confederation, in force from 1781-1789, and prior to that, the military alliance, also relied on voluntary contributions by what were sovereign countries known generically as “states” because their permanent forms of government had not yet been decide. General Washington’s complaints to the Continental Congress for want of men and supplies merely frustrated the delegates from the countries whose respective governments had sole discretion on how much to supply to the cause of independence.

From its founding in 1993, the E.U.’s states have shared governmental sovereignty with the federal governmental institutions, including the European Parliament, whose elected representatives represent E.U. citizens rather than the states, and the Commission. Even in the European Council and the Council of Ministers, qualified-majority voting on a significant number of federal enumerated powers, or competencies, represents a transfer of some sovereignty from the states to the Union. The E.U.’s supreme court, the European Court of Justice, also limits state sovereignty, and thus even the authority of the highest state courts. Accordingly, the Commission’s role should go beyond coordinating voluntary contributions from states.

To be sure, it could be argued that it took the U.S. more than a century to treaty a federal income tax, and for the U.S. federal military to outgrow the preponderance of the state armies (the Guards). Even as of 2026, the federal president was obliged to return the state armies to their respective commanders-in-chiefs—the governors of the still semi-sovereign states. Regarding forest fires, it was not until 1849 that the U.S. Department of the Interior was created, and not until 1916 that the U.S. Park Service was established and began fighting forest fires, and not until 2026 that the federal Interior Department launched the U.S. Wildland Fire Service to consolidate what had been decentralized efforts.

In 2026, the predicted impact of a hotter climate on forest fires was obvious in the E.U., even though astonishingly some politicians were still peddling climate-change denial. Referring to “lots of new parliamentarians in the European Parliament” and state-level politicians who were being “being very vocal against climate science and climate action,” Teresa Ribera, the E.U. Commission Vice President, warned at the end of July, 2026 that those politicians were “lying to people” and putting lives at risk.[3] It’s like telling people that they can drink as much whiskey as they want and then drive a car, she added. Perhaps that goes a bit too far, but her point that denying natural science is stupid and even destructive is valid, given all the data and the actual fires that year. She could have added that ideology trumping knowledge is itself dangerous. Volunteering at a San Francisco film festival in California during the summer of 2026, I was stunned when two young lesbian women walking out of the film on my first shift chastised me with, “it doesn’t work that way,” because I had just remarked that the sex scene in the film was homosexual; the label fits because both women in the scene have vaginas. Obviously, the mental state of one or both of those characters does not render the physical act in the scene heterosexual, but this fact didn’t stop the young lesbians from decrying my statement as “inappropriate” from the standpoint their ideology. An elected representative saying, “I don’t believe in climate change,” is just as culpable from the standpoint of knowledge.[4]

Suffice it to say that for several reasons, the E.U. could not patiently wait out a century or more to federalize a fire-fighting capability beyond merely coordinating voluntary contributions from states and other European countries. The expedited basis with which to shift from a state-centric power standpoint to a more balanced federal system does have the advantage of being able to learn from another political union with the same (dual-sovereignty) genus of federalism and thus avoid that union’s over-consolidating federal legislation during the twentieth century. In other words, the Commission could be given more authority with which to directly send personnel and equipment to fires without fear that the E.U. would be on track toward a centralized federal state at the expense of the cultural and political interstate diversity that exists in any empire-scale federal union.

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1. Luca Bertuzzi, “Devastating Wildfires Expose Europe’s Fragile Response to a New Climate Reality,” Euronews.com, 28 July, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Marta Pacheco, “E.U.’s Competition Chief Ribera Slams Climate Deniers as Fires Rage: ‘They Are Lying,” Euronews.com, 30 July, 2026.

4. Seth Borenstein, “Human-Caused Climate Change Made Spanish, French Fires Much More Likely, Scientists Calculate,” APnews.com, July 30, 2026.

Should the E.U. Pay Prospective States to Reform?

Should the European Union pay prospective, or “candidate,” states to undergo legislative, rule-of-law reforms prior to accession even though becoming a state is not assured? In April, 2026, Marta Kos, the Commission’s commissioner for enlargement warned the E.U.’s parliament that the Commission might “suspect €1.5 billion in E.U. funding for Serbia due to rule-of-law concerns and contentious judicial reforms” that had been introduced in Serbia’s legislature in January.”[1] I contend that the legislative or constitutional proposals should have been sufficient to freeze the very question of Serbia’s accession, and that the Commission should not pay candidate states to undergo reforms in the first place.

Speaking to the elected representatives in the federal parliament, “Kos said she was particularly concerned about legal amendments that introduce major changes, creating a flawed form of autonomy for Serbia’s anti-corruption prosecution and weakening the independence of the judiciary.”[2] That those constituted major changes are were on the scale of amendments rather than mere statutes could have alerted President Von der Leyen as to whether Serbia was in any condition to become a state in a political union in which rule of law (i.e., an autonomous judiciary, and democratically-valid multi-party elections) is assumed rather than even subject to debate. In other words, rule-of-law, as enforced by a judiciary independent of whatever party happens to be in power in the legislative and executive branches of a government, is so fundamental in the E.U. that major changes even being proposed in a prospective state should be a huge red flag. Accordingly, the question goes beyond whether to suspend paying money to such a state to undergo reforms that should be done anyway.

That Serbia’s political culture, at least with respect to its government, was worsening appreciably is clear from Kos’s statement, “We are increasingly worried about what is happening in Serbia. From laws that undermine the independence of the judiciary to crackdowns on protesters and recurrent meddling in independent media.”[3] Such crackdowns and meddling go beyond rendering a judiciary subservient to a governing political group, and thus render Serbia unfit at least for the time being for joining the E.U. as a state. At the very least, in other words, Serbia should not be “eligible for E.U. funding to support its required internal reforms.”[4] If prospective states want to join the E.U., then they should be willing to pay for their reforms themselves. Why, in other words, should the E.U. feel obliged to pay? I contend that joining the E.U. is of such value to any outside state-level republic that the E.U. should not in principle pay for candidate states to get themselves into shape from a democratic standpoint.

Even on policy grounds, the accession of Serbia was risky for the E.U., given the military aggressiveness of Russia in Ukraine. That the E.U.’s parliament had “adopted a resolution criticizing Serbia’s failure to align with E.U. foreign policy” against Russia in 2025[5] should have been a wake-up call for the E.U., given Viktor Orbán’s intentional undermining of E.U. foreign policy with regard to Russia. Did the E.U. administration want another Hungary wielding its veto in the European Council and the Council of Ministers in favor of Russia even as that country was still invading one of its neighbors?

Therefore, Kos’s statement, “We will continue to support Serbia on its E.U. path,”[6] can and arguably should be subject to formidable critique. After all, the E.U. was not so weak at the time, even given its refusal to expunge the veto-power from states in the European Council, that the Commission should have been so desperate to take in even marginal states. The greatness of the E.U. depended more in making internal reforms at the federal level in line with the fact that the member-states were semi-sovereign, than in enlarging. Just because Orbán had just been voted out of office in Hungary does not mean that the intransigence of one state in the European Council and the Council of Ministers could not again hamstring federal foreign and military policy even in the face of the Russian bear invading one of its neighbors on President Putin’s utterly fallacious supposition that the old Russian empire should rise again.

1. Eleonora Vasques, “E.U. Considers Freezing Serbia’s €1.5 billion in E.U. Funds Amid Rule of Law Scrutiny,” Euronews.com, April 20, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

E.U. Statehood for Sovereign Countries

Even as the E.U. struggled to come up with foreign policies on Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran in March, 2026, the union must have been cogent enough then for the Icelandic government to set a date at the end of the summer to have a referendum on whether to seek statehood. The term for this is accession, not merger, for an empire-scale union such as the U.S. or E.U. contains semi-sovereign states rather than co-scale and co-equal “partners.” By implication, to liken a state in one such union to another entire union is to make a category mistake that can be thought of in historical terms as making the claim that a kingdom is equivalent to an empire (of kingdoms). Both the E.U. and U.S. are federations composed of early-modern scale kingdoms and republics.[1] This is not so in the cases of Mexico and Canada. In fact, the U.S. has an open invitation for Canada’s accession (rather than merger).[2] People who presume that it was arrogant for the U.S. founders to invite Canada to accede as a state forget that the U.S. was formed by sovereign countries that became semi-sovereign states.

As the E.U. expands, it too draws on sovereign countries to become states through the process of accession (rather than merger). The planned referendum in Iceland was not on a merger of two countries. Iceland had submitted to the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, an application for accession in 2009, but then unilaterally halted the process in 2015 even though 11 of the 33 “chapters” had been completed. As a sovereign nation, Iceland could indeed unilaterally stop the process, and when the Icelandic government announced the date for the upcoming referendum, the Commission could at most welcome the announcement. In doing so, a spokesman for the Commission said, “Iceland is a close and valued partner of the E.U. . . . Our cooperation is already strong and wide-ranging and we look forward to continuing and further strengthening our close cooperation with the Icelandic authorities.”[3] The word partner connotes distance as in the sense that Iceland is a sovereign country rather than an E.U. state. The word is problematic, however, in that it implies an equivalency. Even just in Iceland having submitted an application, a lack of equivalency is inherent to the relationship. Moreover, accession itself lacks equivalency because Iceland could become a state in the E.U., and no state is an equal partner with the union in which the state is a part, for a part and a whole cannot be equivalent.

The same held in the case of the U.S., which was formed first as a military alliance and then as a confederation of sovereign countries, and only on March 4, 1789 as a modern (i.e., dual sovereignty) federation of semi-sovereign states and semi-sovereign federal governmental institutions. In other words, the Articles of Confederation, which was ratified in 1781, was for a union of sovereign countries. Therefore, just as the U.S. was formed in 1776 (and continuing under the Articles) by sovereign countries, so too was the E.U. formed by sovereign countries. In both cases, sovereign countries, such as Iceland in 2026, because semi-sovereign states and thus parts of political unions. Accession itself is a distinctly political process.

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1. See Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Trans-Atlantic Comparisons (Seattle: Amazon, 2017)
2. Because Canada has expanded West since the 18^th century, Canada would most likely accede as three or four U.S. states rather than just one.
3. Gregoire Lory, “Iceland Plans August Referendum on Resuming EU Membership Negotiations,” Euronews.com, 3 March, 2026.

The European Commission: An Aggregate of the States?

The European Union’s governmental institutions are not limited to the European Council and the Council of Ministers, both of which represent the state governments directly at the federal level. Nor, moreover, is the E.U. an aggregation of its states. In foreign affairs, for example, the E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, can speak and take decisions on the basis of consensus rather than the unanimous consent of state-level officials being required. Therefore, the Von der Leyen administration did not overreach in taking the “decision to send the Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Suica, as an observer to the first former gathering of the United States President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace” on 19 February, 2026.[1] That Suica was merely an observer suggests that the objecting state officials were overreacting as well as misconstruing the E.U. as a confederation of sovereign states.

The Board of Peace originated at the very least in part to guide the real-estate redevelopment in Gaza. Accordingly, a spokesperson at the Commission explained the E.U.’s interest as follows: “Our participation is really to be seen in the context of our long-standing commitment to the implementation of the ceasefire in Gaza, as well as our commitment to take part in international efforts when it comes to the recovery and reconstruction of Gaza. We do believe that we need to be at the table, otherwise we will simply be a payer and not a player.”[2] E.U. was at the time “the biggest donor of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, with a total contribution of €1.65 billion to the territories” since Israel’s genocide began.[3] Also, as many as 14 of the E.U.’s 27 states sent their own representatives to the meeting. Therefore, objections by a handful of states to the E.U.’s observer can be relegated as overblown and unjustified, and likely fueled in actuality by ideological objections to the U.S. federal president. That most of the state representatives at the meeting were diplomats or civil servants whereas the E.U. observer was a “political representative” is a petty objection, and thus likely a political subterfuge overlaying anti-American or anti-Trump resentment or jealousy. That the same people who objected to the “political representative” would likely insist that the E.U. was not a political union also points to a hidden agenda.

Regarding the E.U.’s executive branch itself, the European Commission, a state official of France, Jean-Noel Barrot, erroneously claimed that the approval of the E.U.’s state governments was required for the Commission to speak out or act in foreign policy. Slovenia’s Tanja Fajon even insisted that unanimous approval was necessary.[4] Such a view essentially places the Commission as subordinate to the Council of Ministers and ignores any lawful influence that the European Parliament might have with the Commission. The stances of the two state officials treat the E.U. as if it were a confederation—a mere aggregation of fully-sovereign states—rather than a modern federation wherein governmental sovereignty is “dual” rather than unitary.

To be sure, the European Council and the Council of the E.U. play a role in the setting of the E.U.’s foreign policy, and in those councils the principle of unanimity applies, but those two councils are not the exclusive setters of such policy; any executive branch has some leeway, and sending an observer to a meeting is hardly a substantive foreign policy, especially given the E.U.’s direct involvement in Gaza. Sending an observer can hardly be interpreted as an overreach in need of a unanimous decision by the Council of Ministers.

That some state officials were so interested in subordinating the E.U.’s executive branch to the Councils, while leaving the European Parliament out completely as if E.U. citizens had not voted for distinctly federal lawmakers suggests that the state governments have too much power (given their sense of entitlement) at the federal level. Switching foreign policy to qualified-majority voting in the Councils would be more in line with the fact that the E.U.’s foreign minister can indeed speak and act on the basis of consensus and with a nod to the distinctive foreign interests of the European Union, which the Councils cannot protect because they represent the state governments, which have their own interests. In short, neither the Commission nor the E.U. itself is a mere aggregate of the policies and interests of the state governments. Retaining the principle of unanimity in the Councils invites that mistaken view and thus qualified-majority voting is more consistent with the E.U. overall. For neither the Commission nor the Parliament is subordinate to either or both of the Councils as if the E.U. were a confederation of sovereign states.

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1. Mared G. Jones, “France Says Commission Lacks ‘Mandate’ to Join Board of Peace Meeting as Brussels Remains Defiant,” Euronews.com, 19 February 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

The ECJ Castigates the Commission for Paying Off Hungary

In an opinion submitted to the European Court of Justice, which tends to follow the legal opinions the 11 Advocates General, Tamara Capeta recommended in February, 2026 to the Court that it “should annul the European Commission’s 2023 decision to disburse €10.2 billion” to the E.U. state of Hungary.[1] Capeta found that the state government had not sufficiently addressed “concerns over systemic corruption and rule of law violations” to qualify for the payment.[2] That the Commission released the payment nonetheless points to corruption at the federal level—in its executive branch in particular—and this charge against the Von der Leyen administration renders the charge against the Hungarian government rather ironic. Rule of law should apply (and be respected!) at both the federal and state levels for the E.U. to continue to be viable. This applies especially to the Commission, as it is tasked with enforcing E.U. laws, directives, and regulations as well as treaty obligations that the EU, including its state governments, have to other countries, whether they are federal unions (e.g., the U.S.) or independent states.  

The Commission’s decision to reverse itself on the payment “came just days before a crucial December 2023 EU summit, where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán threatened to veto a €50 billion aid package for Ukraine and block the start of EU accession with Kyiv.”[3] At the European Council’s meeting, “Orbán left the room for a coffee break, allowing the other 26 E.U. [states] to approve the accession talks.”[4] At “an extraordinary” Council session in February 2024, “Hungary lifted its veto on the €50 billion Ukraine support package.”[5] Some representatives in the E.U.’s parliament “suspected the E.U. [had] struck a deal with Hungary, trading unfrozen funds for Orbán’s withdrawal of his veto” even though the Commission “denied any such agreement was made.”[6] Given Orbán’s twice reversal after his state government had just received the suddenly unfrozen funds from the Commission, its denial strains credulity at best, and more realistically actually confirms the charge of sordid dealings in the Commission at the expense of E.U. law.

It is harmful enough to the federal union when a state government violates E.U. law, especially with impunity; for a federal-level governmental institution to shirk federal law says in effect that the E.U. does not respect its own law (so why then should state officials respect it?). Presumably either the Commission and/or one or more of the states could have made a deal with Orbán that did not involve violating E.U. rule-of-law.

Moreover, occasioning the unlawful deal is the staying power of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the EU. A minimum of nine states was at the time sufficient for the federal program of “enhanced cooperation” to be invoked, in which case blocs of states could move forward in being subject to a federal law or regulation even though one or more state would still be in opposition but not to be subject to the law. Of course, this program could not apply to votes on whether to annex another state to the Union, and to decisions on whether to spend E.U. funds on other countries, including Ukraine because on such matters, the E.U. itself must either act as one or not act. So a so-called “multiple-speed” E.U. is not a complete answer to the basic problem of applying the principle of unanimity to 27 (and potentially more!) states.

Rather than relying primarily on its state governments for defense and even foreign policy, the E.U. could look to the U.S., which has both a federal military and state armies (called militias). That the federal president can temporarily call upon such armies even if their respective state presidents refuse does not mean that those armies are federal. Such an arrangement, which the E.U. did not have at least as of 2026, is consistent with the underlying dual-sovereignty of both the federal and state governments (or, for the ideologically squeamish, governmental institutions). The augmented federal powers would need to be decided by qualified-majority voting in the Councils that represent the state governments at the federal level; otherwise, no such partial transfer of governmental sovereignty could take place. Being politically unwilling to “step up to the (baseball) plate and bat,” federal and state officials should not collude in deal-making in ways that violate federal laws, lest the Union itself head down a slope wherein federal law has no force. This is especially of value in a world in which military aggressors such as Russia and Israel were wantonly violating international law with impunity; E.U. and U.S. jurisprudence, which is not international, and the corresponding duties at both federal and state levels of government, is not as self-evidently strong as Europeans and Americans may have been assuming in as invasions and genocides elsewhere were going on with impunity internationally.

On a visit to Florida at the time, I was shocked at the extent of brazen refusals by police employees of at least two cities to enforce criminal law—some employees even denying the existence of whole statutes, and the subordinates’ respective managers refused to hold those employees accountable. I was so stunned by the sheer brazenness of the lies that I decided not to move to that U.S. state. The rule of law cannot be assumed as though it castigates sordid personal discretion automatically; rather, law depends on humans to enforce it with integrity. This is why the international “laws” that Putin and Netanyahu were able to violate with such violence for years may not even count as law, for the enforcement-mechanism was entirely lacking de jure et de facto. “Law” without this cannot be counted as law.

The obligation of government officials to recognize and enforce rather than deny the very existence statutory law should be a given. It follows that federal officials in the Commission should not have been permitted to ignore the relevant federal law when it became an obstacle to making political deals with Hungarian state officials. If getting those state officials on board with a political priority of the Commission was so important, then the Commission could alternatively have pressured the states to reduce or end outright the application of the principle of unanimity in the two federal councils that represent state officials directly at the federal level, at least with respect to foreign policy and defense and even on the matter of “enlargement” (i.e., annexing future states). If qualified-majority is too low, then perhaps 75% of the states could be used as a benchmark for such very important policy decisions. The QMV-unanimity distinction is a false dichotomy, given the daylight available between the two voting methods. If one state can hold an entire Union back, then something is wrong with that federal system, and violating federal law to get around that problem is at best a short-sighted, expedient solution. In other words, the E.U.’s federal system has been suffering, at least as of 2026, from a much more serious problem than (collusive) corruption in the Commission and the Hungarian government.

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1. Sandor Zsiros, “E.U. Court Challenges Controversial €10.2bn Payment to Hungary,” Euronews.com, February 12, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

A Big-State Governor Usurps the Role of the European Council's President

The governor of a large state, if speaking for the E.U., risks not only undercutting federal officials who can speak for the E.U., but also subtly orienting federal policy in the interest of that state rather than the entire union. It is important, therefore, that the president of the European Council be tasked with speaking publicly for the Council, rather than usurped.

On December 19, 2025, the president of the E.U. state of France stood at the European Council podium to announce, presumably speaking for the Council, “Either a robust and lasting peace is reached, with the required (security) guarantees, or we will need in the weeks ahead to find ways for Europeans to re-engage in a fulsome dialogue with Russia, and in complete transparency.”[1] Because Macron was not the chair, or president, of the European Council, it is impossible to know whether he is expressing his own opinion or that of the Council; his decision to make the announcement rather than defer to the Council’s president thus weakened the Council. President Putin of Russia had grounds to dismiss Macron’s statement direct talks between Europe will be needed if the American peace proposal falters. Simply put, Macron did not have standing to speak for Europe in terms of talks. Alternatively, he could have stated that his E.U. state would try to have direct talks with Putin, but the downside to that is that Putin could play the E.U. state governments against each other. Hence distinctively E.U. foreign policy would be worthwhile.

At the end of December, 2025, European Commission President Von der Leyen was on firmer ground in insisting that Ukraine’s accession to the European Union as a state was “a key component” of the security guarantees that Ukraine was then seeking as part of a deal with Russia. According to Von der Leyen, who unlike Macron can speak for the E.U., accession represents “a key security guarantee in its own right.”[2] Even though accession requires unanimity in the European Council, I contend that there is value in having a federal official speak for the E.U. on Ukraine becoming a state in the Union. For one thing, it provides a vision which the leaders in the state governments can either accept or reject. For another, Putin can count on Von der Leyen’s statement as coming from the E.U. itself, rather than just from a state government, whether pro or con on Ukraine entering the Union.

In short, the difference between Macron’s opportunism and Von der Leyen’s attempt to bolster Ukraine’s chances in becoming a state is significant. That the state governments hold so much power in the E.U.’s federal system renders making space for E.U. officials especially important, lest one or two big states essentially take over the Union in pursuit of their own geo-political interests. The E.U. has been vulnerable to this because it was, even in 2025, too bottom-heavy.

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1. Michel Rose, “Macron Says Europe Will Need to Engage with Putin If U.S. Peace Talks Fail,” Reuters.com, December 19, 2025.
2. Maria Tadeo, “Von der Leyen Signals Push for Ukraine’s E.U. Accession as Russia Derails Talks with Attack Claim,” Euronews.com, December 30, 2025.

Homelessness in the E.U.: Rectifying a Right

In late 2025, the E.U. Commission presented its first European Affordable Housing Plan. The E.U.’s involvement in “social housing,” which translates into federal funds being used to provide housing beyond homeless shelters for people who cannot afford to house themselves, implies that the programs of the states had been insufficient. The U.S. could take a lesson from the Commission’s plan, which is cleverly multi-pronged in tackling the societal problem. Both in the E.U. and U.S., both federal and state funds were needed even in 2025 when neither economy was in recession. It is better to increase the supply of affordable housing when times are good than when unemployment is soaring. This is an exception in the E.U. to the usual pattern wherein the E.U. increases its competencies, or enumerated powers, in periods of one crisis or another. Russia’s multi-year invasion of Ukraine, which borders the E.U., and the Union’s foreign and defense activity demonstrate how European integration has typically been enhanced by crisis rather than when times are good.

Homeless in both the E.U. and U.S. was a problem in 2024. In its “9^th Overview on Housing Exclusion” in 2024, Feantsa estimated a total of 1,287,000 people “rough sleeping, staying in night shelters, or temporary accommodation” in the European Union.[1] According to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, 771,400 people were homeless in January, 2024—an increase of 118,300 from 2023.[2] The total population of the E.U. at the end of 2024 was estimated at 450.4 million, and that of the U.S. was 341.8 million (whereas the respective states tended to cluster in the tens of millions). That works out to .0028% and .0023%, respectively. This may come as a surprise because in Europe, housing is more likely to be viewed as a right than in the United States.

Dan Jorgensen, the E.U. Commissioner for Energy and Housing (and the first such commissioner in E.U. history), said at the time of the Commission’s presentation of its proposal, “Housing is not just a commodity; it is a fundamental right. We must mobilise every euro and do everything in our power to make sure that in Europe everyone can afford a decent place to call home.”[3] In the U.S., the lax regulations on investor-speculators on houses, condos, and even apartment buildings evince a commodities-orientation to residential real-estate, whereas in the E.U. the homelessness problem may have more to do with insufficient supply rather than the salience of a political ideology favoring business or disfavoring the poor as deserving their plight.

I contend that permanent housing as a right is a better political ideology than is the business-commodity view of housing units both because being homeless takes such a terrible toll of the human psyche and because society should be obligated via the market or else the state to supply permanent housing because economic interdependence is endemic to a society as opposed to Hobbes’ state of nature, where life is short and brutish. Put another way, being in the state of nature in terms of housing while being in a society does not work because a society and a state of nature are mutually exclusive. 

It is inconsistent to insert, especially within city and even a town, even a slice of Hobbes' state of nature, whether in the form of sociopathic violent gangs for which law in south Chicago in Illinois is wholly disrespected, or homeless individuals in a town or city. Having the state of nature within a society is not like Yin being in Yang, and vice versa, in Chinese philosophy; rather, the state of nature inside a society contradicts the necessity that Kant argued is inherent to law, whether public or moral law. Furthermore, to tolerate homelessness within a society is like inserting a vice like vengeance into omnibenevolence—a point that Nietzsche makes in claiming that the Abrahamic deity is “dead” in the sense of having been discredited by being both vengeful and perfectly benevolent, which are incompatible with each other. Even though the effort to rid humans of vengeance is laudable, the cost in assigning the vice to God was surprisingly overlooked, and still is. Similarly, the utter incompatibility of homelessness and society is seldom recognized. 

By the end of 2025, it was well beyond time for the E.U.’s Commission to come up with a plan to rid the Union once and for all of the sordid plight of homelessness. Ridding Europeans of the constant, underlying existential angst that does not leave a mind that is subtly aware that homelessness could occur in the future can be expected to result in happier, more relaxed people and thus less interpersonal strife. It is indeed realistic that the E.U., together with the member-states, could together, as a shared competency, eliminate  the problem of homelessness in 2026 by relaxing state rules on whom can receive housing assistance (i.e., not just the very poor), using federal “European Social Housing” funds to get homeless people immediately into at least short-term housing (even hotels), and incentivizing the construction of more housing units to meet the demand, and even reducing housing prices and rents for everyone. The sordid commodity perspective in America would be exposed as severely flawed, as it reflects elected officials across that Union being in the campaign-financing pockets of private finance and business rather than looking out for, or protecting, all constituents from the horrible experience of being homeless. Just in virtue of being a human being—how we are hard-wired and how vulnerable the human brain or mind is to the incapacitating harm from severe, existential stress—something beyond short-term housing should be ensured unconditionally. How a human mind reacts to being homeless ought to justify the unconditional aspect, as those who do not work must wander around at all times and be subject to theft is a callous ideological belief.

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1. “What is Homelessness,” Feantsa, Feantsa.org (accessed 16 December 2025).
2. Lisa McKay and Kenneth Cowles, “Who Is Homeless in the United States? A 2025 Update,” The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, March 14, 2025.
3. Vincenzo Genovese, “EU to Revise State Aid Rules to Address bloc-wide Housing Crisis,” Euronews.com, 16 December 2025.

On the E.U.’s Mercosur Deal: State Obstructionism

After 25 years negotiating with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the E.U.’s Commission sought to secure passage of the massive trade-deal in the European Council and the Parliament by the end of 2025. Even though the vote is by qualified-majority voting rather than unanimity in both chambers, one state that was against the treaty sought to delay the vote in the Council, which represents states rather than E.U. citizens. The Commission rightly pushed back on the tactic because for one state in opposition to be able to put off a vote is tantamount to having a veto, which a mechanism only for E.U. competencies that are subject to unanimous approval in the Council.

Due to concerns of possible unfair competition voiced by farmers in the E.U. state of France, that state’s government was “demanding strong safeguards to suspend tariff reductions if imports disrupt EU markets, so called ‘reciprocity clauses’ that align Mercosur’s environmental and agricultural standards with EU standards, and tougher EU sanitary and phytosanitary controls.”[1] Without a veto, making a demand would be too strong, and even presumptuous. So too is the statement that was made by the office of the state’s prime minister’s office: “While a Mercosur summit is scheduled for 20 December, It is clear that . . . the conditions are not in place for any vote by the EU Council on authorizing the signing of the agreement.”[2] This sounds a lot like a statement that the vote could not take place.

The Commission’s deputy chief spokesperson, Olof Gill, cut down the state’s claim that conditions were not in place. In fact, Gill told reporters that in “the view of the Commission signing the deal now is a matter of crucial importance economically, diplomatically, and geopolitically, but also in terms of our credibility on the global stage.”[3] The Parliament was due to vote the next day on a safeguard amendment, with some representatives set to add an amendment on reciprocity. With half of the month of December ahead, the only condition relevant to there being a vote in the European Council was whether the Parliament would vote in favor of the treaty. Whether or not the safeguard and reciprocity amendments pass in the Parliament is a legitimate concern to whether the state of France votes for or against the treaty in the Council, but whether the amendments pass should not pertain to whether the Council holds a vote. In short, the government of France was overreaching even if only in its rhetoric.

The problem of too many E.U. exclusive and shared enumerated competencies, including changes to the E.U.’s basic law, being subject to unanimity in the Council and thus contingent on no state wielding its veto in that upper chamber was already hampering the E.U., especially in the areas of foreign and defense policy even as Russia was invading Ukraine; the E.U. didn’t need the Council to set a precedent of delaying or cancelling a vote just because a state in opposition objects even to there being a vote. Such a precedent is as if each state would have a veto on matters subject to qualified-majority voting rather than unanimity. Even use of language that connotes or implies that the state of France could unilaterally control the European Council is troubling, given the power that the state governments continued to have at the federal level through the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Put another way, the E.U. was already “state-heavy” in terms of obstruction at the federal level; the E.U. could least afford a state in opposition deciding whether conditions for a vote in either of the councils have been met. Moreover, focusing too much on individual pieces of legislation without keeping an eye out for any negative impact on the federal system itself from how the legislative process is being carried out is short-sighted.

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1. Peggy Corlin, “European Commission Turns Up Pressure on France over Mercosur,” Euronews.com, 15 December 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

The E.U.: A Political Union

As if having elected representatives and political parties in the European Parliament were not enough evidence that the E.U. has been a political union all along, the distinctly political role of the E.U. with regard to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion renders the E.U. political not merely institutionally in regard to representative democracy, which is a political rather than an economic system. Also, that the European Commission has exclusive competency on trade does not eclipse the union’s distinctly political activity. That the E.U. agreed to move forward informally with Ukraine’s accession request even though the state of Hungary was formally vetoing the accession demonstrates a political function or role of the European Union.

In December, 2025, the E.U. announced that it had “drawn up an action plan” for Ukraine to meet accession standards “despite official talks being blocked by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.”[1] To be sure, for one state to wield its veto at the federal level when all of the other states are opposed is arguably a case of an abuse of the informal consensus model; after all, it was not as though Ukraine’s accession would threaten the vital interests of the state of Hungary. That veto-power of the states in the European Council and the Council of Ministers on E.U. competencies (i.e., enumerated powers) is itself a misplaced harbinger of a confederal system of government, wherein the states retain all governmental sovereignty, rather than modern federalism, wherein competencies, or governmental sovereignty, are divided between federal and state governmental institutions. So the Commission was entirely justified in working informally to find a political means by which the government of Ukraine could get itself up to the anti-corruption, pro-democratic standards of the E.U. (even though Bulgaria’s government collapsed that December due to mass protests against corruption in that government/administration).

The E.U.’s ten-point plan for Ukraine to follow in order to be assessed at a later date, perhaps after Orbán’s upcoming election, is inherently political (rather than economic) because the Commission framed the accession as “essential” to providing Ukraine “with future security guarantees.”[2] The Union’s Enlargement Commissioner, Marta Kos, said at the time of the announcement that Ukraine’s accession is “the political arm of the European security guarantee for Ukraine” and would be “central to make any peace settlement sustainable.”[3] The E.U.’s executive branch was thus acting in a political capacity. Thus the E.U. is a political union even at its distinctly federal level (i.e., apart from any institutional involvement of the state governments at the federal level).

Put another way, because the E.U. executive branch used it 10-point plan to “bypass Hungary’s political veto on the official opening of accession negotiations,” the E.U. itself was carrying out a distinctly political function. It is difficult to argue that the E.U. was not a political union at the time, yet operated politically even apart from any formal involvement of the state governments at the federal level. Yet ideological denial was still strong enough for many E.U. citizens to deny not only that the E.U. is a political union, but that also that it has a federal system even though having states is sufficient for the E.U. to have a federal system. Underneath the antiquated state-veto lies the Euroskeptic and anti-American political ideologies that have been holding the E.U. back not only from being able to enlarge, but also to adequately aid Ukraine militarily through years of it being invaded by Russia.

1. Mared G. Jones, “EU and Ukraine Agree 10-Point Plan to Speed Up Kyiv’s Accession Bid Despite Hungary’s Veto,” 11 December, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid. Italics added.