Hungary’s Delusion of Sovereignty

On October 3, 2024, The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, filed a legal complaint against the E.U. state of Hungary with the E.U.’s judicial branch—the high court of which being the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The Commission had won a case against the state and recently subtracted the amount of fine issued by the court from the federal money set to go to the state because the Hungarian government was refusing to recognize the verdict. Like Britain before it had seceded from the Union, Hungary was operating under the incorrect premise that it still enjoyed full sovereignty even though every state delegates some of its governmental sovereignty to the Union in becoming a state thereof. In the case of Hungary, the state law at issue in 2024 had in its very name the fundamental problem out of which the state’s disputes with the E.U. were emanating.

 In its written statement, the Commission describes Hungary’s “contentious act,” which “establishes the so-called Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) to investigate people and organizations suspected of undermining the country’s ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘constitutional identity.’”[1] Assisted by the state’s secret police, the SPO could legally “collect information on individuals or groups that receive funding from abroad and are perceived to influence the democratic debate and electoral processes ‘in the interest of another state’ or ‘foreign organ,’ meaning a non-state actor.[2] Undue political influence from outside the E.U. state could presumably come from another state in the Union or from outside of it. Treating both the same involves making the dubious claim that for one state or people therein to buy political advertising or contribute to a political campaign in another state is anti-democratic.

Furthermore, that such interstate political influence somehow violates Hungary’s sovereignty ignores the fact that every state in the Union has given up some governmental sovereignty even just for qualified majority voting to be allowed at the federal level in the Parliament, the European Council, and the Council of the European Union. Only if every E.U. law, directive, and regulation required the unanimous consent of the state governments, which could legally ignore rulings by the ECJ would the Union be composed of sovereign states, such as the U.S. was under its initial Articles of Confederation from 1777 to 1789.

The claim of Hungary’s government that its sovereignty is violated by political influence from elsewhere in the Union can be answered by pointing out that the state is no longer in fact sovereign anyway because it is in a Union whose federal system rests on dual-sovereignty. Put another way, the states have consolidated politically to an extent for their common good, which includes being able to have more political weight in the world, so interstate political influence can be viewed as part of that intermingling that is actually a good thing for such a federal system. If states are too heterogenous (i.e., different), then achieving united action at the federal level is very difficult. The combined sovereignties that instantiate federal sovereignty is actually partly Hungary’s, so interstate influence does not necessarily violate Hungary’s sovereignty.

Back in February of 2024, the Commission cited “the principle of democracy, the right to private life, the protection of personal data, freedom of expression, information and association, and the presumption of innocence, among others,” as being violated by the state of Hungary presumably because they threaten the state government’s sovereignty.[3] More accurately, they may have been a threat to Viktor Orbán’s party remaining in power in Hungary. The principles of liberty and democracy that the Commission was arguing that the Hungarian government was violating can be viewed as competencies, or domains of authority, that both federal and state governmental institutions could legally act on. Put another way, the Commission was well within its rights to protect democracy at the state level. In the U.S., the executive branch had acted to protect democracy at the state level, as in enforcing civil rights with regard to the access of Black people to schools and voting. Alabama could hardly say that its sovereignty was being violated because the federal institutions had the authority to enforce democracy in the United States.

The very name of Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Office is wrong, for the state had delegated some of its sovereignty when it joined the European Union. Just days after the Commission announced that it was taking the state of Hungary to court at the federal level (i.e., at the ECJ), the Hungarian trade minister voted no in a vote taken at the Council of the EU on whether the EU should put tarriffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Had the measure passed the Council, Hungary would have had to recognize the tarriffs as valid within the state. This alone means that Hungary had given up some governmental sovereignty when it acceded to the E.U. as a state.  As it happened, too many votes were abstentions, so there was no final vote either way. So the Commission used its exclusive authority, or competency, in commercial law and policy to enact the tarriffs.  So it is not just qualified majority voting in which the E.U.'s state governments were no longer fully sovereign states. That the E.U. has shared and exclusive competencies, or domains in which it can enact laws and regulations, means that the state governments no longer were fully sovereign. Hungary's "National Sovereignty Law" was thus not only contrary to a basic EU value (and norm), but also a misnomer that gives people the wrong idea concerning Hungary in the E.U. 

To pretend to be sovereign still, such as by ignoring a negative verdict by the ECJ, undermines the sovereignty that Hungary and the other states delegated to the Union, and thus in a way their own sovereignty too because the state governments play a significant role at the federal level not only in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., but also in nominating commissioners for the College in the Commission. In this respect, the state government of Hungary was compromising a part of its sovereignty—that which had been combined with parts of the respective sovereignties of the other states. By making interstate political influence illegal in Hungary, Orbán failed to recognize that the sovereignty at the federal-level has a legitimate interest in there being at least some interstate harmonization, and legally includes protection of the basic values of the Union, such as democracy and liberty. If as I suspect he believed that Hungary was still fully sovereign as a country, then it had no business being a state in the European Union. Britain seceded for this reason—David Cameron, as prime minister, had said that the E.U. was just one of the networks that the UK was in. Similarly, Orbán’s Sovereignty Protection Office explicitly belies or undermines Hungary’s claim to be a state in the Union of states. The Union would be better off without that internal contradiction.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Brussels Takes Hungary to Court over Its Controversial ‘National Sovereignty’ Law,” Euronews.com, October 3, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

A Teachable Moment for Americans: Solidarity as a Shared Value in European Identity

Speaking at the Schloss Bellevue palace in Berlin, President Joachim Gauck used a televised speech in February 2013 to make the case for more European integration. At the time, calling for “more Europe” in terms of shifting still more governmental sovereignty from the state governments to that of the Union was not a very popular task. Further limiting the power of his message is the fact that the German presidency is largely ceremonial , unlike the office of governor in an American state. Nevertheless, Gauck was determined to put the contemporary condition of the “European project” in favorable perspective. The most striking—and even effective—aspect of his speech is his repeated references to “European citizens.” Had he used “Germans” instead, he would have subtly undercut his own message. The prime minister of the E.U. state of Britain at the time would never have used the term, "European citizens." Nor would he have agreed with the E.U. value of solidarity and especially the ensuing social policy. The American media tended to follow suit, rather than covering the otherness of the other—the European Union as having a societal political value that has been very recessive in the United States. In this regard, I contend, the American media companies let down the American people, who would have stood to benefit from the wider perspective that would have enriched American political debates from the tyranny of the hegemonic value ensconced in American culture: that of the self-sustaining individual ideally in the state of nature, economically speaking. Reporting on the principle of solidarity would have given Americans the acccurate picture of the E.U. as being more than just a trading "bloc." This point in turn could have resulted in Americans coming to the realization that the E.U. is equivalent to the U.S.—both being empire-scale federal systems wherein governmental sovereignty is split.

Acknowledging the fiscal and structural imbalances that gave rise to the debt crisis in several E.U. states  and the problems entailed in “patching up” the problems by emergency measures, Gauck nonetheless pointed to non-economic elements of the European project that were also in crisis. “It is also a crisis of confidence in Europe as a political project. This is not just a struggle for our currency; we are struggling with an internal quandary too.”[1] This problem was predicated on the point that the strengthening of a European identity comes out of a recognition of shared values, rather than in differentiation from other cultures outside of Europe.

Too often, Europeans have artificially restricted their values to their particular state. Typically, Europeans would preface a self-referential remark with, “In my country,” only to describe a custom or value that is by no means limited to, distinctive in, one particular E.U. state. Even in saying “more Europe means a European Germany,” Gauck risked falling into this trap, at least in terms of keeping Europe as secondary. More in line with his thesis would have been the expression, more Europe means more European. More European in turn means more of a consciousness of values that European citizens (and residents) share, whether or not people in Africa, Asia, or America happen to esteem those values too. So the question facing European citizens is this: What values do you share?

From an American perspective, the salience of the value of solidarity held by Europeans would be so obvious, were it made transparent by the American media, because solidarity has been such a recessive value in the United States. Ironically, World War II was perhaps the last time solidarity in terms of “we’re all in it together” was explicitly pushed and acknowledged in America. Even then, the value was more in terms of sacrificing for a common purpose rather than seeing to it that the most vulnerable among us do not fall through the cracks in terms of sustenance. In Europe, solidarity has more of a social welfare quality.

Moreover, whereas Americans have tended to apply human rights only to the harm caused by tyrants abroad, Europeans have tended naturally to extend to the value to covering the basic sustenance rights of one’s own fellow citizens as well. The shift needed for a stronger European identity has included becoming aware of the duty to apply the value domestically to other Europeans rather than merely to people in one’s own state, or “country.” By implication, “European Germans” would feel solidarity with starving “European Greeks.” This element twas largely missing from the austerity response of E.U. finance ministers to the debt crisis from 2010 to 2012. So even in the E.U., the principle can succumb to greed and interstate clashes of economic interests. I submit, therefore, that “more Europe” involves not only a stronger value-fueled-identity, but also more fiscal redistribution at the federal, or E.U., level. Put another way, Europeans surely have more shared values than that of austerity. It is a pity that the American media failed to capture this point in reporting on Greek austerity, which more closely resonates with the values dominant in the U.S.

1. Ian Johnson, “German President Joachim Gauck Uses Major Speech to Call For “More Europe,” DW, February 22, 2013.

Van Rompuy as the European Council's First Extended-Term President

“In a sense, Europe seemed to be living down to expectations. Earlier, the foreign minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, warned against a 'minimalist solution' that would reduce the European Union’s 'opportunity to have a clear voice in the world.'"  Olivier Ferrand, president of Terra Nova, a center-left research institute in France, said, “It is quite astounding. . . . It is jaw-dropping. It is the end of ambition for the E.U. — really disappointing.”

I think these are rather extreme positions on the selection of Herman Van Rompuy on November 19, 2009 as the first non-rotated president of the European Council.  Moreover, I don’t think the E.U. is going the way of the dinasaur just because Van Rompuy was not well known at the time of his selection.  He has written six books, is a writer of Japanese poems, has consensus-skills, and seems humble enough.  Would popular election have yielded a better candidate? As the election would have been E.U.-wide, it is doubtful that a high proportion of the voters would have been sufficiently familiar with him to make an informed decision. 

The New York Times continues, “The deal that produced the two choices emerged as a result of backroom negotiations among leaders jockeying for future and more important economic portfolios that could be more powerful in the enlarged European Union, which is still more of an economic union than a political one and looks to remain so.”  However, the E.U. includes a popularly-elected Parliament. Is a parliament not political? Is a parliament not a government body?  Perhaps, moreover, we should simply say that transfers of sovereignty are now economic in nature.

One might ask: who would have a vested interest in perpetrating such a subterfuge wherein governmental institutions, whether intergovernmental (e.g., the European Council) or national (e.g., the E.U. Parliament) are to be portrayed as solely economic in nature? According to The New York Times,  “The leaders of Europe’s most powerful countries, France and Germany, did not want to be overshadowed. Nor apparently did their foreign ministers.”   After the European Council elected Van Rompuy, Gordon Brown, the then-current British Prime Minister who had been pushing for Tony Blair (his precursor), told reporters that the posts are only ceremonial anyway since the state governments are still in control.  However, is Van Rompuy's role in presiding over the European Council merely for show? Is there not power in chairing a political institution? Furthermore, are the heads of the state governments in charge of the E.U. Commission, the E.U. Parliament, and the European Court of Justice? Even within the European Council where the governors of the states sit, qualified majority voting on most issues means that any given state government is not in control. We can conclude that E.U. level officials are not mere gloss on a window, and that the member states have indeed transferred some of their governmental sovereignty to the E.U. Government. Lest is be thought otherwise--that the E.U. does not have a government, there is a saying in English: If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and swims like a duck, odds are it is a duck.  It might be useful to ask why it is in the interest of some that the obvious conclusion be withheld.

My only caveat concerning the selection of Van Rompuy is that the consensus maker was not the sort to make transparent the "duck" subterfuge and denial, which had gone unchecked at the expense of greater European integration. In other words, the E.U. needs its own leaders who can garnish attention for the E.U. itself (i.e., apart from its state governments) because if integration falters, the danger will be dissolution unless or until more governmental sovereignty is transferred to the E.U. As for Van Rompuy's low name recognition outside Belgium at the time of his selection, let’s not forget that few, if any, presidents of the U.S. Senate (the Vice President of the U.S.) have been known at the beginning of their respective terms. Of course, outside of breaking tie votes, the president of the U.S. Senate (whose members are the member states of the union) is more ceremonial than is the president of the European Council.  In fact, senators regularly stand in for the presiding officer when the U.S. Senate is in session, whereas Van Rompuy himself presides over sessions of the European Council.  Also, the European Council is possibly more powerful among E.U. governmental institutions than the U.S. Senate is in the U.S. This is probably so because the state governments in the E.U. have more power at the E.U. level than the American state governments do in the U.S. This could explain why Van Rompuy's position, the President of the European Council, is powerful (because the Council he chairs is powerful) even if Van Rompuy had been an unknown outside of Belgium and was not an attention-getter in the media (e.g., unlike Tony Blair).

Source:

Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger, "Low-Profile Leaders Chosen for Top European Posts," The New York Times, November 19, 2009.

The E.U.: The Growth Union

In relying only on austerity and cheap bailout loans, the German-led strategy has proffered a false sense of European integration in the E.U. Even as expanding the bailout funds to roughly 800 billion euros and strengthening the E.U.’s means of enforcing limits on state deficits and debt are along the line of continued incremental shifts of governmental sovereignty from the state governments to that of the E.U., the related austerity (and recession) sparked a populist backlash in several states. At the state level (and this level has a major role at the E.U. level—unlike in the U.S.), the state-rights (i.e., anti-E.U.) parties have been the beneficiaries even if they could not gain outright majorities. The National Front in the state of France is an obvious example, as it captured 18% of the vote in the run up to the general election in 2012.  Other things equal, such a spike translates into brakes on further European integration in the medium term.

Different takes on the E.U. and austerity: Sarkozy, Hollande, and Le Pen of France    NYT

The full essay is in Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.