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.

---

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.

On Britain’s Possible Accession after Seceding from the Union

Secession is a nasty business. Both Britain and South Carolina learned that lesson. Whereas the American member-state failed to secede from the U.S., Britain succeeded in seceding from the E.U. The parallelism presented here is no accident, for just as the U.S. federal system has been charactered by dual sovereignty—both the Union and the members having at least some governmental sovereignty—so too does the E.U.’s federal system. In deciding whether or not they want Britain to become an E.U. state again, the British ought to keep this fact in mind. 

Calling states “members” makes no difference to the divided sovereignty; in neither the E.U. nor the U.S. are the states fully sovereign, and neither the E.U. nor the U.S. itself is fully sovereign at the expense of any sovereignty remaining in the so-called members (i.e., states). In contrast, to refer to countries that belong to an international organization such as NATO or the UN as “member-states” just compounds the category mistakes that have been oriented to the false assertion that the E.U. and U.S. are qualitatively different rather than of the same (empire-scale) level and political genus (modern federalism of dual sovereignty). Just as sovereign countries formed the E.U., such countries formed the U.S., which at first was nothing more than a military alliance, and then a confederation of sovereign countries, and finally, from 1789, a federal system characterized by dual sovereignty. 

That feature of (early) modern federalism was salient for the British voters who voted to secede from the Union. In fact, their refusal to accept the E.U. having any governmental sovereignty was hardly absent from their judgment to vote in favor of their state seceding from the Union. Such a fundamental divide—between the actual sovereignty held by the E.U. and the Euroskeptic denial that such sovereignty even exists—is more important than other “pros” and “cons” that the British voters considered in voting on secession. So it is unfortunate that after Britain seceded, the question of whether the state should once again become a state has been dominated by “pros” and “cons” without giving much attention to the more fundamental matter of sovereignty.

In late September, 2026, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham “told a Labour Party conference that he would present ‘options’” concerning the relationship between the former E.U. state and the European Union.[1] He told his group’s delegates, “We could stay as we are. We could look at what George Osborne has said about a customs union, we could look at what the Liberal Democrats said about the (EU) single market, or we could go all the way.”[2] He went on to say, “We have to look at what is doable and what would be the problem is (sic) and cons of each.”[3] That is to say, they would have to look at the problems associated with each option. Such a practical, piecemeal approach ignores the more fundamental problem that existed when Britain was state: namely, getting the E.U. itself wrong, meaning mis-categorizing it in its basic, or constitutional, law, as if it were, as the former prime minister, David Cameron once said, “a network to which Britain happens to belong.” International networks, or “blocs,” do not have supreme courts that can overrule state courts, a parliament whose representatives are elected by federal (i.e., E.U.) citizens, and an executive branch. Blocs do not have three branches of government that individually and together, constituting a government, have at least some sovereignty.

Fundamentally understanding what the E.U. is politically is incompatible with being in the Union. This incompatibility dwarfs the particular advantages and disadvantages of various options. That is to say, if Britain is to become a state in the Union again, acceptance of the dual sovereignty enshrined in the E.U.’s basic law should be requisite by the British government and a majority of the electorate voting in a referendum. A house divided cannot stand, especially if each state retains a veto in the European Council and the Council of Ministers; the UK could “enforce” its erroneous disavowal of any E.U. sovereignty by holding federal legislative and executive action hostage. Put another way, if a majority of the British, as well as the British legislature, approaches the E.U. as if it were an international organization or bloc, the E.U. would be executing a self-inflicted wound by allowing Britain’s accession as a state. Obviously, other options, such as a customs union, would be fine, but to be a state, the UK would need to accept the fact of dual sovereignty.  

---

1. Mared Gwyn Jones, “UK’s Burnham Floats Going ‘All the Way’ and Rejoining the EU,” Euronews.com, 30 September 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

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.

---

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.

E.U. Federalism: On SIS Counterterrorism

The FBI was created in 1908, more than a century after the U.S. federal system of dual sovereignty had gone into effect in 1989; before then, the U.S. had been a military alliance and then a confederation of sovereign countries (under the Articles of Confederation). An ahistorical American mindset tends to overlook the international beginnings of that political union, and especially that the federal system designed in the Convention in 1787 incorporated both national and international elements into the federal level. This history bears not only on the American federal system, but also in how it can be accurately compared with the E.U.’s system, which also divided governmental sovereignty between the federal and state levels, and whose federal level also contains national and international elements, institutionally. Unfortunately for the E.U., the destructive technology available in the twenty-first century, as in advanced weaponry for mass destruction, has put pressure on E.U. officials to federalize intelligence-capabilities that could otherwise take over a century, as in the case of the U.S., to be federalized from the state level. Such pressure could exacerbate fears that the E.U. might be headed like a fast train to becoming a central state, consolidated at the expense of even its distinctly federal elements—for the U.S. had arguably consolidated too much, given its empire-scale, since at least the end of World War II.

A German citizen having some association with Lebanon intentionally drove into a crowd of people at a gay Pride festival in Berlin on 26 July, 2026, killing one person and injuring at least 29 others. “Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” the state’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.[1] The suspect, who would be killed by police after a manhunt, “had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group,” according to prosecutors.[2] Even though the problem facing Europeans regarding the presence of socially-conservative Muslims in the relatively open society of the E.U. had obviously not been solved, questions also swirled regarding the all-but-absent E.U. intelligence on the culprit. I contend that the state-biased federal system itself—one that the U.S. also had for over a century at the very least— is culpable.

Even though the Schengen Information System (SIS) “enables police, border guards and customs officers . . . to access real-time alerts on wanted criminals, missing persons and individuals linked to terrorism and other serious crimes,” the alerts are state to state, and even include four countries, so culprits can slip through the cracks.[3] “According to the European Commission, counterterrorism remains primarily the responsibility of individual member states,” with the federal level being limited to facilitating “cooperation through intelligence sharing and common security tools.”[4] Even though the Schengen Information System is “the EU’s common security database,” it allows state authorities “to identify and locate terrorist suspects,” a Commission spokesperson said at the time of the attack. The donut hole in the federal system is evident in the absence of federal authorities and with authority and a “EU-wide intelligence register showing how many people are under surveillance for suspected involvement in Islamic extremist networks,” as each state applies “its own legal definitions, surveillance thresholds, and monitoring practices.”[5] This problem should be obvious, and yet the state-centric bias in the Europeans’ approach to federalism at the empire-level (i.e., consisting of kingdom-level polities) had preempted any fruitful attempts to fill in the hole at the federal level such that it’s role would be more than coordinative.

In the parlance of American history, the anti-federalists (i.e., Euroskeptics) had successfully resisted the creation of an FBI-like agency at the federal (i.e., E.U.) level. That the weapons available to the bad guys had become considerably more dangerous than eighteenth-century muskets did not matter to state officials anxious to preserve their turf from what they would view as encroachment by the Commission. It is precisely this institutional and personal (power) conflict-of-interest that keeps the E.U. from moving to a balanced system of federalism. Such a balance requires more from the federal level than merely a coordinative role, especially if the operative network (i.e. the SIS) is not even limited to E.U. states!

To be sure, a glance over to Hong Kong since China regained control of the “special administrative area” could bring fears that a centralized intelligence operation run by the E.U. could result in “no dark corners” (i.e., security cameras covering every public area) in the E.U. and federal agents too numerous to count (even if they could be recognized) in every E.U. city. Furthermore, Edward Snowdon, once a NSA contractor in the U.S. had made public just how invasive the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had been in collecting data often without warrants even on American citizens.  E.U. citizens in turn could legitimately be worried about giving their consent to the Commission being expanded to include a NSA-comparable agency. Even just in using some words here that are likely to be “picked up” by the NSA or FBI, or even the CIA even though I am an American citizen within the U.S., I empathize with the fears of E.U. citizens who may have heard of the Pride attack yet still resisted calls to strengthen the E.U.’s intelligence capabilities at the federal level.

Whereas the overly-consolidating tendency of the U.S. at the expense of its federal system inhibits the member-states from acting as a collective check on excessive power at the federal level, the E.U. states were, at least as of 2026, fully able to act as a check should the Commission be charged with doing more than cooperative work in the intelligence field. Whereas in the U.S., it was tenuously assumed that the separation of powers within the federal level would protect citizens from inappropriate intrusion by federal intelligence agencies, E.U. citizens could count not only on the Parliament and the Councils to check the Commission, but also on the state governments to leverage their direct involvement at the federal level, via the Councils, to check the federal executive branch from over-reaching. In this respect, the E.U.’s federal system is healthier, but that assumes that more power is given to the Commission to be checked! It makes little sense to trumpet the ability of the states to act as a check on the Commission on X if the power to do X is still held by the states.

At a more abstract (i.e., federal theory) level, the coordinative role of a federal level is consistent with a confederal system in which, as in the U.S.’s Articles of Confederation, all governmental sovereignty is held by the states. Having federal institutions (and officials) do more than merely coordinate state activities is consistent with “modern” federalism, meaning federalism with dual sovereignty—at least some autonomy is reserved for the states and some for the Union itself. At the empire-scale (of territory), a political union benefits from diverse laws set by its parts as well as unified laws reflecting the common good of the whole. Dual-sovereignty not only allows for both, but also gives each some governmental autonomy from the reach of the other. As of 2026 at least, reliance on the SIS can thus be viewed as founded on a category mistake—taking the E.U. to be a confederation of still-sovereign states rather than a federal system in which both E.U. and state governmental institutions have some sovereignty. Qualified-majority voting alone is enough for dual-sovereignty to be demonstrated as extant in the E.U.’s federal system; exclusive competencies of the Commission add even more support. In short, matching the federal role with the E.U. as federal rather than merely confederal would enhance the security of E.U. citizens because the E.U. would be doing more than coordinative work as state officials of various states variously decide on thresholds for intelligence, and thus on what can be shared with other states.  

---

1. Stephen Sorace, “Berlin Pride Attack Suspect Killed in Police Confrontation: AP,” Foxnews.com, July 26, 2026.
2. Anna Weglarczyk, “Berlin Pride Attack Sparks Fresh Questions over EU Intelligence Sharing,” Euronews.com, 28 July, 2026.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Italy Thwarts E.U. Lawmakers Inspecting an Off-Shore Migrant Centre

On 17 June, 2026, the E.U. formally adopted a federal law, the Return Regulation, that allows states to set up “return hubs” outside of the E.U. for the returning of migrants back to their respective countries. On 29 June, 2026, elected representative in the Greens/EFA party in the E.U.’s parliament “were prevented from carrying out a full inspection of the Italian-run migrant detention centre in Gjadër, northwest Albania—a facility at the center of one of [the E.U.’s] most debated offshore migration experiments.”[1] Even though Albanian police patrolled the perimeter of the facility, that it was Italian-run means that state employees, rather than the foreign police, who were thwarting federal lawmakers in their inspection of the facility even though a federal law rendered the facility legal under federal law. Such obstructionist behavior does not bode well for the E.U.’s federal system, wherein both the federal and state legislative bodies are legitimate.

Rep. Tineke Strik, of the Greens/EFA party, said at the time of the visit, “Today’s visit was very disappointing and disgraceful. The staff really created a lot of obstacles for us.”[2] By “staff,” she likely was referring to the Italians running the facility rather than to the Albanian police outside, for police are never referred to as staff. Also, Albania’s Interior Ministry had “previously stated that the Gjadër centre operates as Italian territory, with Albanian police responsible solely for perimeter security.”[3] So managers from the E.U. state of Italy were the problem from the perspective of the federal delegation. Rep. Strik went on to explain, “We didn’t get any data, they didn’t answer any questions, and we were not allowed to really go into the cells and see what the situation is like.”[4] That a check on the Italian staff by federal officials was needed is evident from Rep. Strik’s finding: “For the people we did manage to speak to here, it’s clear they have problems asking for asylum, and many of them don’t see any way out of a failed system.”[5] Had the elected representatives in the Parliament known on 17 June that the system was “failed,” the proposed legislation likely would have been defeated. After the visit on 29 June, it is likely that a significant number of the representatives who had voted yes were suffering “buyer’s remorse.” So, the visit and inspection served a legitimate and thus valid purpose, and the obstruction that the lawmakers encountered from the Italian staff was inappropriate.

That the visit was stymied by state employees is significant from the standpoint of the E.U.’s federal system as a whole, for one of the chief benefits of federalism is that the federal level can act as a check on abuses of power at the state level, and vice versa. Checks can and should work in both directions for liberty to be protected from tyranny, which can occur at both levels in a federal system, and for the legitimacy of both levels. In fact, that the states rather than E.U. citizens are represented in the European Council (and U.S. states are represented in the U.S. Senate, which is founded on principles of international rather than national law) gives the state level a direct check on federal encroachments on the prerogatives of the several states. That E.U. law (excluding directives, which reply on implementation by the state governments) can have direct effect anywhere on E.U. territory, including inside the Italian detention centre in Albania, acts as a check on the power of states, for they are only semi-sovereign in the E.U. Even qualified-majority voting in the European Council and the Council of Ministers can be viewed as a check on a willful governor (e.g., Viktor Orbán) of a state, whereas the principle of unanimity blocks such a check and thus should be eliminated from the E.U.’s basic legal framework.

To be sure, perhaps the E.U.’s Commission would have been more appropriate than legislators in the Parliament in inspecting the Italian facility, for the Commission is the Union’s executive branch, which sees that federal laws, directives, and regulations are implemented whether by federal agencies or state governments. In contrast, lawmakers—legislators—are forward oriented in terms of creating new law. Had a delegation from the Commission have gone and been stymied, the Commission could have recommended to the bicameral Parliament and European Council that the Return Law be amended in some way that would better protect the human rights of the migrants and require state employees to allow inspections with full disclosure of information to federal officials visiting such facilities “off-shore.” Furthermore, it would be rather unwise for candidate states such as Albania, hosting such facilities to block E.U. officials from entering the facilities run by E.U. states. Fortunately, Albania kept clear of such obstructionism, and the blame can be put squarely on the E.U. state of Italy.

Interestingly, just hours before writing this essay, I showed my book on the E.U. and U.S. federal systems, entitled Essays on Two Federal Empires, whose cover-picture depicts the star-studded flags of the E.U. and U.S. (the stars on both represent states), to a young college student newly arrived in California from Italy. She visibly bristled as if in abject denial when she looked intensely at the picture on the cover. I wonder whether the staff at the Italian facility in Albania presumed that E.U. lawmakers had no right to inspect an Italian facility even though Italy was at the time a semi-sovereign state in the E.U.’s federal system. It was obvious to me that the young woman would barely speak to me after seeing my book’s cover, so obdurate was her state of ideological denial that she may even have presumed that the arrogance was mine. Political socialization, which bears on equivalences, evidently starts early.

---

1. Rebecca Rommen, “EU Lawmakers Say They Were Blocked from Fully Inspecting Italy’s Migrant Detention Centre in Albania,” Euronews.com, 29 June, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The European Parliament: Rejecting the Council’s Proposed Budget

On 16 June, 2026, the European Parliament rejected the European Council’s proposed budget for the E.U. not only because of the proposal’s €32.8 billion budget-cut, which would reduce the six-year 2028-2034 federal budget even below that which the Commission had proposed, but also because the Council had refused to address the issue of federal-sources of revenue, which was made increasingly salient by the increasing need of funds at the federal level. In seeking to keep the federal institutions dependent on money supplied by the states, the Council, which like the U.S. Senate represents states, can be viewed exploiting a conflict of interest at the expense of the ability of the E.U. to operate even within its given mandates. Put another way, the requirement that the Parliament pass any proposed budget can be viewed as a check on the state-centric Council’s proclivity to put the interest of the parts above the whole—the individual states above the Union.

Although the proposed federal budget by the Council represented a political compromise between states that wanted “substantial cuts” and other states that “asked for an increase of the budget for agriculture and regional funds,” enough of the Parliament’s representatives elected by E.U. citizens, rather than appointed by state governments, deemed the Council’s proposal as insufficient.[1] Those representatives were oriented to adequately funding extant federal programs rather than doing the bidding even of their own states. This translates into an orientation to the common good that is implied in collection action (i.e., the whole) rather than to the interests of parts. Because the €2 trillion proposal by the Commission had already been rejected as insufficient by the Parliament, the Council’s even lower figure can be interpreted as perplexing unless the states were making a statement that any federal branch is apt to overstate the E.U.’s funding needs so the Parliament’s rejection of the Commission’s proposal could and should be ignored.

Consistent with the alleged proclivity of federal governmental institutions to over-state the E.U.’s needed funding was the refusal of the Council “to touch the issue of the budgetary correction mechanisms known as rebates, revenues coming from taxes at the E.U. level, known as own resources, and the principle of making the budget conditional on the rule of law.”[2] Refusing to increase the E.U.’s own access to revenue independent of funds contributed (and thus controlled by) the state governments was essentially a decision to maintain power over the federal institutions and thus render the Union subservient to the states. At the time, MEP Carla Tavares told the press, “We need to make progress on own resources. . . . It is difficult to achieve a strong and renewed budget with cuts and without new own resources.”[3] In other words, the common good as funded federally would be diminished by the refusal of the state-centric Council to even consider new sources of own resources at the federal level. The distinctly state-level interest in maintaining (inordinate) power in the federal system was operating at the expense of the whole. The self-interested decision of the states in the Council to refuse to make budget-outlays conditional on rule-of-law being upheld in a given state also evinces an institutional (or structural) conflict of interest because using the budget so state governments do not disassemble rule-of-law provisions is in the interest of the whole (i.e., the European Union). One state government being able to backslide could easily domino across state-lines, and as all of the delegates at the U.S. federal Convention thought in 1787, allowing dictators at the state level would be incompatible with a democratic Union. So, the refusal of the Council to address the matter of conditionality can be viewed as putting the Union at risk. Fortunately, the members of Parliament were foremost oriented to the good of the Union rather than to protecting state prerogatives even at the expense of the Union.

One of the benefits of federalism is that the federal and state levels can act as checks on each other so as to preserve liberty against the threat of tyranny. The Parliament’s role in being a check on the use of the Council by the state governments to put the interests of the state government officials and their respective governments above the interests of the whole is thus vital in safeguarding the E.U.’s federal system and thus the E.U. itself. Moreover, putting the interests of parts above the whole of which they are parts is never a good idea, for the interests of a whole are not identical to the aggregate of the interests of the parts; the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

---

1. Eleonora Vasques, “EU Parliament Rejects Member States’ First Draft of Long-Term Budget,” Euronews.com, 16 June, 2026.
2. Ibid, italics added for emphasis.
3. Ibid.

The E.U.: A Political Union

Strong’s The Antifederalist is a series of essays critical of the American federal system in which governmental sovereignty is “dual,” meaning that both the Union and the member-states have at least some such sovereignty that the other cannot abolish or override. Had more credence been paid to the arguments in that text, perhaps the state governments would have more power at the federal level to protect their retained sovereignty from federal encroachment. The drafting of the E.U. paid more heed to those arguments in terms of safeguarding state sovereignty by considerable direct involvement of state officials at the federal level. Even so, Euroskeptics have warned of a centralized state in the process, and the U.S. has furnished them with an actual instance of a nearly consolidated empire-scale federal system. The warnings may thus be valid even with the additional safeguards that the E.U. has but the U.S. lacks, at least as of 2026, but claims that the E.U. does not have a federal system and is not a political union of states ring hollow as they are utterly false. So too, but the way, is the mislabeling of the E.U. as a bloc. The E.U.’s parliament alone knocks out all three of these ideological claims.

E.U. citizens elect representatives to the parliament, just as U.S. citizens elect representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives. This itself is inherently political, rather than merely economic, in nature.The resolutions and laws passed by the parliament are also not limited to economic measures. As a case in point, the parliament’s resolutions against the government of Azerbaijan furnish us with a case in point.

By May 1, 2026, the E.U.’s parliament had adopted 14 resolutions critical of Azerbaijan. The latest of those “called for the right of return of Armenians who [had] fled the region in 2023 after an armed conflict [had broken] out over a disputed region. [The resolution] described the detention of Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijan as ‘unjust’ and urged their ‘immediate and unconditional release.’”[1] Both the detention and the parliament’s reaction to it are inherently political, rather than concerning trade. Put another way, that which is decried as unjust in the resolution is political; it is not as if the parliament’s resolution opposed an unjust trading agreement between the E.U. and Azerbaijan.

The E.U.’s parliament was even viewed by the government of Azerbaijan as a political (legislative) chamber rather than as a trading organization befitting a bloc. “Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, called the European Parliament resolution as ‘a diplomatic disgrace and diplomatic failure,’ and accused members of the parliament of ‘creating obstacles to a peace process.”[2] Besides the fact that peace is a political rather than an economic concept, that the European Parliament was viewed as having engaged in diplomacy, albeit allegedly very badly according to Hajiyev, implies the more fundamental or basic understanding that the parliament is a political body. Diplomacy is that which governments conduct on political matters in international relations.

Therefore, the European Parliament has been viewed by government officials of other countries as a political body engaging in political acts, rather than as a bloc or international organization oriented to trade. As for how that chamber views itself, Roberta Metsola, who is the “Speaker” (translated into American terms for easy comparison) or elected head of the European Parliament, pushed back against the charge that the representatives in that legislative chamber had been obsessing on Azerbaijan by making explicit the political nature of the parliament. Heading to the chamber’s floor to make an impromptu statement, Metsola insisted, “We will never change the way we work, even if it is uncomfortable,” meaning not convenient for people in other countries.[3] Of utmost importance in terms of the parliament’s very legitimacy politically, she had first said: “The European Parliament is a directly elected democratic body, with resolutions adopted by a majority.”[4] The assertion that the E.U. is indeed a political union is satisfied by this statement alone, for that which Metsola described is inherently political.

Furthermore, that the body’s representatives are directly elected, rather than appointed by state governments, means that the E.U.’s federal level is not merely a collection or bloc of states. Just as E.U. law has direct effect on E.U. citizens (and other residents and even tourists), so too do E.U. citizens have political access via elected representatives at the federal level, rather than just through state officials in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Also, through those elected representatives, E.U. citizens can kick out an existing administration at the Commission without the say of state officials.

In short, whereas the European Council and the Council of Ministers, like the U.S. Senate, are founded on international principles, the European Parliament, like the U.S. House of Representatives, is national and thus governmental, in its constitutive principles. This hybrid federal system, differing as it does from a confederation of sovereign states, was invented by political compromise in 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is detailed in James Madison’s Notes.

To be sure, Euroskeptics would surely bolt from these arguments in utter fury, but I contend that the promulgated axis of political comparison is valid even if it is seldom uncovered and made explicit. The distending nature of ideology finds it easy to engage in denial, especially in the domains of politics and religion. Indeed, the E.U. itself is firmly within the political domain, and on this point Hajiyev and Metsola are in agreement, for it is the very premise on which the statements of both officials are based. San Francisco doesn’t matter.

---

1. Vincenzo Genovese, “Roberta Metsola Clashes with Azerbaijan’s Ailyev at European Summit in Armenia,” Euronews.com, 4 May, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Hungary Blocks €90 billion E.U. Loan for Ukraine: Holding the E.U. Hostage

It is one thing for a dog’s tail to lead; even worse is the situation in which the tail refuses to let the dog walk or run. The staying power of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. enables any one of the state governments to block federal policy and law. Such a blockage makes the tyranny of a minority look tame. In contrast, qualified-majority voting ensures that enough of a majority—a “super-majority”—is in place that the resulting minority should lose. The notion that every state government must be “on board” for the E.U. to enact a policy or law is misplaced because governmental sovereignty in that Union is “dual” because both the E.U.’s federal level and the state governments have at least some sovereignty. The same is true of American federalism. Neither the E.U. nor the U.S. is a confederation of sovereign states; only in such a federation does the principle of unanimity fit.

Facing an uphill electoral contest in two months, Hungary’s sitting prime minister, Viktor Orbán, had one of his ministers, Peter Szijártó, announce on 20 February, 2026, “We are blocking the €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine until oil transit to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline resumes.”[1] This is an obvious example of a part putting its own interest ahead of the whole, which includes not only the E.U. but also the entire world-order, given Russia’s non-provoked aggression in Ukraine for years with impunity. Regarding the E.U., the implication that a federal program should be in the particular interests of each state in order to go forward reduces the E.U. to a mere aggregation in which every part must be satisfied and thus federal action is severely constrained even at the expense of the E.U. itself, meaning the collective interest that goes beyond the aggregate of the particular interests of the states.

Besides the systemic problem in allowing each of 27 states to block federal action and even statements, Hungary’s use of its veto to block the loan demonstrates that the governor of an E.U. state is perfectly capable of wielding the veto power immaturely and irrationally. Szijjártó claimed “Ukraine is blackmailing Hungary by halting oil transit in coordination with Brussels and the Hungarian opposition to create supply disruptions in Hungary and push fuel prices higher before the elections.”[2] In other words, the E.U. state was blaming Ukraine. The problem with that narrative is that the “Druzhba pipeline, which dates back to the Soviet Union, was damaged after it was hit by a Russian strike and that has impacted transit.”[3] That the strike had been unprovoked and Ukraine was in the midst of massive power outages due to other Russian strikes seem not to have registered in Budapest. Ukraine was “in the midst of a difficult winter, with gruelling temperatures below zero. Russia’s constant pounding with missiles and drones means a large part of [Ukraine’s] energy infrastructure has been destroyed and cannot cope with the heating needs of civilians.”[4] Was Ukraine to drop everything to fix the pipeline that Russia had damaged? Rather than make this claim, the governor of Hungary could have weened his state off Russian oil. The rationale for the veto is thus dubious at best, and this in turn raises the question of whether the governors of the E.U. states are capable of having a veto at the federal level, especially as one of the rationales for the E.U. is to forestall war from breaking out between states or between a state and a foreign country. This rationale is but one of ways in which the interests of the whole—the European Union—are not mere aggregates of the particular interests of the states, for none of the states has a mandate to look out for peace throughout the E.U.

That Hungary even has a veto over the loan is a stretch because the E.U. states of Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic had successfully been granted federal exemptions from contributing financially to the €90 billion loan. It was “subject to unanimity” nonetheless “because it amends the E.U. budget rules to allow borrowing” for a foreign country.[5] That the E.U. allowed exempted states to vote nonetheless is, I submit, yet another indication that the E.U. was still too wedded to the principle of unanimity and the states were too unwilling to give up that power. That Hungary’s use of that power in this instance was so wrong-headed, for Russia rather than Ukraine was responsible for the non-functioning pipeline, adds urgency to the point that the E.U. should finally confront the question of whether to reform itself by expunging the confederation-fitting principle of unanimity.

---

1. Maria Tadeo and Jorge Liboreiro, “Hungary Blocks €90 Billion Loan for Ukraine over Damaged Pipeline as Tensions Escalate,” Euronews.com, 20 February, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Is the E.U. in the U.S.'s Strategic Interest?

Is a more perfect Union in Europe in America’s national interest? On the American holiday in 2026 that principally honors George Washington, whose eight-year commitment as the military commander-in-chief to the cause of freedom for the 13 new sovereign republics that had been members of the British Empire (and would forge a comparable political Union[1]) was decisive, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the E.U. state of Hungary to deliver “a message of support from the Trump administration to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” who was behind in the polls in his re-election campaign.[2] At their press conference, Orbán and Rubio “signed an agreement on energy cooperation and hailed what they described as a ‘golden age’ of bilateral relations.”[3] E.U. officials were nowhere in sight; it was as if Hungary were still a sovereign state rather than a semi-sovereign E.U. state. An implicit question untreated by the media in the E.U. or U.S. is whether bilateral relations between the U.S. and individual E.U. states, as if the E.U. were nonexistent, was still in the U.S. national interest, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The full essay is at "Is the E.U. in the U.S.'s Strategic Interest?"

---

1. Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Trans-Atlantic Comparisons (Seattle: Amazon Books, 2017).
2. Sandor Zsiros, “’We Want You to Continue’: Rubio Delivers Trump’s Campaign Message to Orbán in Budapest,” Euronews.com, 16 February, 2026.
3. Ibid.

On the E.U.’s Complex Federal System

Because the “the EU is built on consensus at 27” states,[1] by 2026 it had become painfully obvious to Europe’s elite that its Union had come to harbor a great disadvantage in terms of united or collective action because political consensus can be elusive even at 27 states, each of which could result to a veto on reforms at the federal level, with enlargement of the Union from 27 on the horizon. Something had to be done, given the intransigence of the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Direct access of the state governments at the federal level could stave off too much federal encroachment on the prerogatives of the state governments, but the costs associated with this safeguard were becoming too high. Therefore, in February, 2026, E.U. state and federal officials met to give added weight to something called “two-track Europe.” In actuality, there were already more than two tracks in the European Union. Although complex, the means of releasing the Union from the high bar needed to achieve unanimity or even consensus among the several states could well save the Union from the paralysis of division. The outdated premise that united action should only be allowed when there is no division had become too utopian for federal Europe. Multiple-speed Europe in the E.U. is actually more in line with the E.U.’s federal system already being genuine.

In February, 2026, “frustrations about the pace of [economic] reforms prompted” more interest in groups of states moving forward with respect to federal legislation that would be binding only on those states.[2] Mario Draghi, a former head of the European Central Bank, “recommended exploring the use of enhanced cooperation to ‘move faster’ in high-priority areas such as the Savings and Investment Union, the single market and energy prices.”[3] Already, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), patent and divorce law, the Schengen Area and even the euro itself constituted examples of federal law binding on some states but not on others. The term, “enhanced cooperation” is misleading, for it omits the important point that the states falling under a federal law are obliged to abide by it. This point is an important one, especially in the case of the Schengen Agreement. The E.U. already had a genuine federal system, meaning that dual sovereignty was already the case.

Undergirding the creative approach to federalism—more creative than the unitary approach of the U.S.—were informal blocs of E.U. states, “such as the ‘Frugal Four’ and the ‘Friends of Cohesion,’” the Weimar Triangle, the MED9, the Visegrad group, and the Nordic-Baltic Eight.[4] Perhaps the easiest comparison to the U.S. is the bloc of Great Lake states that must all sign off on fresh-water being taken by other states from the Great Lakes. Given the climatic and cultural differences that exist between the American states, more such blocs would not be a bad idea. The key would be that relevant federal law would only apply to the states in a given bloc. The binding nature of the respective law renders both the E.U. and U.S. as something more than blocs, of course. Creative arrangements within a genuine federal system does not stop the system from being federal; rather, such arrangements fit well with the fact that federal systems are tailor-made precisely for cases in which interstate differences are significant. Rather than containing “multiple speeds,” as if every bloc should eventually converge at the most integrated one within the Union, complexity better denotes the E.U.’s way out of the prison of unanimity. Cases in which a federal system makes most sense are hardly those in which one size fits all, so the American doctrine that a federal law must apply to every state is actually inferior.

---

1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Leaders Embrace Two-Speed Europe to Break Impasse as Macron Sets June Deadline for Economic Reset,” Euronews.com, February 12, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Bulgaria: From the Lion to the Euro

Just weeks after the government of the E.U. state of Bulgaria resigned amid protests against the rampant corruption, the state traded in its currency, the levs, which means lion, for the federal currency, the euro. In the new year, 2026, Bulgaria stood to relieve holders of the state’s debt and to tame the endemic inflation that has plagued the state’s economy. In November, 2025, for example, food prices had risen by 5% year-on-year, “more than double the eurozone average.”[1] The term “eurozone” is actually problematic, as it, like the application of the jargon, “bloc,” to the E.U. itself is meant to obfuscate readers regarding the genre of the political, federal union. To claim that Bulgaria joined a currency zone is inferior stating that the state adopted the federal currency. Stated properly, the currencies in the E.U. can be compared with those that were in the early U.S., and all of those combinations of state and federal currencies can be held to be compatible with federalism.

When the U.S. “bloc” began in 1776, the members were sovereign countries and therefore they had their own currencies. The federal dollar commenced in 1785. The member-states had their own currencies until 1788, so those currencies were concurrent with the federal dollar for three years. The E.U.’s model has been that state governments can choose whether to retain their own currency or adopt the euro, so no state can have both its own currency and the euro as legal tender at the same time. The E.U. and U.S. provide us with various combinations regarding currencies in a federal system, none of those combinations being at variance with federalism itself. In fact, the salient feature of dual-sovereignty that characterizes early-modern federalism—which is distinct from confederalism, wherein the states hold all rather than just some of governmental sovereignty—is arguably most consistent with two currencies being legal tender. This is not to say that the U.S. got this right for three years when both state and federal currencies were legal tender in their respective jurisdictions. The American “bloc” was a confederation until 1989, after which the federal governmental institutions and the states both had at least some portion of the governmental sovereignty in the system. When dual-sovereignty came into effect, only the federal currency was legal tender throughout the union.

Of course, like the U.S. in its first several decades, the E.U. in 2025 still suffered from being dominated by its states at the expense of collective action at the federal level. Because one of the chief benefits of a federal system of dual sovereignty is that the states can operate as a check against excessive federal encroachment and the federal institutions can operate as a check against excesses, such as corruption and anti-democratic tyranny, in state governments. The latter check has been severely hampered in the E.U. because the state governments dominate even at the federal level. The adoption of the federal currency by Bulgaria can be viewed as a step in the direction of achieving federal-state balance of power because, as Christine Legarde, president of the E.U.’s central bank, said at the time, the euro is a “powerful symbol” of “shared values and collective strength.”[2] Such strength has been the big loser as the heads of the state governments have resisted, as per their political self-interest, proposing and voting for additional transfers of governmental sovereignty to the federal governmental institutions (i.e., government) in the executive and legislative branches.

So perhaps it can be said that dual currencies fits best with dual sovereignty, at least theoretically, but that this presupposes a balance of power between the state and federal governmental institutions. In the case of a “bottom-heavy” federal system, such as the U.S. was through the nineteenth century, and as the E.U. has been through at least its first three decades, as many states as possible should replace their respective currencies with the euro. Admittedly, even if the 27 rather than just 21 E.U. states would adopt the euro, this would not in itself mean that the E.U.’s hand would be strengthened in defense and foreign policy to push Russia back from Ukraine and Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank. Given the tremendous imbalance of power, however, such that the E.U. has had trouble in asserting collective action for the benefit of the whole union rather than just a few states, a powerful symbol of collective strength could help to dispel the allure of the anti-federalist, or Euroskeptic, ideology.

That intangible benefit is irreducibly political, and as such, it can be easily dismissed by E.U. citizens who are in denial regarding the distinctively political genre of their union. For such people, the adoption of the federal currency by more states is viewed primarily as potentially strengthening weak state economies and bad monetary policies. This applies especially to the adoption by small, corrupt states—Bulgaria being roughly equivalent to Maryland in population in 2025. After being turned out of office by mass protests against the systemic governmental corruption, the state government of Bulgaria certainly could not be relied upon to resist the temptation to inflate its currency given the public debt there. Generally speaking, corrupt people lack the self-discipline necessary to govern anything. The E.U.’s central bank was much more reliable, especially with Lagarde having been at the helm for many years, than the government of the E.U. state of Bulgaria. As salient as this benefit is in the state’s adoption of the euro, the impact, although subtle and largely symbolic, on European political integration, already under way, is worthy enough not to be relegated or ignored outright. The power of symbol can be louder in the long run that a lion’s roar. After all, as Leo well knows, the lion comes only late in the summer, when the heat of those dog-days can be unbearable. 

---

1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Bulgaria Switches to the Euro Amid Mixed Reactions from Its Citizens,” Euronews.com, 1 January, 2026.
2. Ibid.

On the E.U.’s “Pragmatic” Federalism

It is ironic that even though European political theorists, including Immanuel Kant, Johannes Althusius, and Kenneth Wheare, made substantial contributions on the topic of federalism, even political leaders in the E.U. as late as 2025 were stumbling over the basics, getting the very concept wrong. Unfortunately, that has caused journalists to trip and fall too, leaving E.U. citizens grappling over the apparent problem of being citizens both of their state and the E.U. even though, according to former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi spoke in 2025 in favor of “’pragmatic federalism’ as the political conditions for a true, federal union do not exist in the E.U. at the moment.”[1] The claims that “pragmatic federalism” is somehow not indicative of “true” federalism, and, moreover, that somehow the E.U. has states that are semi-sovereign (as the E.U. itself has exclusive competences) and yet federalism does not apply are patently absurd. Draghi was confusing the politics of the moment, in which the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic ideology was still too powerful for more governmental sovereignty to be moved to the federal level from the states, with whether the E.U. had a federal system already. In other words, “political conditions” are distinct from whether the E.U. has a federal system of public governance. Draghi’s assertion is all the more astounding not only because of his governmental experience at the federal level, but also because the dual-sovereignty (of the states and the Union) means that the E.U. fits within the category of modern federalism rather than confederalism (using Wheare’s terminology). Europeans have quite understandably been confused in trying to classify the E.U. away from the pull of the anti-federalist ideology in Europe.

That ideology has been a major impediment to the E.U. being able to govern. Although qualified-majority voting applies to some of the E.U.’s enumerated powers, or competencies, enough of the important matters of policy and law have been requiring unanimity in the European Council and the Council of Ministers that the veto-power of each of the 27 state governments has “thrown a wrench” in the governmental machinery at the federal level, especially in foreign policy and defense. Whereas the U.S. at first federalized those areas, the E.U.’s initial emphasis was on economic policy and law, so drifting over to include the more traditionally-federalized domains has been stymied by recalcitrant governors threatening to wield their respective vetoes in the Council even in the face of an overwhelming consensus.

For example, between 2011 and 2025, “Hungary vetoed E.U. proposals more than any other member state . . ., with a total of 19.”[2] A “total of 46 vetoes,” moreover, were “exercised in the E.U. by 15 member states across 38 issues.”[3] Poland ranked second with seven vetoes. “Hungary has vetoed a significant number of joint foreign policy statements, but it has also blocked proposals to lend concrete support to Ukraine and start formal E.U. accession talks,” which are necessary for Ukraine to become the 28^th state in the Union.[4] It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, was by the end of 2025 “deliberately structuring its proposals [for legislation and foreign policies] in order to avoid requiring unanimous consent” from the states in the councils, which, after all, represent the states whereas the European Parliament represents E.U. citizens.[5] With such governmental machinery, plus the E.U.’s supreme court, the European Court of Justice, residing at the Union level, the claim that the E.U. is not a true federal union of states is utterly untenable. “Pragmatic” federalism, which is actually a governmental tool in the E.U.’s basic law, does not nullify the E.U.’s federal system, rendering the E.U. as a “multi-speed bloc.” That label actually signifies decadent jargon rather than any kind of governmental system that is capable of enacting federal laws that are binding on the states and anyone on the E.U.’s territory.

Pragmatic federalism is simply a tactic that the Commission can use to bypass the requirement of unanimity in the Councils, which, like the U.S. Senate, represent the states. The tactic was used, for example, to pass federal legislation to phase-out “Russian fuels under the REPowerEU framework” and to “extend the freeze on the Russian assets.”[6] So too, in passing legislation enabling the E.U. to issue debt to support Ukraine militarily, the European Council “bypassed the need for unanimity among member states” by “gathering those [state governors] who wanted to work together while keeping Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic out of the deal as a condition for it to go forward. In doing so, the E.U. . . . showed a new path forward—one where the unanimity requirement need no longer obstruct” the passage of legislation at the federal level.[7] States could be exempted, such as had been done in the Schengen Agreement and the Stability Pact. The exemption of particular states from a federal program, policy, law, or regulation does not invalidate the federal system; rather, the tool merely renders the federal system more flexible. In fact, the U.S. could benefit by adopting the mechanism, especially because so much power has accrued especially since 1865 at the federal level at the expense of state differences. Exempting certain states from a given proposal would not nullify America’s federal system.

Beyond “pragmatic” federalism in the E.U., the question of rendering the state-veto obsolete was being seriously considered by the end of 2025. With 27 states in the E.U. and Russia invading Ukraine just east of the E.U.’s territory, the E.U. could ill-afford the continuance of the veto, especially in the domains of foreign policy and defense. That unanimity would be required to amend the E.U.’s basic law to rid the union of the state-veto is itself a problem, but it could be solved by any states objecting to such a change being exempted from any “enhanced cooperation” that would be switched from unanimity to qualified-majority voting. In short, the precedents of the Schengen Agreement and the European Stability Pact, which are not incompatible with federalism, could be followed. In terms of such competencies of the E.U. that would be added to those that are already subject to qualified-majority voting, states like Hungary and Slovakia could be exempted. This is not to say that there would be a union, such as the “EU-26,” within the union, or a foreign policy union, a defense union, and so on. Such jargon, as well as the euphemistic-sounding “enhanced cooperation” and, even worse, “multi-speed bloc,” only obscures the point that in a federal system, states can be exempted from particular federal legislation (and policies) without the federal system itself being nullified. Also, to refer to exempting certain states as allowing for “voluntary co-operation” in “coalitions of the willing” is also misleading because there is nothing voluntary about being subject to qualified-majority voting on an E.U. competency manifesting as law. Reducing the E.U. to voluntary cooperation and coalitions of the willing undermines the European Union itself by detracting from what strength it does have as a “true federal union.” The extent of vacuous, ideological jargon outdoes even that of the American retail sector, in which customers are called “guests” and even “members,” customer orders are considered “perfect,” and one of the official public holidays is singled out intentionally to be (ideologically) obscured passive-aggressively as “happy holidays.” But I digress.

To be sure, within the E.U., the state-veto has been seen by some people as “the last resort to protect” state rights.[8] Tamás Lattmann, an international-law expert, said, “A veto power is the last line of defence of vital interests. Every case of circumvention has led to a set of new problems, often the inoperability or discrediting of the system itself.”[9] However, that states could be exempted means that their vital interests would not be threatened. Also, exempting states would not discredit the E.U.’s federal system. In fact, the U.S. federal system could arguably benefit by being more flexible, as so much governmental power has been federalized and “one size does not fit all” in an empire-scale federal union, whether in North America or Europe.

The argument that the state-veto “serves as an equalizer between smaller and larger member states” has also been made, especially because the European Parliament has representation by population.[10] During its debt crisis, for example, the state of Greece could have made the case that E.U. policy reflected the interests of German creditors to the extent that even the anti-austerity party was pressured to accept continued austerity. Furthermore, the smaller eastern states could legitimately argue that the large states in the west have disproportionate (even in terms of the population part of qualified majority voting) informal as well as formal power. The problem is in relying on a mechanism, the state veto, that has been such a detriment to the enactment of federal policy and law.  In the U.S. Senate, which was established principally to safeguard the interests of the small member states, the filibuster, which can be overridden by 60 votes (out of 100), is typically viewed as sufficient for the minority on any given question. To be sure, a minority is not the same as one state. In E.U. competencies subject to qualified majority voting, a single state, whether large or small, could vote no and yet be subject to a federal policy or law. The case of tariffs on Chinese imports was a case in point in 2025. If the filibuster mechanism is sufficient protection for small states in a legislative chamber in which each state has the same number of votes, then the number-of-states set at 65% in qualified majority voting could be deemed sufficient. Generally speaking, a majority of 65 percent has more democratic legitimacy than does a simple majority—a point that Americans might want to consider.

In conclusion, the Commission and Council could hardly be blamed for trying to obviate the state-veto without subjecting objecting states, for their vital interests are untouched because they are exempted. With enlargement of the Union being an issue, as well as the need for federalized defense and foreign policies given the military aggression of Russia and even Israel, the Union could no longer afford the veto-mechanism itself even by 2023. The mechanism actually pertains to confederalism, in which governmental sovereignty is retained by the states, rather than to modern federalism, in which the atom of governmental sovereignty is split, though not necessarily evenly, in a federal system between the states and the federal level. That the E.U., even initially in 1993, has the salient feature of dual sovereignty means that that union has never been a mere confederal system; the E.U. is thus well-within being a “true federal union.” Even though it has been in the interest of E.U. officials to appease Euroskeptics so to as to render them more docile, ideological denial has cost the European project severely, and the state-veto has played a major role in the self-inflicted federal impotency.

---

1. Sandor Zsiros, “The EU Wants to End the Era of National Vetoes—But It’s Complicated,” Euronews.com, 23 December, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.