Showing posts with label Mercosur countries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mercosur countries. Show all posts

Saturday, January 10, 2026

On the Role of the European Parliament: The Mercosur Treaty

With the European Council, which represents the E.U. states, having passed the Mercosur free-trade treaty by qualified-majority voting, the legislation went on to the European Parliament, which represents E.U. citizens, to vote on final passage before being sent to E.U. President Von der Leyen for her signature. From the standpoint of this standard legislative procedure, it is significant that immediately following the vote in the Council, which is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Senate, efforts were being made to essentially side-step the Parliament, which is equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives. Von der Leyen’s plan to sign the treaty once it passed in the Council reflects both the disproportionate power of the state governments at the federal level in the E.U. and the fact that the U.S. House is excluded from voting on treaties, whereas the U.S. Senate votes to give its consent to them before the U.S. president ratifies them (or not).  

On 9 January, 2026, the European Council voted by a super majority representing 65% of the E.U.’s population and 55% of its states to approve the Mercosur free-trade treaty with four countries in South America. President Von der Leyen had completed the negotiations on the treaty two years earlier so E.U. companies could “gain access to a market of 280 million consumers . . . where some 30,000 E.U. firms” were already operating.[1] A massive free-trade area with a combined population of 700 million inhabitants would dwarf NAFTA (the North America Free Trade Agreement). It is no wonder that on the heels of the Council’s vote, President Von der Leyen wrote in an official statement, “I greatly look forward to signing this landmark deal . . .”[2] Not so fast. The approval procedure “also requires the consent of the European Parliament.”[3] In the Parliament, a contingent of the Renew party saw an opportunity to scuttle the proposed treaty because of the fears of European farmers, mostly in the state of France, that free trade in agriculture could harm the E.U.’s farmers financially if enough European consumers buy agricultural products from the Mercosur countries rather than domestically.

Admittedly, getting the consent of the Council by even just by qualified-majority voting had been viewed as the challenge. A contingent of the Renew party could presumably be easily outvoted in the Parliament. Nevertheless, the focus on the Council is in line with the inordinate power wielded by the states at the federal level in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Put another way, being slighted doubtlessly came as no surprise to the representatives in the Parliament. The chamber of the people had typically played second fiddle to the chamber of the states.

Even in the U.S., where the two federal legislative chambers have been viewed as equals since their founding, the U.S. House of Representatives is excluded from the procedure in which treaties proposed by the federal president are sent to the U.S. Senate for advice and to be confirmed (or rejected). If confirmed, the president can either ratify or refuse to do so. Such ratification is required for a treaty to go into effect. The U.S. House of Representatives is excluded.

Resonating with the exclusion of the U.S. House, the E.U. state chairing the Council at the time “used a legal procedure” just after the vote “to enable the provisional implementation of the agreement without a parliamentary vote.”[4] Although the Parliament’s upcoming vote could derail the treaty, the provisional implementation would make it more difficult for representatives to vote against the treaty because it would already be underway. Even if President Von der Leyen would sign the treaty before the Parliament’s vote, the treaty would be rendered invalid, but in setting up a fait accompli, the Commission and the Council were making use of momentum such that voting against the treaty would be more difficult. Furthermore, that the U.S. House is excluded from the legislative consent and ratification of U.S. treaties implicitly implies that maybe the European Parliament, which also represents citizens rather than states, should not be involved in the passage of E.U. treaties with other countries. In federal unions in which governmental sovereignty is divided, regardless of the proportions, the legislative chamber in which the semi-sovereign states are represented can be argued to be more important in international treaties precisely because of the sovereignty still reserved by the states in their political union should have a say, even if by qualified majority voting (in the E.U. Council) or a two-thirds majority (in the U.S. Senate).  Put another way, both of these bars, being higher than a simple majority, reflect the fact that the states in the E.U. and U.S. are semi-sovereign.

In tension with the argument that the E.U. Parliament and the U.S. House should also be included so the respective federal citizens could also have a say, the states might object that a defeat in either of those chambers would nullify what the semi-sovereign state governments have agreed to, and that such sovereignty, together with the limited sovereignty of the respective unions, should not be denied domestically with respect to relations with other countries. The tension here reveals a judgment call, which is of such a magnitude and indeterminacy to be properly determined by popular sovereignty—that which is reserved to the people themselves as an electorate. Moreover, this comparison of the E.U. and U.S. works so well that the equivalency of the two unions, even with the very different proportions of governmental sovereignty delegated by basic law to the federal level, can be easily grasped even by Euroskeptics and anti-federalists.


Thursday, December 18, 2025

Proliferating Blocs: The E.U. and Mercosur

Words matter; they may not break bones, but they can wreak havoc if they are used carelessly or ideologically. Political labels can stick, and, if inaccurate, they can result in people having an incorrect impression of what something or someone is, politically. The war that began in North America in 1861, for example, has typically been labeled as a civil war, but it may be more accurately labeled as the C.S.A.-U.S.A. War because the Confederate States of America did not want to take over the U.S.A.; it was not as if the C.S.A.’s goal was to conquer and government the U.S.A. Having established itself as a functioning political entity even though U.S. President Lincoln refused to acknowledge the political existence of the C.S.A., that union could be said to have existed and been at war with the U.S.A. from 1861-1865. Two unions of states were at war with each other; it was not as if the Union Army was at war with individual seceded states. The C.S.A. had a government apart from the state governments. So “the war between the states” is an inaccurate label because it denies the existence of the two unions. But the common label of a civil war is also problematic because two political factions were not fighting each other for control of the U.S.A. If this criticism seems unusual and even perhaps rather strange, the reason may be because the victor’s labeling of the war has been so overwhelming. My point is that this does not mean that the labeling is accurate just because it has been widely accepted. Similarly, the labeling by E.U. officials (including the E.U.’s ambassador to the U.S.) of the European Union as a bloc is not accurate. 

That the label has been meant to placate anti-federalist Euroskeptics, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, so they don’t further weaken the Union renders the actual, self-inflicted weakening as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Furthermore, that the E.U.’s self-inflicted weakening-by-label has fit the militaristic agenda of Russia’s President Putin and the isolationist agenda of the American President Trump like a glove seems not to have disturbed the E.U.’s political elite. That the E.U. has never been an informal trading “bloc” of sovereign countries like the Mercosur trading bloc in South America is seems not to have bothered the European labelers, including the enabling media.

For example, reporting on a speech by E.U. President Von der Leyen’s to the Parliament, European journalists referred to both the E.U. and the coordination on trade by four countries in South America as “blocs,” as if the two were of the same political type or genre. For instance, Euronews reported that with regard to the E.U. helping Ukraine withstand Putin’s continuing invasion and signing a trade deal with the four countries in America, at “stake is the 27-member bloc’s credibility to shape its foreign policy and trade agenda.”[1] But it is the E.U.’s foreign policy and its trade agenda, not the aggregate of all of the states’ foreign policies and trade agendas, and this difference is backed up by the E.U. having an executive, legislative, and judicial branch of its own, albeit with state participation in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Blocs do not have governmental branches. The label of bloc does, however, fit “the South American Mercosur bloc” of four countries because that bloc is simply an alignment of trade policies.[2] There was not Mercosur executive, legislature, and supreme court, no Mercosur social policy, and not even a Mercosur federal system wherein governmental sovereignty is split between states and a federal level. The false equivalence of the European Union and Mercosur is a grave insult to Europe, and yet it has repeatedly been self-inflicted by the European political elite itself.

I contend that the E.U. has been a formidable accomplishment, not a perfect union, but far beyond what a bloc is and can muster, and that the potential of that union of states should therefore not be held back by a dominative label intended placate an anti-federalist minority. The costs of continuing to treat the E.U. as equivalent to a trading bloc of countries in South America may seem bearable, but President Von der Leyen’s point that the E.U. was then at a critical inflection-point concerning Europe’s security and independence, global image, and international standing means that the E.U. could no longer afford to label itself as a bloc as if were just another Mercosur group of countries.

For on the very same day as Von der Leyen was delivering a speech to the European Parliament, Russian President Putin was telling a gathering of his military brass, “European swine wanted to feast on the collapse of Russia” and—interestingly in echoing comments only recently made by the American President, Donald Trump—in referring to Europe and the E.U. in particular, “Today it turns out there is no civilisation there, only complete degradation.”[3] Swine degrading European civilization. Ouch! Unfortunately, Russian tanks, bombs, and troops in Ukraine combined with Putin’s rejection of the proposed American compromise because it does not give Russia all the territory is wants in Ukraine render the punch behind the insult more serious than mere words. It is ironic that words spoken outside of the E.U. have made the Europeans’ own use of their word, “bloc,” more costly because what bloc could expect itself to issue its own debt to help Ukraine militarily? What bloc can have a federal foreign policy? What bloc can do more than rely on state militias for a defense? Simply in degrading these expectations, the European political elite continued to shoot itself in its collective foot as Putin continued to apply his political theory that military might makes right in Europe.

The E.U. is neither a regional UN nor a trading bloc of sovereign countries, nor even an international organization. All of these claims are the result of ideological resentment and political expediency. These two vices in the E.U. are like water to a fish. That the member-states ceded some of their governmental sovereignty to be exclusive and even shared competencies of the European Union effectively relegates such false equivalencies to the dust bin, so it is strange that they persisted at least through 2025. In fact, the staying power of the principle of unanimity in place of qualified-majority voting on some major issues may stem from the continuing misunderstanding that the E.U. is merely a bloc.

So, labels do matter, and they can get in the way. This is especially problematic in hard times, for European integration in the E.U. has largely happened only times of crisis. The rhetoric of presidents Trump and Putin alone justifies President Von der Leyen’s statement, “Yesterday’s peace is gone. We have no time to indulge in nostalgia. What matters is how we confront today.”[4] Describing the E.U. as a bloc of member-states does not even qualify as nostalgia because the E.U. has never been a bloc; the self-defeating label sprang out of anti-Americanism (lest the E.U. be held to be equivalent to the U.S. as an empire-scale federal system characterized definitively by dual sovereignty) and the political fear of the domestic, yes, domestic, opposition of anti-federalist Euroskeptics that is ironically strengthened in its version of political reality by the label itself. Self-inflicted weakness in a partisan ideological battle hardly attracts support.

Saturday, December 7, 2024

Euro-skeptic Anti-Federalism: An Institutional Obstacle in the E.U.

On December 6, 2024, the E.U. finally—meaning more than twenty years after negotiations had begun—reached a free-trade agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The deal would cover 780 million people, but the completion of the negotiations between the E.U. president and those of the South American countries was “just a first stage before a long process”[1] that would require passage by a qualified majority vote—meaning 55% of the E.U. states and 55% of the E.U. population—in the E.U. Council and in the European Parliament and in enough state legislatures. Presumably if enough state ministers for trade in the E.U. Council vote yes, their respective state governments would go along and also be sufficient for final passage. I contend that the requirement that enough state legislatures also vote yes on the deal is excessive.

The most obvious point to be made concerning the excessiveness is that the state governments were directly represented in the E.U. Council, so for those governments then to need to approve the E.U.’s treaty is at best duplicative, and, at worse, enabling opposition yet another means of thwarting final passage. Moreover, the treaty is that of the E.U., rather than any of the state governments because the E.U.’s executive branch negotiated the trade deal. To be sure, the presence of non-trade terms in the deal, including binding commitments by the South American countries to stop illegal deforestation, explains why the Commission did not have exclusive competency, which the Commission had as of 2024 in commercial policy as when President Van der Leyen had the Commission enact tariffs on imports from China.  Even though the trade deal with four South American countries did not fall under the Commission’s exclusive competency (i.e., domain of authority), this only means that the E.U. Council and the Parliament had to approve the treaty too; non-exclusive competency does not mean that the state governments must or even should approve federal legislation (and E.U. treaties with other countries).

A subtle reason can also be cited for why the E.U. is too fettered by the excessive role of the state legislatures in being required to pass a federal trade treaty. Specifically, the ongoing Euroskeptic, or states-rights (or “nationalist”), ideology, which had been so unproductive for the E.U. precisely because of the extent of sovereignty that the states retained (i.e., had not already delegated to the federal union), relishes the duplication of the state governments’ power in passing federal trade treaties as indicating that the E.U. had remained merely an alliance of sovereign countries. Before Britain seceded from the Union, Prime Minister David Cameron referred to the E.U. as just one of the networks to which Britain happened to belong. With such a jarringly unreal notion of what the E.U. was politically, it was best that that state seceded. The state of France had not been wrong in halting Britain’s accession in the early 1970s.

In short, a bottom-heavy federal system awash in an anti-federalist ideology can really be paralyzing at the federal level. At the very least, having an excessive number of institutional hurdles for a bill (or trade treaty) to become law undermines the legislative process. Moreover, even dissolution is more likely to occur when the state governments wield a lot of power over federal legislation.  

This may seem trivial or even silly, but words matter because language can feed (and starve) an ideology. Let’s unpack the following passage from Euronews on the proposed trade deal: “Negotiators from the Latin American bloc were assembled . . . with the EU trade negotiation team to iron out the deal, that will cover 780 million people between both zones. But the deal will need a sign off (sic) from EU 27 member states.”[2] That European and American journalism often referred to the E.U. as a “bloc,” even though an informal grouping of sovereign countries does not have a constitutional (i.e., basic law) court, an executive branch, and a bi-cameral legislature whereas the European Union contains the governmental European Court of Justice, the E.U. Commission, the E.U. Council (like the U.S. Senate, representing the states), and a (lower) Parliament, implies that in using the word “bloc” to describe four South American countries as the Mercosur group, and we might think too of the BRICS countries, those trade groups are of the same genre as a federal union. That both the E.U. and U.S. cases of “modern federalism” include dual sovereignty, wherein two governments have domains in which they are sovereign for a given territory, nullifies the appellation of “bloc” or “zone” to either union, even if anti-federalists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been in denial concerning this point.

At an academic talk at Harvard’s Center for European Studies in which the dean of Boston University’s School of Global Studies said that the E.U. does indeed have a federal system, a Harvard graduate student dismissed this point and, in “asking” a question, insisted that the E.U. is only an alliance of countries. I then asked the dean to confirm her judgment that the E.U. is not an alliance, which she did. Yet I doubt whether the Harvard graduate student had enough intellectual humility to let this point sink in. In fact, at another talk at the Center, another graduate student, who had been present at the visiting dean’s talk, insisted that economically, a Swiss (county-sized) canton could be compared to “a red or a blue state,” including Texas and California. That speaker, from MIT, had said that in looking at the economic inequality between rural regions and a metropolitan city, E.U. states should be compared with U.S. states rather than with the U.S. overall (as there is no focal city of the U.S.). That the European graduate student ignored this and implied that Switzerland is a United States of Europe (and thus as equivalent to the E.U. even though the latter treats Switzerland akin to a state in trade matters and free movement sans borders) stunned me. I had been thinking of applying to be a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, but the stubborn, jejune disrespectful attitude of the two graduate students, as well as their abject ignorance and yet presumption concerning federalism theory, convinced me to cancel my application, for I was already too old for the grief (and passive aggression). Also, I was not about to buy an airline ticket to the E.U. only to be dismissed as a stupid American for claiming that the E.U. has a federal system of government and is thus not a “bloc” or “zone” equivalent to four countries in South America that have a trading relationship.

Given the excessive ability of state governments in the E.U. to styme federal legislation and treaties, misconceiving the E.U. as a “bloc” or “zone” can cement the anti-federalist systemic bias and thus render the E.U. itself as too paralyzed even with respect to federal policy, regulations, law, and treaties that are at the level of the E.U. and thus proper to it, with the state governments having direct federal access through not only the E.U. Council (of Ministers), but also the European Council, which sets the overall political priorities for the Union. Officials of the state governments sit on both councils, and may even have excessive influence over the political parties (not groups!) in the European Parliament. That one of those parties, the European People’s Party, has nonetheless been labeled as a “group” rather than a party from a state-level perspective is yet another instance of how federal law-making must brace against a head-wind of federal illegitimacy.

Lastly, it bears remembering that thirty years from the U.S. having instituted a federal system characterized chiefly by dual sovereignty in 1789 (before which the U.S. was an alliance, or confederation, unlike the E.U.!), the American state governments had too much sovereignty for the good of that union, given the multiple “Brexits” in 1861. To be sure, Lincoln was better off than General Washington had been in fighting a war, for Lincoln’s Union had dual-sovereignty whereas Washington had a confederation (i.e., the state governments were sovereign until 1789).  Connecting the dots for my European friends (and those Americans who are awake concerning the E.U. even existing), the E.U. in 2024 was of the same federal genre or type as the U.S. had been since 1789 but not since 1776! Now this should get several Harvard graduate students from Europe scratching their heads.


1. Peggy Corlin, “Von der Leyen Clinches E.U.-Mercosur Trade Deal, in Face of French Opposition,” Euronews.com, December 6, 2024.
2. Ibid, italics added.

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