The E.U.’s Hungary Overreaching on Sovereignty: International Trade

Sovereignty is not a word to be casually used, especially if in overreaching. In both the E.U. and U.S., state governments have overreached at the expense of the delegated competencies or enumerated powers of the respective Unions of states. The Nullification Crisis in the U.S. and de facto unilateral refusal of the E.U. state of Hungary to observe E.U. law both demonstrate how the overreaching by state governments can compromise a federal system.[1] In the E.U. the refusal to do away with the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. enable and even invite such overreaches at the expense of the E.U. itself, and its distinctly federal officials. Even a state government’s pursuit of it’s state’s economic interests does not justify holding the E.U. hostage. The case of supporting Ukraine in the midst of the invasion by Russia is a case in point.

The full essay is at "The E.U.'s Hungary Overreaching on Sovereignty."

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1, In 1832-1833, the government of South Carolina held that the U.S. tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void within the state. “The resolution of the Nullification Crisis in favor of the federal government helped to undermine the nullification doctrine,” which holds that states have the right “to nullify federal acts within their boundaries.” Britannica.com (accessed August 25, 2025). I submit that the European Court of Justice could do worse than declare the same with regard to state laws, including the refusal of a governor or state legislature to implement federal directives, that are in violation of E.U. law and regulations. Monetary sanctions by the European Commission have not been a sufficient deterrent. If either de facto or de jure nullification becomes the norm, then it would only be a matter of time before the Union dissolves and the states could once again take up arms against each other.

An E.U. Political Party Mischaracterizes the Union as an Alliance: Suicide by Mis-Identity

Two weeks before the E.U. election in 2024, far-right parties were projected to do well and thus have more seats in the E.U.’s lower legislative chamber, the European Parliament. Immigration was a key issue in the rising popularity of those parties. Although immigration in both the E.U. and U.S. was in dire need of governmental fixes, the rise of the right in the E.U. came at the expense of the union itself due to an underlying category mistake evinced at least in the European Conservatives and Reformists party. 

Even though it was at the time a political party in the Parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists party denied its obvious identity as a political party in referring to itself vaguely as a group instead. No doubt according to that party, and other Euroskeptic parties on the right, a mere alliance of countries cannot have political parties, so linguistic gymnastics were resorted to, such that the parties in the European Parliament would be known as “groups,” any of which could be composed of member parties. 

A legislative body, including the E.U.'s parliament,  has political parties even if some call themselves or are called groups whose members are state-level parties. Such "members" are not recognized as such in the Parliament because it does not represent the states; the European Council does that. Even if a party is only in one state, it is a federal party if it exists in and is recognized by the European Parliament because one or more representatives, or Members of Parliament, claim to be of such a party, which in turn is thereby federalized. 

All of such mental twisting was being done of course for ideological purposes so the nobody would dare liken the E.U. to the U.S., or any other empire-scale federal union, such as the former U.S.S.R. Such equivalencies of reason pale next to puffed up egocentricity that wants to claim that a state in one such union is equivalent to an entire union elsewhere in the world. 

Both in terms of scale and the type of federalism, category mistakes have been conveniently promoted by politicians and a willing media in the E.U. and unknowingly parrotted by purblind journalists in the U.S. Because the U.S. began as a military alliance of sovereign counties under the Articles of Confederation and then invented and adopted modern federalism in 1789. those automated journalists should have known at the very least that the E.U. fits modern rather than confederal federalism.

That a union with dual-sovereignty is distinct from a mere alliance is supposedly “unthinkable,” at least it was to Nicola Procaccini, a co-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists party. “It is unthinkable that anyone would argue that the European Union was born as the ECSC and as the European Community, as a federalist state, as a United States of Europe,” he said.[1] However, the E.U. is distinct from the previous European Coal and Steel Cooperative (ECSC) and the European Community. The E.U. began after those two single-issue groups, neither of which included a government—complete with executive, legislative, and judicial governmental bodies, or “arms”/branches. In contrast, the E.U. has not only the European Council, which represents the state governments, but also a parliament, which represents E.U. citizens, the European Court of Justice, and the Commission. Furthermore, governmental sovereignty is divided in the E.U. between the federal and state governments; qualified-majority voting alone involves some sovereignty being at the federal level. So as it turns out, it is not unthinkable, undenkbar, to think of the E.U. as a federal system because it is precisely that—unlike what the ECSC and the EC were.

Procaccini’s nationalist ideology blocked his mind from grasping the fundamental difference that renders the E.U. as a federal system rather than as a mere alliance wherein sovereignty resides with the states. “We want to go back to the original idea of the European Union,” he said, “which is an alliance of nations doing a few things together, doing those things that nation-states alone wouldn’t be able to do in the best way.”[2] Although the latter refers to the principle of subsidiarity, which, like its counterpart in the basic law of the U.S., is valid, it is incorrect that the E.U. was founded in 1993 as an alliance of still-sovereign countries. Instead, the governmental atom of sovereignty was split, just as I was in 1789 in the United States. In other words, Procaccini was conflating the original idea of the ECSC and the EC with that of the European Union. Going back to Althusius’ Politica (1603), the politician was confusing plena (full) with nonplena (not full) federalism.

The distortive cognitive effect of a fervently held ideology had just a week earlier been referred to by Pope Francis in an interview with the American television show, 60 Minutes. Referring to the socially ideological Roman Catholic bishops, the pope said, “conservative is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box.”[3] In fact, the pope said that ideology itself is bad. In falsely claiming that the E.U. was an alliance of sovereign nation-states, Procaccini was trapped in an antiquated dogmatic box at odds with the social reality of the E.U.; his view was thus inherently suicidal to that federal system in denying its very existence.

To be clear, sole E.U. competencies, or enumerated domains of political authority, or law, and the union’s voting mechanism of qualified (by E.U. population and by numbers of states) majority instantiate governmental sovereignty that no longer resides with the state governments. The E.U. is thus not an alliance because in an alliance, all governmental sovereignty is retained by the countries. The splitting up of governmental sovereignty between a federal government and state governments is also not confederal; instead, it evinces what scholars of federalism call modern federalism. Both the U.S. and E.U. are cases of that kind of federalism.

Therefore, just as characterizing the U.S. as an alliance is unthinkable, so too should such a characterization of the E.U., so it is ironic that Procaccini’s dogmatic box contains the unthinkable. If allowed to be imposed on the E.U., Genovese’s distorted ideology would place that union in an impossible position—namely, of being contrary to what it is. Hence that ideology can indeed be characterized as suicidal. Now that truly makes the sordid ideology unthinkable, or at least it should be so.

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1. Vincenzo Genovese, “Nicola Procaccini: Reformist Group Seeking Balance of Power Shift in E.U. Parliament,” Euronews, May 24, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Norah O’Donnell, “Pope Francis Tells 60 Minutes in Rare Interview: ‘The Globalization of Indifference Is a Very Ugly Disease,” CBSNews.com, May 19, 2024 (accessed May 25, 2024).

Cases of Coronavirus: Comparing China, the U.S.A., and Italy

On March 26, 2020, “the US overtook Italy and China as the country with the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases.”[1] At first glance, this statement can gain sufficient traction to become definitive. The implication that the U.S. is mismanaging the pandemic can even be regarded as valid even though the comparison itself is invalid.

Firstly, the United States, Italy, and China have very different population-levels. At the time, China’s population stood at roughly 1.435 billion, the U.S. population was 331 million, and Italy’s was 60 million. The U.S. had at least 81,321 cases.[2] China had at least 82,000 cases.[3] Italy had at least 80,539.[4] Per capita, the U.S. had at least one case for every 4,070 people; China had at least one per 17,500 people; and Italy had at least one case per 745 people. Adjusted for population-level, Italy was worse than the United States, which in turn was worse than China. Of course, China was coming down from its apex of cases, while the United States had not yet hit its apex and Italy may not have hit its own yet. Singapore’s confirmed 631 cases may seem a trifle until the city-state’s population of 5,838,360 is taken into account.  With at least one case per 9,253 people, Singapore stood between the United States and China in severity of cases.  So, at the very least, taking the population level into account is vital in comparing countries on the coronavirus pandemic.

Secondly, comparing countries assumes that they are all equivalent, as countries, not only for comparative purposes, but also as political entities. This is a modern assumption—that a city-state is equivalent to an empire, to take two points at the extremes; the kingdom being between the two. In other words, it is assumed that just because every country is sovereign, every country is equivalent even in non-political matters of comparison.

Historically, the attribute of sovereignty was not so decisive in declaring equivalencies. No one would claim that a stand-alone kingdom was the equivalent of an empire. For example, Althusius’ theory of federalism, described in his Political Digest (1604), clearly distinguishes a city, province, kingdom, and empire from each other. Based in part on the Holy Roman Empire, Athusius’ version of federalism contains a hierarchy, including guilds, villages, cities (composed of villages), provinces/regions, and the empire. Representatives of the guilds sit on village councils, village representatives sit on city councils, and so on until representatives of the provinces sit at the federal head—the empire’s governance.[5] It would be absurd to claim that a kingdom in one empire is equivalent to either a city or another empire. With these terms of political organization going by the wayside, the vague, over-generalizing term, country, filled the void, with its fallacious assumption that the attribute of sovereignty means that countries are equivalent in matters of making even non-political comparisons. This working assumption, as part of the status quo by the twenty-first century, is so ridiculous that the underlying presence of a warping large mass can be indirectly detected.[6] The ideology of nationalism, for instance, would have sufficient force to warp reasoning, as well as perception.

To get a glimpse of the flawed assumption, we can superimpose the historical terms on early-modern/modern countries (e.g., the UK, rather than the medieval England). At least as of 2020, the United States and China, as well as the European Union, were empire-level polities, whereas the E.U. state of Italy was an (early-modern) kingdom-level polity, and Singapore was a city-state. The flaw in only using the number of cases of coronavirus rests on the deeper flawed assumption that all countries can be classified on the same level, notwithstanding huge differences in scale and political type. In the E.U. and U.S., representatives of the states (early-modern kingdom level) sit in bodies at the empire level (i.e., the European Council and the U.S. Senate). To treat a state in one empire as equivalent to another empire thus represents a category mistake (i.e., conflating two different categories as one).

By implication, to treat the regions or provinces of a U.S. or E.U. state as equivalent to the U.S. or E.U. state level (provincia level in the ancient Roman Empire) also involves a category mistake. The American colonies, which became sovereign states (in a league or confederration), were mapped out to be on the scale of the early-modern kingdoms in Europe.[7] Hence the geographical scales of the U.S. and E.U. states cluster. California is roughly the size of Spain, Arizona of Italy, Texas of France, and Montana of Germany. The small states also cluster, but the differences between the large and small states is dwarfed by the difference between the state cluster and the unions' cluster. In other words, the difference between the sizes of the states and the unions is sufficiently larger than how much the states differ and the unions differ that a "step" (i.e., difference in kind, rather than just in amount) can be seen. That the unions are made up of the states is another way of pointing to two plateaus rather than a continuous slope (i.e., saying that the U.S. is larger than France, which is the size of Texas). This is why conflating the two clusters (i.e., of the states and of the unions) represents a category mistake. 

Therefore, comparing Italy’s 80,539 cases to the United States’ 81,321 can be understood as misleading, therefore, because not only are the population-levels so different, but also Italy is a state in a union that in turn is equivalent to the U.S. Logically, if the two unions are equivalent, then a state in one cannot be equivalent to the other union.

In comparisons in which either the E.U. or the U.S. as one or both sides, the overgeneralization is itself problematic because it hides the significant differences between the states. In other words, that the American States differed significantly in coronavirus cases in March, 2020 was lost in comparing the entire U.S. to Italy. With a population of 5.85 million, Wisconsin had at least 707 cases on March 26, 2020, and therefore one case per 8,274 people, while Washington (the state) had at least 3,207 cases in a population of 7.8 million, and therefore one case per 2,432 cases. The represents a substantial difference that is hidden in aggregating all of the states' data. The statement that the entire United States just got worse in coronavirus cases than a state in the E.U. is thus problematic. 

Even in correcting for the category mistake (e.g., comparing an empire-scale geographic polity with an early modern/modern "kingdom"-level polity, we would over generalize to say that the E.U. is worse off than the U.S. precisely because such a comparison ignores significant differences between the states in both unions. In fact, even if it made sense to generalize the entire U.S. (i.e., states differing little) rather than report predominately on the States, then the E.U. too should have been at the other end of the comparison, even if its states differed appreciably. As both unions were empire-scale, their respective states were very likely to different on a variety of indexes.

Having corrected for the category mistake and taken account of the fact that state-level differences were significant in both unions, greater insight could have been gleamed on how the virus was faring in Europe and America by comparing the "hot spots," for example. That is to say more accurate comparisons would be made between Italy, New York, France, Germany, California and Washington because they were all being battered by the illness by the end of March (which was going out like a lion).

On March 26, 2020, New York (the State) had over 37,000 cases in population of 20 million: one case for every 542 people, worse than Italy's 745 people. Washington (the State) stood at 2,432 people, less severe than the E.U. state of Italy. From this standpoint, the derivative (i.e., the change in the rate of increased cases) for each state could be used to compare the "hot spots" with regard to where they are relative to their respective apexes (i.e., the highest, hence peaking, infection rates). Comparing the "hot spots" could thus have been quite useful. 

Because the state level in both the U.S. and E.U. bore out tremendous differences in severity, it is just common sense that states rather than the unions, or even worse, a union and a state in another like union, should be compared. Moreover, that vast differences in population and in political category, or even just geographical scale (Italy being roughly the size of Arizona), have been routinely missed is a serious flaw both in reasoning and knowledge of political organization. I submit that the flaws in the default-axis of comparison have been protected by a worldwide blind-spot, which has enabled a myriad of false-comparisons. 

Nietzsche would doubtlessly write that a brain-sickness predicated on a weakness was behind the warping of reason and perception. A herd-animal mentality, including in the animals who cannot resist the urge to dominate, could explain how the warping became ingrained in the societal (and global) status quo. I contend that nationalism and turning the attribute of governmental sovereignty into a tautology rendered the flaws both invisible and part of the taken-for-granted status-quo. 

Well into the twenty-first century, people (and governments) around the world were still intent on assuming that the attribute of sovereignty justifies the assumption of equivalence between countries even in making non-political comparisons. Singapore and the U.S. can be compared on a variety of things because both are countries, meaning both are recognized internationally as sovereign within their respective territories. 

With its strong desire, ideology can eclipse reason and perception without leaving finger-prints. Nationalism has likely been playing a subterranean role in the warping of equivalence as in comparing E.U. states like France and Germany to the U.S.A., with the E.U.'s governance and the American States being deliberately overlooked or even blocked from view in a sort of state of denial. 

Even in comparative politics, confounding the state and federal levels of both the E.U. and U.S. is problematic. For instance, federalism came out of empire-level groupings and has the greatest benefits for empires, which are by definition heterogenous (diverse between provinces/states). To model the governance system of the E.U. or U.S. on that of Sinapore (a city) would entail a greater downside of uniform (i.e., union-wide) laws because in empires, "one size does not fit all" of the circumstances of the states (e.g., significant differences in coronavirus infection). Hence New York's government took much more strict measures against the spread of coronavirus than did the government of Kansas in March, 2020. Had the U.S. President handed down a severe, blanket "lock-down," it would have gone unnoticed that several states did not yet need that level of caution through government action. Hence, the state governments were able to set policies according to their situations. As in the case of the E.U. state governments, it was even possible for those American governments to distinguish between their respective regions (or provinces) in taking precautionary measures.[8] As a city, Singapore, unlike the states (and empire-scale unions), could only have one situation. Rather than being influenced by where sovereignty resides (at both the state and federal levels in the U.S. and E.U.), the level at which comparison is best made depends on what is the subject of comparison (e.g., coronavirus) and which level (or cluster) of institutional and geographical political organization (i.e., state, county/province, state/kingdom, or empire-scale country) presents the greatest differences on the subject.

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[1]. Jeffrey Sachs, “Why America Has the World’s Most Confirmed Covid-19 Cases,” CNN.com, March 27, 2020 (accessed March 28, 2020).

[2]. Donald McNeil, “The U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases,” The New York Times, March 26, 2020.

[3]. Sachs, “Why America Has the World’s Most Confirmed Covid-19 Cases.”

[4]. Crispian Balmer and Gavin Jones, “Italy Suffers Setback to Hopes Its Corronavirus Epidemic Might Be in Retreat,” US News & World Report, March 26, 2020.

[5]. Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Transatlantic Comparisons (2015). Athusius' theory of federalism is also discussed and applied.

[6]. I am thinking here of how the presence of a black hole can be detected by looking at the warped orbits nearby (their shape and relatively high speed).

[7]. Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Transatlantic Comparisons (2015).

[8] Lest it be argued that the most suitable level of comparison is that of intra-state regional/provincial, the state size-cluster is not so large that intrastate differences would be as big as the interstate differences. However, the fact that the counties of Dane (which contains the state capital city, Madison) and Milwaukee were both more severely hit on March 26, 2020 than were the other counties suggests that state governments had reason in at least once case to either have different policies for counties or delegate the power to the county governments. Adopting the county level for comparisons within or across empire-scale unions would not be parsimonious and thus practical. Also, I suspect that the typical inter-county differences were less than the inter-state differences. This is why I stopped at the state level in assessing the best level of comparison generally. 

Automatic Standing: The American States in Federalism Cases

Unlike that of the E.U., the U.S. system of public governance is structurally biased toward  political consolidation at the expense of federalism. In fact, the bias extends to jurisprudence. This is evident in a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on September 8, 2011 against Virginia on the 2010 federal health-insurance reform law.

According to the Wall Street Journal, at issue was “whether the federal government can require Americans to either carry health insurance or pay a fee starting in 2014.” In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond Virginia “found Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli lacked legal standing to bring his challenge. That threw out a ruling [in 2010] by a lower court judge who said Mr.Cuccinelli was entitled to sue and found the law’s requirement to carry insurance went beyond Congress’s powers under the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Cuccinelli, a Republican, had argued Virginia had standing because, shortly after President Barack Obama signed the health law, the state’s previous governor had signed a law saying the state’s residents shouldn’t be required to carry health insurance. But the Fourth Circuit judges found that law alone wasn’t enough to generate standing for Virginia, and the state couldn’t show it was directly burdened by the insurance requirement. ‘If we were to adopt Virginia’s standing theory, each state could become a roving constitutional watchdog of sorts; no issue, no matter how generalized or quintessentially political, would fall beyond a state’s power to litigate in federal court,’ Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote. She and the other two judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.”

Analysis:

In her statement, Judge Motz fails to grasp one of the fundamental mechanisms of modern federalism—namely, that the two systems of government—that of the states and the federal government—check and balance each other. This is necessary because governmental sovereignty is divided up between the two systems in modern federalism. The division and the related enforcement mechanism of “check and balance” are means of protecting the citizens’ liberty at the expense of tyranny (i.e., unaccountable government action). For modern federalism to work effectively, any encroachment on the sovereignty of one system by the other must be repelled. Otherwise, even one successful encroachment by one system could snowball into such an imbalance of sovereignty between the two systems that the federalism itself is defeated and the union is either de facto dissolved or consolidated with the people’s liberty paying the ultimate price.

Accordingly, governments of republics that are members of a modern federal system of governance have standing constitutionally, as semi-sovereign members, to challenge possible encroachments by the general government. I contend that Virginia had standing in the appeal because a Congressional over-reach based on the interstate commerce clause (i.e., the enumerated power authorizing Congress to regulate the commerce between two or more states) would be at the expense of Virginia’s sovereign sphere. Moreover, it is in the interest of the federal system itself, and the U.S. Constitution, that members or branches of one of the two systems of government have standing to contest over-extensions by a member or branch of the other system because otherwise one system could come to eclipse the power of the other (i.e., consolidation or dissolution).

It could be argued that Virginia’s standing is pretty obvious given Virginia’s membership in the U.S. federal system and the fact that Congress’s encroachment would be at the expense of the polity members because the federal law would bind the Virginia government. The fact that the appeals court is itself a member of one of the branches of one of the parties may account for the judge’s refusal to find standing.

In terms of the constitutional law jurisprudence, being burdened should not be required of Virginia in order for the republic to have standing; merely having an interest in terms of its sovereignty should be sufficient. Such an interest is triggered by a possible encroachment by Congress beyond its enumerated powers because the Virginia government would not otherwise be confined in its legislative, executive or judicial actions. Above all, it is in the interest of the federal system itself, and thus the United States, that both systems of government within the system have standing to contest any and all possible encroachments. Perhaps if the state governments’ standing were recognized where it is possible that Congress, the president or a federal court has unduly constricted the states’ semi-sovereign situs in the federal constitutional order, the U.S. system of public governance would be closer to federalism rather than consolidation. Given the extent of the latter, it would not be a bad thing to have each state “become a roving constitutional watchdog of sorts; no issue, no matter how generalized or quintessentially political, would fall beyond a state’s power to litigate in federal court.” Perhaps then a balance of power—and of the respective sovereignties—which is necessary for a modern federal system (i.e., not confederalism, such as in an alliance), would be within reach; the check and balance between governments that exists in viable federalism could once again function (if it ever did in the American context).

Source:

Janet Adamy, “Court Upholds Health Law,” Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2011. 

Two Governmental Sovereignties in American Federalism: Medical Marijuana and Drug Trafficking Across State Lines

"Federal agencies conducted 26 raids on medical marijuana facilities in 13 Montana cities [in mid-March, 2011], as agents seized thousands of marijuana plants and froze about $4 million in bank funds. The raids stunned medical marijuana advocates, many of whom believed the Obama administration's policy was to leave states with medical marijuana laws alone. That belief stemmed from Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement in October 2009 that the pursuit of 'individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance' with existing state medical marijuana laws would be the lowest priority of U.S. law enforcement. . . . Montana U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter said there was 'probable cause that the premises were involved in illegal and large-scale trafficking of marijuana. . . . When criminal networks violate federal laws, those involved will be prosecuted.' . . . While 15 states have legalized some form of medical marijuana use, the federal government still considers the drug an illegal controlled substance with a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Justice Department officials contend the focus of investigations involving marijuana is on large-scale drug traffickers and not on individual patients. 'We have made clear that we are not going to look the other way while significant drug-trafficking organizations try and shield their illegal efforts from investigation and prosecution through the pretense that they are medical dispensaries,' Justice Department spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. Marijuana advocates say enforcement of illegal activities involving medical marijuana should fall to the states, not the federal government."

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.