This EU Won't Work

There’s a gap between what the EU says it is and what it really is. This is not simply because the project is incomplete and has (inevitably) encountered some bumps in its path.

There are two main reasons why this European Union cannot work, from which all our concerns follow:

1. What the EU really is isn’t what most of its citizens want, which is why…

2. The EU isn’t really what it says it is.

Of course EU citizens like the promise of peace, prosperity and friendship with respect for their national identities but whenever they have been asked they have rejected supranational government. [1]

EU Treaties—the legal basis that, after the fact, support EU theory—can be summarised it its own words:

DRAWING INSPIRATION from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law,

CONFIRMING their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of the rule of law,

DESIRING to enhance further the democratic and efficient functioning of the institutions so as to enable them better to carry out, within a single institutional framework, the tasks entrusted to them,

RESOLVED to achieve the strengthening and the convergence of their economies and to establish an economic and monetary union including, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty and of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, a single and stable currency.

There is much more to the Preamble to the Treaty on European Union (TEU) [2], which we have analysed in detail (though not the full 412 pages, in English, of the Consolidated Version) in our series of posts [3].

Then we read this grand statement, suitable for marketing purposes but surely not suited to a legal document that commits the Project to practical—and supposedly delivered—outcomes:

TEU Article 21(1): The Union’s actions on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement,… democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.

Like much in the Treaties this Article doesn’t commit the EU to anything of substance, because of the weak “guided by” and “respect for”, which no court could pin down (except, perhaps, the CJEU).

In 2016 Martin Schulz, then President of the European Parliament, confirmed that it was the policy of Germany’s Social Democratic Party to turn the European Commission into a “proper European government” [4]. He was a cautious about this policy, arguing that the time was not right; nevertheless he confirmed that this was the basis of the EU’s ambition despite it never having been acknowledged openly as such.

Jean-Claude Juncker supported the case, saying of ‘European government’ that to “implement it, the European treaties would have to be amended. Martin’s plan is a long-term project that cannot currently be implemented due to the mood on the continent.”[4] This is an inconvenient truth that is usually well disguised.

EU member countries’ constitutions oblige governments to put themselves up periodically for re-election. EU treaties do not require this inconvenience. To achieve its goal of a federal state in Europe the EU must force through ever closer union, against the wishes of many of its citizens. For this it needs stability and continuity. Its leaders cannot afford to risk a change of regime at the whim of an ignorant electorate.

The EU, if it described its founding principles honestly, would argue that the common people do not know what they want and should be governed by what the EU believes they need. They feel that they have to pretend to respond to expressed wants and needs, but the evidence shows up their failure and their insincerity.

The advantage of setting such goals [5] is that achievement of them can always be deferred to some unspecified future time. We reviewed these and other goals and values in an earlier post [6] so we won’t go over the arguments in detail again, except to say that while these are what the EU says it is, they do not correspond to what the EU does in practice.

We described some of the ways in which the EU is not what it says it is in [7]. There is a gap between how the EU acts and what its leaders say about it. This gap, involving deceits and obfuscations, characterises the EU and the distance between its true objectives and its declared ones. The main goal of the EU is hidden behind promises of prosperity and cooperation that read well but do not accord with the experience of many citizens.

The EU is a regime cloaked in a claim of high moral purpose. It is not willing to give serious consideration to the view that it is not a democratic form of governance; the EU uses propaganda to cover the deficit, which shows up the contempt in which it holds its citizens.

The EU is a project designed and run for the benefit of those who designed and run it. It offers its leaders a grand platform on which to strut, as well as impressive, untaxed salaries with large pensions for recycled politicians; nice work, which only a select few can get.

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:9e8d52e1-2c70-11e6-b497-01aa75ed71a1.0006.01/DOC_1&format=PDF

[3] Treaties: Examined in detail

[4] Themes-4: Founded in Deception (First item: The Great Deception Continues)

[5] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en

[6] Only Believe

[7] Words versus Deeds