Menon, A. (2015) “The Five Things Everyone Should Know About the European Union“, Social Europe Journal, 08 April.
Where to start when asked, in five points, to encapsulate an institution as complex, as contested, as frequently misunderstood and indeed as deliberately misrepresented as the European Union? Perhaps with the statement that both its supporters and detractors exaggerate their cases.
- Rather than being the all-powerful behemoth frequently alluded to by its critics, the European Union is a fragile – indeed perhaps uniquely fragile – political system. It relies on the consent of member states without whose acquiescence decisions would neither be taken nor implemented. It remains one of the great miracles of modern day international politics that these states acquiesce in respecting and implementing decisions they may have opposed and which then take precedence over national legislation. The EU is not a normal federal system. Its central institutions are weak, whilst its constituent parts are sovereign nation states. It cannot act like the United States and call up the National Guard in the event that a member state refuses to implement European law. It rests on consensus.
- The flip side of this is that member states decisively shape what the EU can and cannot do. For all the talk of qualified majority voting, of member states being over-ridden either by their peers or by an all powerful and power hungry European Commission, the fact is that it is in no one’s interests to steamroll national governments. Even where majority voting is possible, member states prefer to seek consensus. And in the event that a national government signals that important domestic interests are at stake, a search is launched for compromise. The growing power within the EU system of the European Council – the forum within which Heads of State and Government meet to thrash out difficult decisions – bears eloquent testimony to the growing importance of national governments in EU decision making.
Relevant posts:
- Friedman, G. (2015) “The European Union, Nationalism and the Crisis of Europe“, STRATFOR, 20 January.
- Cooper, R. (2014) “The European Union does not have a democratic deficit – it has a democratic surplus“, LSE EUROPP, 11 June.
- Hobolt, S. B. (2014) “Ever closer or ever wider? Public attitudes towards further enlargement and integration in the European Union“, Routledge Publications, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 664-680, 28 April.