Two European Conservative think-tanks, Polish Ordo Iuris and the Hungarian Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) have published proposals on institutional reform of the European Union.
Under the plans revealed on March 10, the bloc would return to its roots of being run by the member states rather than pan-European institutions.
The think-tanks’ aimed to restore sovereignty and democracy, reversing the drift towards a European super state currently supported by the European Parliament, European Commission, the European Court of Justice, Germany and France.
The report Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the EU presented two scenarios for institutional reform of the bloc away from centralisation and federalisation, returning to the “EU’s founding principles” of subsidiarity and sovereignty of member states.
According to the authors, “the EU’s democratic deficit stems from unelected key institutions, opaque decision-making, and the EP’s struggle to unite 27 diverse member states”.
The report identified what it said was the democratic deficit, undermining of national sovereignty, threats to civil liberties, mass migration, bureaucracy stifling economic competitiveness and rejection of traditional values of Christianity and subsidiarity as the ills that have damaged the EU.
The first scenario envisioned a reformed EU that was decentralised, enabling deregulation and the flexibility to respect national interests and restore sovereignty while allowing for co-operation between member states.
That included making the European Council the political core of a union the name of which would change from the EU to the “European Community of Nations” (ECN).
That would embody expanded unanimity of decision making, downgrading the European Parliament so that it was composed of national delegations rather than of pan-European parties. It also proposed making the European Commission a technical and facilitating organisation rather than a political body.
The ECN, according to the report, would function on the basis of shielding the competencies of member states and limiting body-wide law to areas clearly specified in treaties and that did not encroach on national constitutions.
The second option for change presented in the report was a more radical scenario, called “New Beginning”.
That envisaged the gradual dissolution of the present EU with a system based on the primacy of intergovernmental bodies and the creation of a European Court of Arbitration to handle any disputes within the community.
The new intergovernmental body would be based on a clear division of competencies between what was done at national level and what would be carried out at intergovernmental level. Member states would be allowed to opt in or out of any arrangements that expanded intergovernmental powers.
Former leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) in the European Parliament Ryszard Legutko welcomed the report.
He claimed it demonstrated clearly how the principle of subsidiarity on which the EU had been founded was now “a dead letter, as evidenced by the lack of any litigation before the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning breaches of these principles”.
According to Legutko the current system favoured unequal treatment of various countries “and has led to a concept of the union being led by its two most powerful member states”.
He said he also felt that the concept of an “ever closer union” had overridden all other elements of EU treaties, leading to a “remarkable shift of power from nation states towards European institutions and informal centres of power”.
The proposals produced by the two think-tanks in the report were in line with the ideas of a “Europe of nation states” that have been supported by the ECR, the Patriots for Europe and the Europe of Sovereign Nations groups, Legutko said.
They were also in stark opposition to the concept of an “ever closer union” as supported by the majority coalition in the EP composed of the European People’s Party, Renew Europe and the Socialists and Democrats, he added.
