On December 17, the European Parliament adopted a resolution endorsing the so-called My Voice, My Choice initiative. Presented as a matter of fundamental rights and women’s health, the resolution in fact constitutes yet another example of a growing and deeply troubling pattern: The systematic overreach of European Union institutions into areas that remain, under the Treaties, the exclusive competence of Member States.
Abortion law is one such area. The EU has no competence whatsoever in regulating the protection of human life before birth. This is not a marginal legal detail, but a cornerstone of the European constitutional order, grounded in the principle of conferral enshrined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. And yet, the European Parliament has once again chosen to act as though this principle were optional, politically inconvenient, or simply obsolete.
The My Voice, My Choice initiative calls for the EU to ensure universal access to abortion services across Europe, framing abortion explicitly as “healthcare”. By endorsing it, the Parliament not only promotes a radical ideological agenda, but also seeks to exert pressure on national legislatures in an area where democratic self-determination should prevail. This is not an isolated incident. It is part of an accelerating process of centralisation, whereby European institutions expand their influence far beyond the competences conferred upon them by the Member States.
For years, the European Parliament has used non-binding resolutions as a political battering ram against national sovereignty. In successive texts, it has referred to abortion as “abortion care”, denounced restrictions on abortion as violations of human rights, and even, in November, described the lack of access to abortion as a form of “violence”. These rhetorical manoeuvres are not innocent. They are designed to reshape legal and moral categories by repetition, regardless of the Treaties.
In this context, it is worth recalling that the European Parliament has twice officially labelled the Ordo Iuris Institute, of which I am President of the Board, as “ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalists” — not for any unlawful activity, but for the simple act of defending the right to life from conception, a position that remains fully legitimate and constitutionally protected in many Member States. Such language is revealing. It illustrates how dissenting voices are delegitimised, while ideological conformity is enforced under the banner of “European values”.
Yet even the Parliament’s most ardent supporters must concede a basic legal fact: Abortion policy has never been transferred to the EU. There is no Treaty basis for EU action in this field. What we are witnessing, therefore, is not integration through law, but integration through political pressure, semantic manipulation, and institutional persistence.
If the European Parliament were the only institution engaged in such overreach, the damage might still be containable. Unfortunately, it is not. The most dramatic escalation has come from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), whose recent jurisprudence marks a decisive break with the constitutional balance upon which the EU was built.
In a ruling delivered last week against Poland, the CJEU crossed a legal and political Rubicon. For the first time in such explicit terms, it asserted the primacy of its own case law over national constitutions. National courts, according to the Court, may no longer rely on constitutional norms to set aside EU law as interpreted by the CJEU. In other words, even the highest constitutional provisions of Member States must yield to the Court’s interpretation of EU law.
This is not merely a reaffirmation of the primacy of EU law over ordinary national legislation — a principle long accepted within certain limits. It is the creation of an entirely new hierarchy, one in which the CJEU effectively places itself above national constitutions. By doing so, the Court arrogates to itself the power to define the scope of EU competences unilaterally, thereby emptying the principle of conferral of any real meaning.
The implications are profound. The EU was never designed as a constitutional super-state with a supreme court standing above national constitutional courts. The Treaties rest on the assumption that Member States remain the “masters of the Treaties”, voluntarily transferring specific competences while retaining ultimate constitutional authority. The recent CJEU ruling turns this logic on its head.
This decision does not stand alone. It fits into a broader pattern of judicial activism through which the CJEU has progressively extended EU influence into domains traditionally reserved to national sovereignty.
In November, the Court obliged Member States to recognise same-sex marriages contracted in other EU countries, even where national law or constitutional provisions define marriage differently. Family law, however, has never been transferred to the EU and remains subject to unanimity in the Council where cross-border effects exist. The Court nonetheless used free movement law as a pretext to impose far-reaching social consequences.
Earlier this year, the CJEU ruled that Member States must allow individuals to change the sex registered in civil status records based on subjective self-identification, invoking EU data protection rules. Once again, a technical competence was instrumentalised to reshape fundamental social norms.
In July, the Court further undermined national control over migration by allowing domestic courts to disregard government-defined lists of “safe countries of origin”, weakening states’ ability to manage asylum and deportation policies.
Taken together, these rulings reveal a clear trajectory: EU competences are no longer limited by the Treaties, but continuously re-engineered through judicial interpretation, without democratic consent and without formal Treaty revision.
Legal centralisation is now being reinforced by financial pressure. As analysed by Ordo Iuris, the European Commission’s proposed new multiannual financial framework would significantly increase the Commission’s leverage over Member States. Through conditionality mechanisms, “milestones”, and discretionary assessments of compliance with vaguely defined “rule of law” criteria, access to EU funds becomes a powerful tool of political discipline.
Budgetary sovereignty — a core element of democratic self-government — is thus increasingly constrained by supranational bodies that lack direct electoral legitimacy. National governments find themselves compelled to adjust legislation and policy priorities not through parliamentary debate, but under the threat of financial sanctions.
This combination of judicial supremacy, parliamentary activism, and budgetary conditionality creates a system in which real power steadily migrates away from democratically accountable institutions at national level towards technocratic and judicial actors at EU level.
The result is a deepening democratic deficit. The most powerful EU institutions — the European Commission and the CJEU — operate without a direct mandate from European citizens. The European Parliament, for all its claims, does not represent a single European demos and therefore lacks the political legitimacy of a true legislature.
As EU institutions increasingly interfere in areas such as family law, bioethics, freedom of conscience, and internal security, the gap between decision-makers and citizens widens. National electorates can vote governments out of office, but they cannot vote out European judges or commissioners who redefine the scope of EU power.
This erosion of representative democracy is not accidental. It is the logical consequence of an integration process that has abandoned subsidiarity in favour of centralisation, and pluralism in favour of ideological uniformity.
Europe has now reached a critical juncture. There are only two realistic outcomes if the current trajectory continues. Either the Union will transform into a highly centralised, non-democratic super-state, governed by courts and commissions rather than citizens and parliaments — or it will eventually fall apart under the weight of its own legitimacy crisis.
The only alternative is profound Treaty reform, such as the one proposed jointly by Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute and Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium in a report titled The Great Reset: Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the European Union. This means restoring the primacy of national constitutions, re-establishing the principle of subsidiarity, limiting the competences of EU institutions to those explicitly conferred, and returning genuine decision-making power to democratically elected governments. Whether this can be achieved through a “return to the roots” of European cooperation, or will require a more radical institutional reset, remains an open question.
What is no longer tenable is the illusion that the EU can continue expanding its powers by stealth, without political consequences. The My Voice, My Choice resolution is not merely about abortion. It is a symptom of a broader constitutional drift — one that threatens both national sovereignty and the future of European cooperation itself.
If Europe is to survive as a community of free nations rather than a bureaucratic empire, this drift must be halted — now.
Attorney Jerzy Kwaśniewski is President of the Board and co-founder of Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture and Attorney and Managing Partner of Parchimowicz & Kwaśniewski Law Firm, Poland
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