Is European Union able to reform?
European Union needs to be reformed. This is a statement that most of the politicians from both left and right wing would agree. The left-wing liberals would like to see EU as a federation resulting in slow dissolution of national states in general while the right-wing supporters would like the return to the early stages of EU when the idea was about free trade and not interfering into every aspect of human lives. While I don't believe that federalization of EU is a viable way (as elaborated here), I am going to focus more on the other idea, returning to the initial ideas of the EU that I, as a right wing conservative, find appealing.
I will claim and the very beginning that the return of EU to its initial stage, meaning free economic zone and freedom of movement is never going to happen. Reason for that is the ridiculously overinflated bureaucratic apparatus that has been leeching on EU and whose numbers are still growing. There are no official statistics of how many people works directly for EU but it is safe to say that it is dozens of thousands at least. Add the families of these people, and we are in hundreds of thousands of people who are directly dependent or at least partially dependent on EU. Now you have to add another tens of thousands who are connected with EU indirectly such as experts on grants, subsidies, law, etc. of the EU. In the best case scenario of returning to the very basic ideas of free trade, majority of these people will loose their job.
In theory, this scenario does not sound bad. These people will start working for the private sector which will make them finally useful members of society who will create actual values and moreover, some of them would learn a thing or two about the real world which is very different from the world that exist in the heads of EU clerks. In reality, this is never going to happen. These people have already established a mafia-like fraternity of „European Unionists“, and this group will never allow any major reform of the EU.
We must understand that people who either work for EU as employees or were elected to the EU parliament don't do this job because they want to improve the situation in EU. They work for EU for one of the two reasons. First reason is that working for EU is a well paid job with no responsibility and no high requirement in terms of capabilities or intelligence. The second reason why some people went to work for EU is that these people have autocratic or even totalitarian tendencies and want to impose their ideas of social engineering on the citizens of the EU member states. Be careful though, this second group of people, unlike the first group, is very capable and intelligent and must not be taken as easy opponent.
The first group is not so dangerous. After all I cannot blame them for wanting to have a comfortable life without any responsibility. What I however cannot accept is that their comfortable lives are sponsored by others, who usually have less paid jobs with much higher level of responsibility. The second group, however, is very dangerous. These people will do everything to stop any attempts to reform EU and to maneuver it into the right direction again. Meaning from authoritarian ideas hidden behind noble plans to protect the environment and improve the health and safety of the people toward more freedom. Not only freedom of movement or free trade, but also freedom of choice, freedom to decide about my own life without having EU above me telling me what to do.
These people would loose their sense of life as they are self-centered individuals who believe they are better that ordinary people and who believe they know better what the others should do.
This „European Mafia“ is only the first problem. Another problem are the dozens of different EU institutions, offices, think-tanks and non-profit organizations that were created during the EU development and whose only purpose is surveillance over EU matters and promoting EU ideas. Some of them, if not most, would suddenly become useless if the EU was not the over-controlling entity it is now but rather a community of mutually cooperating states. But can you imagine dissolving these organizations? To make you better understand what I am talking about, I am talking about institutions or EU bodies such as: The European External Action Service, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions, the European Ombudsman, the European Data Protection Supervisor, the European School of Administration, the European Personnel Selection Office, European Innovation Council and many more. Quite an impressive list of agencies right? These agencies naturally employ a lot of people which leads us back to the first point, but there is more. If EU should return to its initial idea, these institutions should be dissolved. And here comes the point – everyone involved in these institutions and many supporters of EU would start arguing that these institutions are necessary for EU, that their benefit to the area they operate in is irreplaceable and dissolving these institutions would be an incurable blow to the respective area of operation of each of these institutions. Is it true though? Of course not. Life would be just the same without these institutions as it is now. But, when thinking about possible reform of EU, we cannot think only about opposition from the people who are being employed by the EU but also opposition from the institutions itself who will claim that they are irreplaceable.
Then there is the European Law. It is maybe not known amongst the people who does not have legal education, but European law is not just a branch of regular national law such as commercial or civil law. European law is now an independent branch of law together with public international law and national law. European law started as offspring of regular public international law but as EU more and more deviated from its initial ideas, so did the European law deviated from public international law until it emerged as independent legal branch.
Why should this be so important? Because EU is the only organization in the world with its own law. Regular international organizations are established on the basis of public international law. States are bound by public international law to the degree they agree to be bound and are of course governed by the national law. EU is something else, something in between. All the EU directives and regulations, all legal documents of the EU are build on European law.
That is one of the big reasons EU is not able to be reformed to return to its initial stages. European law is so deeply embed in all the EU procedures, documents and institutions that any possible reform is deemed to fail at the beginning because if we want to return EU to its initial stage, we must as well abandon all of the European law idea and return to the public international law. Reason for that being that public international law operates on the basis of equality. All states, subject of public international law, are equal meaning that states can freely decide if they want to be subject to certain international treaties and therefore be bound by it or no. No such thing exists within European law. Member states are bound to accept the regulations and directive of EU and are bound by them no matter if they agree or not.
Given the fact that majority of the EU documents and procedures are based on European law instead of regular public international law, abandoning European law would be a difficult process with uncertain results.
While I believe EU must be reformed, I don't think that EU as a current organization can be reformed for better. The way the right-wing reformists should be pursuing is to dissolute current EU as a whole and create new organization based in fair principles of public international law. Only this way we can achieve truly fair cooperation within Europe while maintaining the basic ideas of EU which were, unlike its current state, actually fruitful.
In the very end, just one more observation – how can you reform organization that has been unable to decide about its seat since it establishment and travels regularly between Brussels and Strasbourg...
In theory, this scenario does not sound bad. These people will start working for the private sector which will make them finally useful members of society who will create actual values and moreover, some of them would learn a thing or two about the real world which is very different from the world that exist in the heads of EU clerks. In reality, this is never going to happen. These people have already established a mafia-like fraternity of „European Unionists“, and this group will never allow any major reform of the EU.
We must understand that people who either work for EU as employees or were elected to the EU parliament don't do this job because they want to improve the situation in EU. They work for EU for one of the two reasons. First reason is that working for EU is a well paid job with no responsibility and no high requirement in terms of capabilities or intelligence. The second reason why some people went to work for EU is that these people have autocratic or even totalitarian tendencies and want to impose their ideas of social engineering on the citizens of the EU member states. Be careful though, this second group of people, unlike the first group, is very capable and intelligent and must not be taken as easy opponent.
The first group is not so dangerous. After all I cannot blame them for wanting to have a comfortable life without any responsibility. What I however cannot accept is that their comfortable lives are sponsored by others, who usually have less paid jobs with much higher level of responsibility. The second group, however, is very dangerous. These people will do everything to stop any attempts to reform EU and to maneuver it into the right direction again. Meaning from authoritarian ideas hidden behind noble plans to protect the environment and improve the health and safety of the people toward more freedom. Not only freedom of movement or free trade, but also freedom of choice, freedom to decide about my own life without having EU above me telling me what to do.
These people would loose their sense of life as they are self-centered individuals who believe they are better that ordinary people and who believe they know better what the others should do.
This „European Mafia“ is only the first problem. Another problem are the dozens of different EU institutions, offices, think-tanks and non-profit organizations that were created during the EU development and whose only purpose is surveillance over EU matters and promoting EU ideas. Some of them, if not most, would suddenly become useless if the EU was not the over-controlling entity it is now but rather a community of mutually cooperating states. But can you imagine dissolving these organizations? To make you better understand what I am talking about, I am talking about institutions or EU bodies such as: The European External Action Service, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions, the European Ombudsman, the European Data Protection Supervisor, the European School of Administration, the European Personnel Selection Office, European Innovation Council and many more. Quite an impressive list of agencies right? These agencies naturally employ a lot of people which leads us back to the first point, but there is more. If EU should return to its initial idea, these institutions should be dissolved. And here comes the point – everyone involved in these institutions and many supporters of EU would start arguing that these institutions are necessary for EU, that their benefit to the area they operate in is irreplaceable and dissolving these institutions would be an incurable blow to the respective area of operation of each of these institutions. Is it true though? Of course not. Life would be just the same without these institutions as it is now. But, when thinking about possible reform of EU, we cannot think only about opposition from the people who are being employed by the EU but also opposition from the institutions itself who will claim that they are irreplaceable.
Then there is the European Law. It is maybe not known amongst the people who does not have legal education, but European law is not just a branch of regular national law such as commercial or civil law. European law is now an independent branch of law together with public international law and national law. European law started as offspring of regular public international law but as EU more and more deviated from its initial ideas, so did the European law deviated from public international law until it emerged as independent legal branch.
Why should this be so important? Because EU is the only organization in the world with its own law. Regular international organizations are established on the basis of public international law. States are bound by public international law to the degree they agree to be bound and are of course governed by the national law. EU is something else, something in between. All the EU directives and regulations, all legal documents of the EU are build on European law.
That is one of the big reasons EU is not able to be reformed to return to its initial stages. European law is so deeply embed in all the EU procedures, documents and institutions that any possible reform is deemed to fail at the beginning because if we want to return EU to its initial stage, we must as well abandon all of the European law idea and return to the public international law. Reason for that being that public international law operates on the basis of equality. All states, subject of public international law, are equal meaning that states can freely decide if they want to be subject to certain international treaties and therefore be bound by it or no. No such thing exists within European law. Member states are bound to accept the regulations and directive of EU and are bound by them no matter if they agree or not.
Given the fact that majority of the EU documents and procedures are based on European law instead of regular public international law, abandoning European law would be a difficult process with uncertain results.
While I believe EU must be reformed, I don't think that EU as a current organization can be reformed for better. The way the right-wing reformists should be pursuing is to dissolute current EU as a whole and create new organization based in fair principles of public international law. Only this way we can achieve truly fair cooperation within Europe while maintaining the basic ideas of EU which were, unlike its current state, actually fruitful.
In the very end, just one more observation – how can you reform organization that has been unable to decide about its seat since it establishment and travels regularly between Brussels and Strasbourg...
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