Rodrigo Ballester is the Head of the Center for European Studies at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Budapest. Last year, he was appointed Ministerial Commissioner for the internationalization strategy of Hungarian universities. He is a former EU official with sixteen years of experience, including serving as a staff member to Hungarian Commissioner Tibor Navracsics.
He is the co-author of a recently released report by the MCC and the Polish Ordo Iuris Institute entitled ‘“The Great Reset,” which proposes to take the European Union back to its roots, restoring the sovereignty of its member states.
The report states that “over the past seventy years, the EU has evolved from a simple economic cooperation project into a powerful supranational entity with its own currency, court, and ability to impose financial sanctions on member states. What began as a vision of free trade and peaceful coexistence has morphed into an institution shaping nearly all aspects of governance in Europe, centralizing power at the expense of national sovereignty.”
The report gives a damning assessment of how the European Union has evolved from a cooperation of sovereign nations into a supranational entity, with EU institutions interfering in the domestic affairs of the EU’s member states. Where did it all go wrong?
In Maastricht. The trend that we describe in the report started with Maastricht. It is basically thirty years ago that the European Union started to think politically. The federalist agenda, and all of the problems that come with it, started very, very clearly in Maastricht.
The report states that the EU should be brought back closer to its 1957 model, to a stronger EU rooted in national sovereignty. But what you are saying is that the real problems started in 1993, when the Maastricht Treaty came into force?
The original project was not like the Maastricht project at all. The original project was very pragmatic. It was very respectful of member states, both of their sovereignty and their cultural differences. And that lasted for a long, long time. For example, look at Ireland. Until recently, it was difficult to get a divorce. No one really said anything about it. It was accepted as being Ireland’s point of view. Can you imagine what would happen now if, for example, Hungary were to prohibit divorce? Brussels would go absolutely mad.
The European Union has become an ideological trojan horse, a centralized entity that wants to impose a lot of things, including ideology, from top to bottom. This was not the case seventy years ago, not even thirty-five years ago.. Pragmatism and respect for national identities and sovereignty have been replaced by too much integration and the gradual creation of a centralized monster that is no longer serving the interests of the member states or its citizens.
One could argue that the EU’s member states agreed to this.
Indeed, the majority of the member states are happy with this new centralized European Union. They are ready to give up even more of their sovereignty. This is mostly true in Western Europe. Why is that? I think because when you start eroding the sovereignty of member states, they get used to it. It gets very comfortable for them to delegate the work to the European Union, especially the European Commission. That was very obvious in the past five years. They slowly got used to not having to make decisions, and not being treated like adults.
The majority of Western European countries accepted a lot of things that are not even included in the treaties—legislation for which the EU has no mandate, and all kinds of ideologies. The Western elites who don’t share the tragic past of Central and Eastern European countries, and didn’t experience communism and dictatorship, are much keener to embrace this globalist agenda, with a certain naivety and arrogance.
Is that the reason why there always seems to be little resistance from member states regarding certain decisions? We hardly hear of national vetos when unanimity is required, or dissenting voices when a qualified majority is needed. Hungary has been in the spotlight for the past few years for vetoing certain EU decisions, for example on Ukraine, but otherwise not many examples come to mind. Even the notorious Migration Pact was adopted with a qualified majority, and very few countries opposed it.
Because they are no longer the main actors of the European Union, and they seem to have accepted that. They are neglecting their own duties and slowly allowing the decisions to be taken by someone else. The majority of member states no longer want to be treated like adults. They are happy to give up those competences and sacrifice their national sovereignty. Out of pure comfort.
So the Maastricht Treaty basically enabled the European Commission and the European Parliament to take matters into their own hands?
Yes, exactly. And this trend was confirmed by the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Treaty of Nice, and the Treaty of Lisbon. But the breaking point in the seventy-five years of European integration is definitely Maastricht. The problems of the European Union on migration come from Maastricht. The euro zone is also a product of Maastricht. The policies of the rule of law also come from Maastricht. This huge leap from economics to politics, from the intergovernmental to the federal level, it all has its origins in the same place.
As you mention in your report, EU institutions are now interfering in areas that should be the competences of nation-states, such as energy or family law. For example, Hungary has been ostracized and even taken to court for adopting a child protection law that bans LGBT propaganda in schools. The European Court of Justice regularly takes the side of EU institutions against member states, and equally regularly delivers verdicts in line with leftist-liberal policies, in what your report calls “judicial activism.” Is there any way for member states to defend themselves against the overreach of the EU?
The most immediate weapon they have is unanimity. While many in Brussels want to get rid of it, our report recommends the extension of unanimity. We really believe that the European Union is much stronger when member states can defend their rights and red lines. The only mechanism that allows Hungary to still defend itself against the autocratic tendencies of the EU is unanimity. The rule of law combined with the conditionality of the budget are political instruments for blackmailing. All you have to do is look at the case of Poland and you cannot draw any other conclusion. They confiscated EU funds from Poland for years, and as soon as they changed government—within months, without any legislative commitments—they released the money. The European Union is turning the European budget into a political instrument that can be used against countries that are not behaving “the right way.” That is why unanimity matters a lot.
Your report proposes the establishment of a ‘National Competence Shield.’ How does that work?
It is a list of competences that the European Union could by no means interfere with, not even through the European Court of Justice, because they do that all the time. They did it on March 13th, for example: they published a ruling that obliged Hungary to recognize the perceived gender identity of an Iranian migrant: a woman who identifies as a man. Because the Hungarian authorities do not recognize her as a man, she went to court. The European Court then resorted to a classic technique: they took an EU legislation, the GDPR, the general data protection regulation [which gives people the right to correct inaccurate information about themselves] and they used it as a Trojan horse to impose their ideology on member states. Hungary and all the other EU nations are now legally obliged to recognize perceived identity. This is something that totally goes against the Hungarian constitution, and against what the vast majority of Hungarians and probably Europeans think. Despite having no competences whatsoever in this area, the EU has nevertheless managed to push through its ideology. So this is political blackmail and a political hijacking of national competences.
EU institutions regularly refer to the need to defend “EU values” when dealing with dissenting nation-states. Could court rulings like the one mentioned above set a dangerous precedent?
Article Two of the Treaty of the European Union is a list of empty shells, very vague and generic concepts. According to the European Court of Justice, the principle of non-discrimination means that you have to recognize perceived identity. So if the next refugee from Iran identifies as a unicorn, you have to accept that as well. And so, yes, this is the danger with these values. They are empty shells that give a lot of power to centralized bureaucracies like the European Union. And the best example is the Hungarian law on the protection of minors because before asking yourself whether you like this law or not, the very first question should be: is it a European competence? It is not, because family law and education is a national competency. Yet, in the name of the principle of non-discrimination, they are rewriting the treaties. The same is true about the exclusion of Hungarian universities from the EU’s Erasmus and Horizon programmes. This is none of their business. It is not for the EU to say how a Hungarian university should be organised. But in the name of the rule of law, they can do anything they like.
How does your report propose to solve this problem?
We have several proposals, such as expanding unanimity in decision-making, establishing the ‘National Competence Shield,’ ensuring clear distinctions between EU and member state competences, who is doing what, and most importantly, putting the European Council above all the other institutions, including the Court of Justice. If there’s a conflict of competence between the EU and the member states, I don’t think it’s for the judges to decide. The treaties should also make it clear that European law should never, ever have primacy over national constitutions.
The report mentions that both the European Parliament and the German-French leadership have called for further federalization of the European Union and reforms aimed at centralizing power within supranational institutions. Are Germany and France, the two most powerful member states, essentially responsible for how the EU has evolved?
The problem is that the weakness of Paris and Berlin has been translated into a strengthening of Brussels. As an example, when Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. President in January, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was sick for a week. There was a certain panic, and everyone was looking for the Commission to make decisions, as though they were the bosses. But they are not, and should not be. The European Commission should be a General Secretariat in the service of the member states, they should be the pen holders, not the bosses. The fact that everyone was panicking about Von der Leyen’s absence shows that many member states are not taking their own sovereignty and their own national competences seriously.
The report says that “decades of increased centralization have not solved Europe’s challenges but rather exacerbated them.” What has been the most glaring failure of the EU?
I would say competitiveness and migration. In terms of competitiveness, fifteen years ago we were at the same level as the United States. The GDP gap is now 80%. The European Union is extremely bureaucratic, and the Green Deal has contributed to the castration of our competitiveness. Migration has been a European competence for at least two decades, and the results are really poor. Do we control our borders better? No. Do we have less crime? No. Are member states more empowered to control, to manage the migration flow? Absolutely not. It has been a fiasco. One of the things we have proposed is to use the principle of subsidiarity which says that decisions should be taken at the most adequate level. We can see that the European level is not the right one for migration. It’s time for member states to take back power in certain areas, such as border management and asylum. One of the federalist dogmas is that once you give away your competences to the European Union, they stay there forever. We believe the opposite to be true. We believe that according to the principle of subsidiarity, if the EU is not the right power at the right level, then you should go back to the member states.
In your evaluation, in what direction is the EU currently heading?
This question is very relevant since January 20th, since the start of the Trump tsunami. I knew that the European Union would be repulsed by Trump’s victory, but I’m disappointed that they are using up the little energy they have left to confront an historical ally instead of trying to find a new type of partnership with it. I’m shocked, for example, that the EU is not being at all constructive regarding the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. The European elites are arrogantly trying to build a new alliance without the United States, which is absolutely unrealistic. They are offended and instead of looking at the real threats, they are starting a crusade against an imaginary enemy which is actually their strongest ally. However, there is a much bigger threat: Islamism. I would like to see the EU fight Islamism with 10-20% of the energy they are using to oppose the Trump administration. The EU is acting like teenagers, and that is one of the big problems today in Europe: there are no adults in the room.
