The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony

Author:Yoram Hazony
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2018-09-04T07:00:00+00:00

In areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member states and can therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community.88

Here, the Maastricht Treaty states explicitly what was left ambiguous in the American Constitution: The European government will make decisions for its subsidiary national states, both in those areas reserved to it by the treaty, and, in addition, in other areas in which “the objectives of the proposed action… [can] be better achieved by the Community.” Since the decision as to which objectives can be better achieved by the federal European government is in the hands of the officials of this government itself, there is no barrier to the constant reduction of the authority of the member national states other than the self-restraint of these same officials. This restraint has not, however, been forthcoming, and the EU bureaucracy, backed by federal European courts, has consistently extended its powers over member nations in areas such as economic policy, labor and employment policy, public health, communications, education, transportation, the environment, and urban planning. The European principle of subsidiarity is thus nothing other than a euphemism for empire: The subsidiary nations of Europe are only independent insofar as the European government decides that they will be independent.89

The obviously imperial character of the European federal government has been consistently obscured, however, by claims that the European Union has discovered a new “transnational” form of political order, to which the traditional categories used to describe political institutions can no longer be applied. Partisans of the EU frequently deny, for example, that the loss of political independence suffered by the member national states of Europe has resulted in the establishment of a federal government, as one might suppose. Instead, Europe is said to have devised a new form of “pooled sovereignty,” under which there is no government, only a joint “governance.” And of course, if there is no European federal government, then it is impossible to say that this federal government has established an imperial political order.

But all of this is make-believe. The European Union does, despite the propaganda, have a powerful central government whose directives are legally binding on European nations and on their individual members. This government consists of a large lawmaking bureaucracy whose directives are imposed on Europe’s subsidiary nations through their law-enforcement agencies and judicial systems, which are subject to European federal courts. Various appointed and elected bodies have the power to ratify these laws or to decline to do so, although ultimate authority remains with the judicial hierarchy.90 It is true that none of this reminds us of the institutions of a free government. But it is certainly a kind of government: It is the kind of bureaucratic autocracy that imperial states have historically used to govern their subsidiary nations.

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