19. November 2024
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Papers
Beyond Maastricht
3 min Lesezeit
Strengthening Europe’s sovereignty has become a much-debated policy goal. This paper adds three arguments to ongoing discussions.
First, it is no coincidence that recent years have witnessed increasing debate around how to strengthen Europe’s sovereignty. The Maastricht-EU, Europe’s overarching political order since the 1990s, aimed to overcome sovereignty, not to strengthen it. In a context of war and an industrial policy renaissance, this ambition is obsolete. Sovereignty lies beyond Maastricht.
Second, the debate around external sovereignty, i.e. power and its material base, would benefit from stronger integration with debates on internal sovereignty, i.e. legitimacy and institutional reform. Without clear and legitimate decision-making structures, even a strong material and technological base fails to provide self-determination or security.
Third, reforming and clarifying decision-making structures in Europe is politically challenging. To achieve progress, transparent horse-trading seems the most promising path forward: the shifting or sharing of competences based on openly avowed self-interest. Such horse-trading is complex. A lack of trust at various levels further complicates negotiations. In this context, civil society and academia can help by analysing possible elements of such horse-trading – for example, in the areas of energy, finance, defence or industrial policy – to offer an outsider’s view on who wins and who loses under respective options.
Why did we write the paper?
Since the Brexit referendum, the election of Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron’s first Sorbonne speech in 2017, Europe’s sovereignty has been at the forefront of debate. With COVID and the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, sovereignty became a priority, especially regarding health, energy, and economic matters. But how exactly is the concept of sovereignty to be understood? Can economic sovereignty be separated from political sovereignty, and if so, along which lines? What can we do to increase our sovereignty?
What did we learn?
Our examination of European sovereignty yielded three results: First, looking at recent European history through the lens of sovereignty sheds new light on it. The Maastricht-EU emerges as a political project that aimed to overcome national sovereignty, not to strengthen it. Its ideal was peaceful coexistence under the rule of law and in a common European market society. Political action in the strict sense was considered neither necessary nor desirable.
In the 1990s, this may have been a forward-looking attempt to leave the nation-state-driven violence of the 20th century behind and to organise a new, peaceful and prosperous social order. But since then, Europe and the world have changed and the ideal of a post-sovereign order is passé. Major states such as China, Russia and (in parts) the US have rejected the model; its ability to secure peace and prosperity is in doubt; and its democratic legitimacy is waning. A paradigm shift is needed, away from the Maastricht-EU and its post-sovereign ideal.
Second, sovereignty must be analysed as a 360-degree concept. Considering individual policy areas in isolation, e.g. ‘digital’, ‘industrial’ or ‘technological’ sovereignty, leads nowhere. This is because domestic sovereignty – legitimate final decision-making-power – and external sovereignty – the absence of foreign domination – are closely linked. If domestic sovereignty is unclear, or if the alleged sovereign lacks legitimacy, it is difficult to resist external pressure. This link was visible, for example, in early US history, as described in the paper. The ‘Hamiltonian Moment’ of 1790-1 was only possible on the basis of a previous ‘Constitutional Moment’ of 1787-9.
While the early United States are not the European Union of the early 21st century, deep dives into the areas of energy, defence, industrial policy and finance show that here and now, too, a clarification of domestic sovereignty could strengthen external sovereignty.
Third, a clarification of domestic sovereignty in Europe is very challenging today. There is neither a sufficiently robust pan-European public sphere, nor are there clear majorities in favour of more European statehood in the individual member states. Nevertheless, in order to secure more sovereignty for Europe, transparent horse-trading is an option: the reshuffling, sharing or surrender of powers in pursuit of enlightened self-interest.
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