Many of us on the Right are aware of the war being waged on European Union member states’ sovereignty behind the scenes, but far fewer can account for exactly how it is happening. Why do capitals seem increasingly weak at defending their interests every year, despite the lack of obvious structural reforms being implemented that would explain this encroachment?
That’s why the renowned conservative think tank MCC Brussels has published a new report entitled “The Silent Coup: the European Commission’s power grab.” It was written by British journalist Thomas Fazi, the author of such books as The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent—and How We Can Take It Back (2014), and The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (2023).
Fazi opened the report’s launch event on Wednesday, September 11th by stating,
Supranational integration—the process of constantly and exponentially expanding the EU’s competencies and powers—is at the root of virtually all the problems we now face in Europe.
Fazi also warned that this process is not always done within the EU’s legal and institutional boundaries. Instead, more often than not, it’s what scholars refer to as “integration by stealth” or “covert integration”: the act of deliberately catching countries off guard by pushing through power transfers wrapped in shiny emergency measures during times of crises—measures that then turn out to be permanent and irreversible.
Specifically, Fazi examined three such “moments of public fear” that allowed the European Commission to take further steps toward becoming a supranational state.
The first was the European debt crisis—or euro zone crisis—between 2009 and the mid-2010s, which opened the door for the EU to become a sovereign entity for the first time, with the ability to impose budgetary rules to bail out its most struggling economies.
More recent, and much more serious examples, are the COVID crisis and the war in Ukraine.
COVID was used, for instance, to get member states accustomed to the highly controversial idea of joint borrowing at the EU level, something that was always met with strong opposition from frugal countries, wary of sharing a ‘debt union’ in the past. At last, COVID single-handedly managed to change the economic constitution of the EU, and the decade-long debate was overcome “not by democratic deliberation, but through emergency policies,” Fazi noted.
The borrowed €800 billion pandemic relief funds of the Next Generation EU package serve another purpose: they are a powerful tool to further influence and blackmail countries that refuse to adhere to Brussels’ ideological lines or do its bidding. This happened to both Poland and Hungary, who had their share of emergency funds suspended for alleged rule-of-law violations, and it will probably happen to others, including Slovakia, which recently found itself in the crosshairs of the Commission.
Additionally, let’s not forget that the ‘conditionality mechanism’ pushed through during the 2020 emergency budget talks is not exclusive to the pandemic relief funds. Since then, it can be—and is being—used to freeze member states’ regular EU funds whenever Brussels wants it.
COVID also allowed the Commission to set up a centralized procurement regime for vaccines, persuading EU countries to let the Commission buy them on their behalf, claiming that the bloc had better negotiating power than individual member states. It turned out to be “a massive waste of money,” Fazi noted, with the EU buying over ten doses of vaccines for every single citizen at far more than the average global price, only to discard billions of euros worth of redundant vaccines later. Not to mention ‘Pfizergate,’ the EU’s biggest-ever corruption scandal, which von der Leyen treats as if it never happened. She refuses to adhere to the EU’s transparency rules by releasing her text messages to this day.
The war in Ukraine brought forth many similar opportunities for the EU elite to jump on as well. Fazi detailed how the Commission crafted the sanction regimes largely alone, without involving member states in the process, and justified it with the need to act quickly. “It actually coordinated more with Washington than with EU capitals,” Fazi noted.
Moreover, by making sweeping promises to Ukraine in the name of member states from day one, von der Leyen silently established herself as the bloc’s leader in foreign policy, defense, and security issues—competencies that had previously been strictly reserved for the capitals. If intentional, her strategy was genius: von der Leyen’s statements created “an epistemic reality” on the ground, automatically fostering a sense of consensus before there could have been any, and internally pressuring member states to then support whatever policy was put forward by her during Council votes.
The same trend can be observed during all of these crises, Fazi underlined: “emergency solutions become the new institutional status quo.” And only by understanding how this silent coup is happening can we hope to spot the next attempt and begin broadening the public debate until our governments can find the courage to fight back.
Time is of the essence, as the cumulative effect of these power grabs makes it increasingly hard to stop them. But EU countries should never give up, Fazi added. They should pick even the losing fights, because the day they give up trying to preserve their sovereignty is the day they lose control over their destiny forever.
