The European Parliament adopted a report on Wednesday, November 22nd that seeks to amend the treaties of the European Union, liquidating member states’ veto rights, and giving more power to EU institutions. The resolution was accepted by 291 votes, with 274 MEPs voting against it, and 44 abstaining. The vote itself shows how divisive the issue is, and member states don’t seem keen on change either.
As we reported, conservative MEPs called the proposals an attempt “to hijack Europe,” and to create “a dystopian superstate that degrades member countries to the status of regions.”
The plans would see a massive transfer of competences from a national to an EU level, and the unanimity voting system—veto rights of member states—would almost completely be abolished, to be replaced by majority or qualified majority voting. The European Parliament would have more powers, and the European Commission would become much more political.
A treaty change is unlikely to happen as it would need the backing of all member states.
Poland’s conservative government adopted a resolution on Tuesday to oppose proposed changes to European Union treaties, saying the EU Parliament’s proposals “reduce the role of the principle of unanimity in the European Council” and “seek to limit the powers of member states in strategic areas,” such as foreign policy, defence and national security. Such changes would “fundamentally reduce Poland’s sovereignty” and “violate the Polish constitution.” The Polish government said the proposed modifications would “serve the interests of the EU’s two biggest member states,” namely France and Germany.
Poland’s largest opposition party, centre-right Civic Platform is also dismissive of the EU Parliament’s proposals. Leader of the party, Donald Tusk, who is likely to become the next prime minister, warned that the ideas epitomise the kind of “naive euro-enthusiasm” that pushed the United Kingdom to leave the EU. “No groups on the Polish political scene will allow ourselves to be involved in any decisions, manoeuvres or processes that would limit Polish independence, sovereignty and interests,” he declared.
Conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also strongly rejects taking away the veto rights of member states. “For Hungary, this is taboo. Hungary considers unanimous decision-making to be the last guarantee of the protection of the national interest, and in the next 120 years no parliament in Hungary—whatever its composition—is likely to vote in favour of this [abandoning unanimous voting]. So we’d better take it off the European agenda,” he recently said in a speech.
The new left-wing-nationalist government of Robert Fico in Slovakia has also made it clear that it vows to put “Slovakia first,” and will oppose the abolition of national veto rights or a move towards majority voting in more areas.
For a treaty change to occur, the European Council—made up of member states—first has to vote with a simple majority to set up a convention, which would comprise MEPs, commissioners, MPs from the member states, and EU leaders. The convention would then analyse the proposals and make recommendations that all the member states would have to adopt.
There seems to be no appetite for change, however. Neither the French, nor the Czech, nor the Swedish EU Presidency acted on a resolution adopted by the European Parliament last summer calling on the European Council to start the process to revise the EU Treaties. During Tuesday’s debate in the European Parliament, the representative of the current Spanish Presidency, Secretary of State for the EU Pascual Navarro Ríos said the Presidency plans to raise the subject at a meeting of EU ministers on December 12th.
