In what is just the latest push toward creating a centralized superstate by weakening member states and transferring their competencies to Brussels, the European Parliament adopted two resolutions on Wednesday, January 17th, both disguised as noble efforts to strengthen sovereignty and subsidiarity—yet they are anything but.
One of the resolutions calls for strengthening the role of national parliaments (as opposed to governments) in the EU decision-making, while the other puts forward the creation of an EU citizenship that would grant voting rights to “mobile citizens” in the country of their residence, a measure that could be expanded to third-country national as well.
Both reports were adopted in the plenary by the usual majority, comprising all leftist parties as well as the center-right EPP, with only the two conservative groups (ECR and ID) voting against in significant numbers.
Cross-border ‘majorities’ instead of governments
The resolution on the role of national parliaments recommends strengthening existing interparliamentary frameworks and giving them—and by extension, all non-governmental parties in each capital city—more power to influence and scrutinize the EU decision-making process, as well as reorganizing the European political sphere from above along the lines of European political families, which ultimately strengthens the European Parliament over the European Council.
The report argues that this is important because member states are represented in the European Council only by their governments, which is unfair to opposition parties and their voters. “A minority in one member state may be a majority in another,” rapporteur Paolo Rangel (EPP) argued in the plenary on Tuesday, saying that countries’ political plurality must have a larger role in what’s being decided in Brussels.
Conservative MEPs were quick to point out that, despite being sold as a measure to strengthen democracy and subsidiarity, the resolution is just a small but obvious step toward federalization as the proposed treaty change inevitably weakens the member states for the benefit of cross-border political movements. What’s more, the report rejected the conservative proposal to allow national parliaments to repeal EU legislation, the only real way to effectively safeguard against Brussels’ overreach.
“By the looks of it, you believe that everything should be going in one direction, and any motions, any voices wishing for more sovereignty for member states are rejected,” MEP Beata Kempa (ECR) said during the debate.
Eroding citizenship from within
The second file, pertaining to EU citizenship and introduced by the liberal Renew group, was even more controversial—and for good reason. The report argues that EU citizenship would guarantee that “mobile EU citizens” (European expats living in other member states) don’t suffer any discrimination, and are granted largely the same rights as if they were citizens, including voting rights in national and regional elections.
While this resolution only talks about European expats who are already citizens in one member state, it recalls previous resolutions that already put forward the notion that the same EU citizenship should be gradually extended to those without citizenship as well, i.e. third-country migrants. Similarly, the new report also calls for a harmonized, lowered voting age, which previous reports already want to set at 16 throughout Europe.
But even without extending it to migrants, the proposal would make it irrelevant whether a country has stricter or more relaxed rules for acquiring citizenship than its neighbors, since becoming a citizen in one EU country would effectively grant the same status in all of them.
As many conservative MEPs pointed out, what the report advocates for is nothing short of violating member states’ sovereign and exclusive right to grant citizenship and to allow an individual to take part in shaping his nation’s future.
“It’s essential to remember that citizenship is fundamentally a subject matter of national responsibility, not a supranational one,” MEP Gunnar Beck (ID) explained, adding that the initiative lacks both adequate legal base and democratic legitimacy.
According to the MEP, the “sanctity” of citizenship is under attack from two simultaneous forces:
As the EU seeks to redefine citizenship from above, certain political groups, mostly from the left, aim to erode it from within, transforming it into a mere commodity, detached from tradition, language, and culture. We must counter both these threats—the EU’s top-down approach and the internal dilution of citizenship’s value. … Citizenship must never be found for easy pick-up off the bargain rack.
