“An enlarged Europe should be a reformed Europe,” German Chancellor Scholz underlined in his opening speech at this year’s ‘This is Europe’ debate in the Strasbourg plenary on Tuesday, May 9th. Scholz argued for more central power for the European Commission and for stripping member states of their veto power in foreign policy decisions.
Marking the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration of 1950, May 9th is reserved in Brussels and Strasbourg for ‘Europe Day,’ the celebration of the history of the European Union with special events in all EU institutions.
But as discussing history cannot be complete without turning to the future as well, it is also now customary to have a so-called ‘This is Europe’ debate on this day in the plenary, with one eminent European leader presenting his vision for the bloc’s preferred path—as an unofficial, symbolic state of the union address—then giving back the floor to MEPs to respond.
Powerful Ambitions
“We need to ensure Europe an appropriate place in the world of the future,” Chancellor Scholz began after a few mandatory rounds of praising the EU for the security of post-war Europe. Describing the future international order as a ruthlessly competitive multipolar world, Scholz said Europe needs to become an influential global player again to keep up with the pace. But to do that, he said, Europe needs to change, for a “geopolitical EU” equals an “enlarged and reformed EU.”
Increasing our geopolitical influence has to start with ramping up defense capabilities, Scholz stated, because it simultaneously gives Europe the ability to defend its values abroad by supporting countries like Ukraine and strengthening its alliance with the U.S.
“We need closer links between our efforts at defense and the establishment of an integrated European defense economy,” Scholz said, citing the European Peace Facility (EPF), the ongoing joint procurement projects, the cooperation on air defense, and the adoption of the Strategic Compass as good examples to build on and expand in the future.
The second imperative should be enlargement, the chancellor stated. He urged the EU to speed up the accession process for all the candidates it promised a seat in Brussels many years ago, including Ukraine, Moldova, the West Balkan countries, and potentially Georgia.
“This isn’t just about altruism, but about our credibility, a good economic sense, and Europe’s security,” Scholz said, adding that “an honest enlargement policy sticks to its promises.”
But to be able to incorporate all these new countries, the EU should also be reformed at its core, allowing for a more flexible—or as critics say, less democratic—decision-making process. Reiterating the proposal Germany and several other powerful states put forward a few days earlier, Scholz called for replacing the unanimity requirement in the Council for important foreign policy decisions with qualified majority voting.
But even if stripping members of their veto power would only favor the most populous Western European nations, leaving the smaller countries unable to defend their interests, Scholz believes this is what true democracy looks like. “It’s not unanimity … that creates democratic legitimacy, but the opposite,” he said, “the search for compromises is what reflects our understanding of liberal democracy.”
Then, in another shocking statement for many of the conservative MEPs, Scholz went on to suggest that the European Commission should also be given more power, specifically to exert punishment on misbehaving member states:
[We should] use the current discussion on reforming the EU to strengthen the Commission and ensure that it can introduce infringement proceedings when our basic values are violated, such as freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and guarantees of human rights.
It is not hard to decode whom Scholz refers to as potential “violators” of these basic values, since, contrary to the Commission noting certain rule of law problems in many EU member states, it has only ever triggered the mechanism against Poland and Hungary, the countries with explicitly national-conservative government.
Finishing his speech, Scholz said the following, almost as if reminding the conservatives in the chamber that a more centralized—and, therefore, leftist—EU is inevitable:
The message of the 9th of May … is that the past will not triumph over the future. Our future is the European Union.
Mixed Response
Expectedly, the large European parties’ representatives mostly agreed with Scholz on these basic tenets for the EU’s future strategy. After all, these are points that they too have been making from time to time.
For instance, EPP President Manfred Weber also called for structural reforms in his speech, “to reimagine the treaties to make Europe fit for decades to come.” Weber has been advocating for treaty reform for some time now, naturally arguing for more—not less—central power.
In a separate statement on the same day, Weber also took a firm stance on behalf of the EPP, urging NATO to speed up Ukraine’s accession talks toward full membership of North Atlantic alliance. “We cannot imagine Ukraine outside Europe’s security architecture after the war,” he said, asking NATO to officially invite Kyiv during NATO’s upcoming summits.
Iratxe García Pérez, the head of the social democrat S&D, mostly used her time on the podium to bash conservative parties. “[The European] values are today questioned by the far right and the conservative right, which has become the opposition in Europe,” she said, adding that “We cannot give credit to those who want to destroy our European project.”
Naturally, some conservatives were quick to express their outrage about Scholz’s proposed future for the European Union. As Ryszard Legutko, the Polish Co-Chairman of the European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group noted, while trying to speak over his colleagues’ loud interruptions, “[the EU’s political system] is a combination of an oligarchy and a tyranny of the majority” already. According to him, the Parliament represents the latter, while
the Commission is a typical oligarchic institution; unelected, with limited democratic legitimacy, and having an unquenchable lust for power.
This is why he was so shocked to hear Scholz proposing even more power to the Commission and to the large Western European member states, especially given that all catastrophic decisions in the recent past have been made by them. “It boggles my mind; the more you screw up the more power you want,” he added.
