The EU as an existential threat to Europe

How von der Leyen's über-hawkish European Commission hijacked the bloc's military and security policy — and why this represents an existential threat to the continent

Sep 28, 2024

Part 2 of a two-part interview I gave to Maike Gosch on my recent report titled The silent coup: the European Commission’s power grab, originally published in German on NachDenkSeiten (part 1 here).

Maike Gosch: In the first part we talked a lot about the background and the history of the EU and also of the power shift from the members states to the EU over time. Let’s now get to the crises that were used, according to your paper, to further shift power to the EU, and especially the European Commission.

Thomas Fazi: In the paper I focus on three historical turning points: the euro crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis, and how all these crises have been used by the Commission to radically expand its powers — to the point that now the European Commission (and by extension the EU as a supranational entity) is more powerful than it’s ever been. The interinstitutional balance of power has massively shifted away from the European Council, where the governments come together, towards the Commission itself. And Ursula von der Leyen has been absolutely critical in promoting this as the Commission president who oversaw both the Covid-19 crisis and then the Ukraine crisis (which, alas, she is still overseeing). I think clear patterns emerge when you analyse the two crises, in terms of how the Commission deliberately used these crises to concentrate more and more power in its own hands. This is very concerning, because now we have this undemocratic, unaccountable, unelected institution, which wields huge power over pretty much every area of policymaking — from public health to economic, monetary and fiscal affairs to, now, even foreign policy and military and security policy, which is something that, based on the treaties, the Commission has no competence over.

When it comes to foreign policy, and especially military and security policy, this has always been the one area where, understandably, governments have been reluctant to cede power to the European Union; in fact, the Commission has always had a very limited influence in those spheres. But now, thanks to the Ukraine war and the way that von der Leyen has skilfully exploited that crisis to take over and become a sort of “commander-in-chief” of the European Union, we now have this wholly undemocratic institution deciding, to a large degree, the foreign policy and the military and security policy of the whole European Union, which is really quite terrifying, considering that we’re talking of the most important issue there is: war and peace and the potential threat to the very survival of every single person in Europe, given the increased prospect and likelihood of a direct confrontation with Russia.

This is the process that I describe in the paper. I felt it was important to bring people’s attention to it, because not enough people realise what has happened over these past few years, and just how dangerous the situation that has resulted from this growing “supranationalisation” of politics really is. The Commission today is a threat not just to democracy, but also to the security and well-being of all European citizens.

Maike Gosch: So, let’s talk about these crises that were taken advantage of, according to your analysis, starting with the euro crisis, and maybe especially the role of Germany as concerns these developments.

Thomas Fazi: Germany’s policy vis-a-vis the European Union for a long time fit the pattern [discussed in part 1 of the interview] of national governments and national elites using the European Union to their own advantage. Germany is probably the most clear example of this, in terms of a country using the European Union and the narrative of “Europeanising Germany” and supposedly getting away from Germany’s hyper-nationalist tendencies of the past to, in fact, promote the national interests of Germany, or more precisely those of its capitalist elites, and pursue what could be described as a form of economic nationalism. For a long time, Germany’s relationship with the European Union could be described as one of “nationalism through Europeanism”. Much of the narrative about Germany’s relationship with the European Union is completely wrong, even going as far back as Germany’s entry into the euro. The official story is that Germany didn’t want to join the euro but this was the price the country had to pay in order for other countries, first and foremost France, to accept reunification. But this is largely a myth. When you actually go over the history of that period, in the early Nineties, you realise that the political and economic elites in Germany understood very well that the euro was to Germany’s economic advantage, or better: to the advantage of its elites.

So the first real coup by the Commission happened during the euro crisis, when, under the guise of responding to that crisis, the Commission took on unprecedented powers of oversight and intervention into the economic policies of countries. Now, handing over more powers of intervention to the European Union into its own economy was always something that Germany had been very wary of, being a country that has always been quite proud of its economic sovereignty, and rightfully so. But Germany consented to a lot of those institutional changes because it realised that the Commission would not focus on Germany, it would focus on the weaker countries of the Union, forcing them to implement the economic reforms and adhere to the economic agenda that Germany wanted them to adopt. Those are clear examples of the way Germany has “used Europe” to assert and entrench its economic and even political hegemony over Europe.

But let’s get back to the euro crisis. When it hit, we saw the European Commission and the other supranational institutions, like the European Central Bank, say: we need to have a much bigger role in the management of the financial and economic affairs of countries to save them from defaulting. In fact, the architecture of the euro was the main reason several countries were facing financial problems in the first place. And yet the crisis was used by the European Commission to temporarily take control of those countries’ finances. They did this for example through the “troika”, the ad hoc institution comprising the Commission, the ECB and the IMF, which was created during the crisis. And what happens through all these crises is that certain measures are presented as temporary and “one-off”, but then lead to permanent institutional change. So, the troika, which was an ad hoc institution, allegedly created just to solve the crisis at hand, then led to a number of new rules, laws, regulations, organisations, such as the European Stability Mechanism, and even a treaty, the Fiscal Compact, which effectively institutionalised the austerity regime and institutionalised this system of fiscal surveillance, whereby the Commission was given sweeping powers to oversee the fiscal budgets of member states. That led to a massive institutional change and it meant a huge transfer of power from the national to the supranational level.

And this constituted a pattern, which then repeated itself in subsequent crises. So, when the Covid crisis hit in 2020, Ursula von der Leyen immediately put herself at the helm of the crisis response, both on the economic front, and then on the vaccine-procurement front. And the argument was always the same: “We’re dealing with a massive crisis, so we can’t let national governments tackle this alone. Let us handle it, we have the expertise and we are the only ones who can take decisions for everyone”. And again, if you look at the economic measures that were adopted during the pandemic, like the launch of the Next Generation EU fund, which was presented as an economic support fund to help countries get through the crisis, in fact what it led to was an actual change in the de facto economic constitution of the European Union, because for the first time we saw the EU undergo a massive joint borrowing operation programme, which is something that has always been resisted by certain countries, notably Germany, and by certain electorates. And this resistance was not overcome by a democratic public debate or a treaty change, but simply under the guise of responding to the crisis. So, under the guise of responding economically to the Covid crisis, we have now evolved into a situation where the EU is taking on joint debt, which is something it had never done, certainly not on this scale. Additionally, the Commission is also in charge of the disbursement of these funds, which of course gives the Commission a huge say, not only over how this money is spent — as the Commission ultimately decides where this money goes — but it can then also use that money to blackmail states that do not adhere to the Brussels agenda, by threatening to withhold these funds, as it has done with Hungary and Poland, for example.

Then, in the second phase of the Covid crisis, the Commission, or rather von der Leyen herself, single-handedly led a massive vaccine-procurement programme for the whole EU, signing a staggering €71 billion worth of contracts on behalf of the member states. Most of these contracts were signed behind closed doors. A single deal, worth €35 billion, was negotiated by von der Leyen herself in a series of text messages and calls with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, which have since disappeared. All efforts by auditors, transparency commissioners, MEPs, journalists and citizens to find out what exactly happened have been met with stonewalling, and “Pfizergate” has become one of the biggest scandals in EU history. What’s more, even the argument put forth by the Commission for this joint procurement programme, namely that by negotiating on behalf of all member states it could obtain lower prices, proved to be unfounded.

Then, after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Ursula von der Leyen again placed herself at the head of the EU’s response and in that way achieved two goals, which she had pursued ever since she had taken office in 2019: expanding the EU’s and the Commission’s mandate on security, while at the same time ensuring the bloc’s subordination to the US-NATO strategy, basically turning the EU into the political arm of NATO. She started by launching an unprecedented sanctions package that was adopted literally the day after Russia’s invasion, so obviously had been prepared well in advance. Many others followed. The power grab involved here is that traditionally the Council would be in charge of a sanctions’ regime, with the Commission being only responsible for overseeing technicalities and implementation. The roles were now changed and the whole process was developed and driven by von der Leyen, no doubt in close coordination with Washington, up to the point that the US, at least at the beginning, knew more about the work on the sanctions than the member states themselves. And, in late 2022, a decision was taken by the Council to give the Commission the power to establish and enforce penalties for the violation of sanctions, something which until then had been the competence of individual member states. In all public statements and speeches, Ursula von der Leyen set an increasingly belligerent tone on the Ukraine conflict, firing off an ever-increasing number of sanctions packages, and then played a crucial role in pushing to fund the provision of lethal military aid with €3.6 billion from the European Peace Facility funding mechanism, of all places. Through this strategy of public statements, which continued to push the envelope further and further, she managed to “lock in” the EU-NATO strategy (at this point indistinguishable), effectively using overpowering tactics and peer pressure to get the members states to stumble after her lead — all this, mind you, on issues of defense and security, over which the Commission, it’s worth repeating, has no formal competence.

I lay this out in the report in much more detail and also talk about the way that the Commission used this crisis to further its efforts of controlling opinions and narratives (as they are now called) in the EU, via a new censorship regime in the form of the Digital Services Act.

Maike Gosch: Your report is published by MCC Brussels. Could you tell us a little bit about that institution and your relation to it.

Thomas Fazi: MCC Brussels is a Hungarian think tank. It’s not directly funded by the government, so it’s an independent think tank, but like all think tanks it reflects an ideology. And MCC Brussels is quite closely aligned with the views of Victor Orbán. Hungary today is one of the few countries that I think still stands for basic principles of sovereignty and democracy, and is trying to push back against the EU’s ever-growing encroachment on the domestic affairs of nation-states, and is also effectively the only country that is pushing back against the EU-NATO strategy in in Ukraine.

And so, of course, the institution has its own views, which partly align with Orbán’s. I don’t align with Orbán on all issues, but I definitely align with him when it comes to his approach to the European Union and his geopolitical views, especially vis-a-vis Ukraine and NATO. The simple fact that the think tank is associated with Orbán will discredit it in the eyes of some. But then, again, I think this method of trying to delegitimise any critical view simply by describing it as being “far right” or pro-Putin or whatever doesn’t seem to be working that well anymore. I would invite more people to realise that this is just a way of refusing to engage in a debate.

I presented the report in Brussels recently and there were a lot of hostile journalists that came to the presentation. I think they came there hoping to get some good quotes to make a hack piece against MCC, but instead, I think, they came away realising that what they heard was a solid analysis which had nothing “far right” about it. And in fact, most of them ended up not writing about it — for that very reason, I think, because they realised that they couldn’t disparage the paper or the event, and one of them told me so quite explicitly. So I’m happy to write papers for anyone that is willing to let me write without censorship or interference. It could be a conservative think tank like MCC, but I’d be just as happy to write for a left-wing think tank. The problem is that the left, as mentioned [in part 1], has become so unanchored from its traditional values that they view an old-school socialist like me as a right-winger for talking about the importance of national sovereignty or other such issues.

It’s one of the paradoxes of the age we live in that I, as someone who comes from the left, the socialist left, on a number of fundamental issues — such as national sovereignty, the European Union, NATO, the war in Ukraine — today often find myself more aligned with people that come from the right, or that come from completely different political traditions than mine, than I do with those on the left. But again, I don’t see this as me shifting to the right. I see this as most people on the left having gone completely bonkers. As I’ve said already, my position on these issues hasn’t changed over the past twenty years, and, in fact, is closely aligned with the position that the left had for a very long time on these issues up until a few decades ago.

Maike Gosch: I think that, whether one agrees with your description of these developments as a “coup” or not, most people can agree that we have seen an increase in the Commission’s power in recent years, and that it has assumed competence in areas where it didn’t have it before. I wonder, has there been any pushback against this “power grab” that you describe, either from the Parliament or from national governments, or from any other body or people?

Thomas Fazi: First of all, as concerns the European Parliament, it would be naive to expect the EP of all institutions to push back against that, because the EP has always been in favour of empowering the European Union at the expense of national governments. So, historically, MEPs have always promoted the transfer of sovereignty from the national to the supranational level. The European Parliament, historically, has always been committed to the federalist idea — the United States of Europe, etc. — and so has historically always been in favour of transferring power to the Commission and giving more powers to the Commission at the expense of nation-states, even as they talk of the need of “democratising the Commission”, etc., but that’s just sugar-coating of what is fundamentally the complete support for the idea of supranationalisation itself. Maybe the current Parliament will adopt a slightly different approach, but historically the Parliament has always been in favour of transferring powers to the Commission.

So, no, there hasn’t been much pushback there. There has also been very little push back at the grassroots level from citizens, but that’s, I think, because partly a lot of people aren’t really aware of what’s happening, except on a kind of instinctual level in terms of them realising that the European Union is more powerful than it should be — and tending to vote increasingly for eurosceptic “populist” parties — but they often lack a deeper understanding of exactly what is happening at the institutional level.

There’s been relatively little push back from governments as well, but I think part of it could have to do with the fact that there might be in the calculations of some governments a bit of that “blameshift logic” I mentioned [in part 1] still at play. So, for example, if you favour massively supporting Ukraine, and you want to wage a proxy war against Russia, but your people are unlikely to support that policy, then it can be useful to entrust the Commission with pursuing that policy, because then you can say: “It’s the entire European Union that’s doing this. It’s not what we want, but look, it’s the Commission that’s taking the lead on this. It’s the European Union that’s pushing for this policy, and everyone else is doing it as well. So, we have to go along with it”. But I think more in general it has to do with the kind of path-dependent nature of supranationalisation. Once you start this process, it becomes very hard to stop it or to pause it, let alone reverse it. It takes on kind of a logic of its own.

Even small transfers of sovereignty to the supranational level will create the conditions that will make further transfers of sovereignty inevitable or apparently so. The existence of a supranational institution, and membership of that supranational institution, creates very strong institutional, material, and I would say, even psychological pressures for governments to then accept further transfers of sovereignty down the road. This is particularly evident in the economic sphere. If you’ve given up your monetary sovereignty, you’ve given up much of your economic sovereignty, so then, of course, when a crisis hits, you have no choice but to cede further control to the institution that actually does control your economy, which happens to be the European Union, which is what we saw during the euro crisis. But the simple fact of belonging to the European Union, to this kind of “multinational club”, in itself creates huge pressures, in the sense that, whenever a crisis that is continental or even global in scale occurs, it creates huge pressures for governments to accept that it should be the Commission, as the only institution capable of acting swiftly and on a European scale, that should take the lead.

I think the rise of so-called “populist” parties across Europe is clearly a strong rejection of their own governments. But it’s definitely also, indirectly, a rejection of the EU’s policies, to the extent that governments are often just implementers of policies that come from the European Union. So, yes, the people have been trying to push back in in some respects through their votes. And of course, we should hope for much more of that.

Maike Gosch: Apart from that, do you have any idea or suggestion as to what the European public could do against this power grab, if they agree with your analysis?

Thomas Fazi: What we need to do, I think, is raise more awareness of what’s happening and more awareness of just how much of a problem the European Union really is and how much of a threat it is. I think that’s the best and the most important thing that we can do: to raise awareness about the importance of dismantling this institution. It’s become almost impossible for people to conceive a Europe without the EU, but honestly what we’ve got to realise is that the European Union’s contradictions are building up more and more. And so it’s far from clear that the EU can survive the next ten or twenty years. The economic contradictions resulting from it are growing and growing. Europe’s economic performance is basically the worst among industrialised countries. And the EU has a lot of the responsibility for that. And you’ve got the EU’s constant pressure on the democratic process. How long can that last? How long can you suppress those parties that are critical of the European Union? And then, of course, you’ve got the geopolitical element — the way that the European Union is playing a key role in dragging us towards a potentially catastrophic conflict with Russia. So the European Union today is an utter economic, political and geopolitical failure. Maybe not from the perspective of elites, but definitely from the perspective of the overwhelming majority of people. It has failed us all on so many levels.

I’d like to see a strong movement against the EU emerge across Europe, because I think it’s only from the ashes of the European Union that we can rebuild a Europe based on true collaboration among states — true internationalism — which requires the existence of sovereign states. That’s very different from what we have now, which is supranationalism, which is the negation of nation-states, and therefore the negation of internationalism. So let us all hope that we will see the emergence of some form of European-wide opposition to this highly destructive institution. And the best we can do is raise awareness about what the EU really is, and hopefully play a part in the emergence of this movement.

Read part 1 of the interview here. Read my paper, The silent coup: the European Commission’s power grab, here.

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