The recurrent blocking (until Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary this spring) of the aid to Ukraine that the members of the European Union had voted for, has amply revealed the institutional limits of that body. In a 27-member EU, in which the most important decision-making body functions by unanimity, the system simply does not work—or works very badly.
Jean-François Drevet reminds us of this point here, devoting his Chronicle to the European Council and its future prospects in a context of growing insecurity on Europe’s borders. Retaining the current functioning of the Council (the trend scenario) would confine the Union to a ‘vetocratic’ system without any real capacity to react or intervene, thus excluding the possibility of real strategic autonomy. For Europe to front up on the international stage, it needs genuine defence and deterrence capabilities, which entails deploying the necessary material, budgetary and other resources. This means member states pooling resources and sharing sovereignty. Operating by the unanimity rule leaves the Council prone to deadlock and prevents such sharing, while the institutional reform procedures required to resolve the situation have a large measure of uncertainty to them.
Perhaps the time has come to move to a variable-geometry Europe, enabling the states that wish to do so to take a step forward in pooling sovereignty and asserting a more powerful Europe. This is what is advocated here by Jean-François Drevet, who lays out the institutional options that might enable it to meet the challenge.
The article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
