Wojciech Przybylski: the European Union is not a federal project and will never be
18.01.2024
Wojciech Przybylski
Recent events and trends also cause concern for the European Union, whether the EU and particularly the member states, will be able to maintain the balance between federalism and sovereignty. What the process of deepening European integration will be? Wojciech Przybylski, who is editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight and head of the ResPublica Foundation in Warsaw, shared his vision with our media.
The European Union is not a federal project and will never be for good reasons. Foremost, it is not a republic, and it does not have a common public space it could manage. In essence, it is a decentralized way of coexistence for nations and different forms of democratic states. The right-wing in Europe cries about federalization, which is a hoax. There isn’t such a process going on as I said there will never be one.
The other term that you referred to, which is sovereignty, is a fuzzy one. Currently, the nation-states and their governments have ultimately the biggest share of sovereignty over decision-making and competencies in the EU, which is embodied by the European Council. Neither the Parliament nor the Commission can bypass the national government’s decision-making in the current and future construction of the year. However, there is a grade need to make the people of the European Union, part of the solver equation. And that needs to come with investment in the public space of the media, common decision-making, and transnational collaboration.
Finally, there is an increased appetite, a need and will to coordinate and do more as a union together. Examples of that started with building up a common European energy strategy by now, including also the Green Deal, the common response to the pandemic, which enabled small and weak member states to receive the vaccine as quickly as the wealthiest big ones are the common response to Russian terrorism in a form of military package.
This is the way forward.
Maryna Kovalchuk, Newssky’s correspondent (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), head of the V5 Media project, and deputy editor-in-chief, contributed.
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