Sovereignty: EU Experience and EU Policy

I should say immediately that I am in agreement with the main thesis of Jeremy Rabkin's paper-the development and experience of the European Union ("EU") is having a clear impact on the development of multilateral governance. I also agree with the paper's conclusions. There are, however, inaccuracies in the paper, and I will address three of them. I should make clear where I think the paper is deficient. I see this mainly in one major factual error and in two significant omissions. The error is in the paper's description of the role played by non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") in the EU's decision-making process. Without going into detail, I will simply say that I do not recognize it at all. It is simply not the EU I know. Logically, I cannot share any of the conclusions based on it. In particular, it is quite incorrect to state that 10 percent of the EU budget is used to fund NGOs. They play a very similar role in our political process to the one they play in Member State politics. Rabkin himself notes that they make up only 20 percent of all registered lobby groups in Brussels. The two missing elements are the answers to the questions: "Why are the Member States of the EU sharing sovereignty?' and "What alternative approach would be possible?" In order to answer the first, I will attempt to define sovereignty. The sovereignty of a nation is its ability to take the action necessary to control its own destiny, achieve its aims, and further its interests in an independent manner. In today's world, this ability faces two difficulties, one old and one new. The difficulty that has always existed is greater for smaller nations. Clearly, larger, more powerful nations can more easily act successfully to promote their interests than smaller, weaker ones. The new difficulty is created by the growing interdependence of countries that results from the growth of trade, investment, telecommunications, etc. This increases the number of areas in which a country cannot achieve its aims on its own, but only in concert with, or with the acquiescence of others. And if the ability to achieve these aims is constrained by the reality of interdependence, sovereignty becomes an illusion. The European integration process was not originally designed to deal with this situation. Rather, it was intended to bind the peoples of Europe so tightly together that war between them would become unthinkable, and indeed that has now been achieved. The means chosen to do this were initially economic, and it is precisely in this area that the European states are deeply interdependent. The resulting common project was initially the creation of a customs union, then the realization of a single market, and finally the creation of a common currency. Let me use the common currency to make a point. The common monetary and fiscal policies, which now accompany it, are little more than the policies that were necessary for economic success before, but with one important difference. They are now the result of conscious, collective decisions, and not simply a shadow of German decision-making dictated by the markets. For all the countries involved, with the exception, I accept, of Germany, the result is a gain in effective sovereignty-effective, shared sovereignty. It is this idea of the regaining of effective sovereignty through sharing it, that is the key lesson of the EU's integration experience. By the way, it applies only in some areas of policy. Where the conditions for it are not given, we believe that decisionmaking should remain at the national or local level-that is the principle of subsidiarity. But it is seen to apply in a whole series of areas, including environment, immigration, international crime, etc. I dare say similar arguments were used when the Federal Bureau of Investigation was set up. So we have moved in Europe to a sharing of sovereignty through a new form of governance in certain areas. …