West at a Crossroads in European Parliament Elections

Democracy and national sovereignty are on the ballot in the next election. But we are not talking about November in America, but rather about the June 6–9 elections for the European Parliament, the decision-making body for the European Union (E.U.).

448 million people live in the 27 countries of the E.U., and roughly 350 million are allowed to vote to choose 720 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). Typically, however, less than half of eligible voters actually take part in these elections that are held every five years, which is a much lower level of participation than in the national elections for the national governments of E.U. members.

This is because many people in Europe see the European Parliament as a rather toothless institution with little influence on things that matter to them, unlike their national parliaments.

This is flawed thinking, however, as a very significant number of E.U. member states’ national laws now originate in the E.U. itself. The European Parliament, along with the Council of the E.U., play a significant role in crafting policies that impact virtually everyone living under the E.U. umbrella.

There are still many areas of decision-making that are reserved for the national level, though, and these include those issues that are key to a country’s sovereignty, such as foreign affairs and defense, or the police and the organization and administration of justice. Other examples are health issues, education, and family policy.

As of today, for instance, the E.U. cannot yet force member countries to recognize gay marriage or provide free access to abortion – although its Brussels-based institutions, and in particular the European Commission (the E.U.’s executive branch), as well as a majority in the European Parliament, have been longing to do so.

In all these areas, any decision taken at the E.U. level requires unanimity in the Council. This amounts to a right of veto for each member state, whether big or small.

There are other issues where the E.U. has exclusive or shared competence (i.e., where things are decided solely at the E.U. level, or where matters are decided at both the E.U. and the national levels). In these cases, in order for an E.U.-level law, called a directive, to apply to every E.U. member nation, three things must happen. First, a majority of the European Parliament must pass the directive. Then, a qualified majority in the European Council is required, where at least 55 percent of member nations, accounting for at least 65 percent of the E.U.’s total population, must vote in favor. Finally, each member state’s own government must adopt the directive.

But this high bar for passing E.U.-wide directives could come down depending on the results of the ongoing European Parliament elections. As a result, the continent’s nation-states, both old and new, could ultimately be deprived of their sovereignty without their citizens fully realizing it. If this were to happen, it would also mark the end of democracy in Europe, as the fact is that the institutions in Brussels are accountable to no one. Indeed, when you are a citizen of one of 27 countries in this kind of supranational organization, the influence you have on the decisions made at that higher level is near zero.

It just so happens that last November, the European Parliament adopted a resolution containing 267 amendments to the two existing E.U. treaties: the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. This vote formally initiated a procedure aimed at changing those treaties.

This procedure was then given the green light by the Council thanks to a majority of the member states being in favor of it. This is because some have Leftist, progressive governments that truly believe in the need to centralize decision-making in the E.U. so that it falls into the hands of liberal elites, and that power should be kept as far away as possible from the people. At the same time, some smaller countries are aware that the European Commission will not hesitate to use lawfare – under the guise of protecting the rule of law and “European values” – to withhold those E.U. funds that are paid to them out of the common budget should they offer resistance.

This is the kind of lawfare and blackmail that has been used against Hungary and was also used against Poland until Polish voters were pressured into exchanging their conservative, pro-sovereignty government for a more left-liberal, Euro-federalist (or more accurately, Euro-centralist) one last October.

The current version of the E.U. treaties, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, was forced upon the peoples of Europe by the governing elites despite being earlier rejected under another name (the 2004 “Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe”), in two national referenda held in France and the Netherlands.

Moreover, the European Commission now has new tools at its disposal for blackmailing the reluctant member states, such as the so-called “rule-of-law conditionality” mechanism that officially allows the Commission to withhold funds based on extremely arbitrary grounds, such as when it believes that a state has insufficient respect for “European values.” Keeping all this in mind, it is not unlikely that the European Parliament’s Proposals for the Amendment of the Treaties will be pushed through in a matter of a few years if liberals continue to control the E.U.

If some countries have to amend their own constitutions by popular vote in order to make the amended E.U. treaties legal, be assured that the media, which are largely controlled by the same liberal elites who are now pushing for the treaty changes, will conduct massive propaganda campaigns in order to make sure Brussels obtains the results it wants in member state elections.

If this happens, the member states will have no more right of veto in any area whatsoever, apart from one: the issue of the E.U.’s enlargement. Brussels, where decisions are mostly made under the influence of Berlin and Paris, will take control of the 27 countries’ foreign policies as well as their external borders. Based on the E.U. elites’ past policies and declarations, this can only mean a Europe with open borders and even more mass immigration, both legal and illegal.

Brussels will likewise decide on where to send troops from the various countries on foreign missions and take control of the member states’ arms procurement, which will most likely mean that a country such as Poland, which has been buying a lot of American weaponry (including Patriot anti-missile systems, as well as F-16 and F-35 jet fighters), will be forced into buying German and French hardware instead.

This same Poland, which is predominantly a Catholic country, would also be forced into legalizing abortion-on-demand, given that such a right is to be added to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is itself annexed to the E.U. treaties.

In Brussels, the European Commission has been following an official LGBTQ Equality Strategy since 2020, and is bent on imposing gender ideology upon all E.U. members. It will indeed be able to do so if the E.U. treaties are changed according to the will of the left in the European Parliament.

Not only do the proposed treaty changes give the E.U. new powers over family policy, including by suspending the member states’ right of veto in this area, but they also give the E.U. power over education, from kindergarten to university. This would in turn pave the way for indoctrinating the young generations in such a way as to weaken their sense of national identity and allow for the creation of a “New Man” – a nationless, preferably genderfluid, multicultural European man.

By obtaining new authorities in the field of climate policies, Brussels will also gain the right to stick its nose into all those policies that are linked to industry and the protection of the environment, among others.

Another major change would be that both the E.U. treaties and their interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) would take precedence over the member states’ constitutions. The CJEU has always tended to expand the E.U.’s powers at the expense of the nation-states, but it has been met with resistance by several national constitutional courts, not least the German one, which reminded the CJEU a few years ago that the member states are “the masters of the treaties.”

This will no longer be the case after the proposed changes to the current version of the E.U. treaties are ratified by E.U. member states. The CJEU’s unelected judges will then have the power to define the European court’s jurisdiction and expand the European Union’s powers, and the national constitutional tribunals will become mostly useless, since each country’s courts will then be expected to turn directly to the CJEU in Luxembourg each time E.U. laws and/or the E.U.’s general principles and “values” are at stake.

Last but not least, the proposed amendments to the E.U. treaties would be the last requiring ratification by all E.U. countries. This is because, per those amendments, any further changes to the E.U. treaties will not require the approval of all member states. Thus, they will be decided by the E.U. governing elites, allowing them to deprive the voters of their last remnants of sovereignty without the need to seek their approval.

This is why the upcoming elections to the European Parliament are so important. According to the polls, the conservative pro-sovereignty parties are going to win more seats, with some of the most spectacular results expected in France, where Marine Le Pen’s conservative National Rally could win some a third of the vote (while another, even more pro-sovereignty and anti-immigration party is expected to win a further 6-8 percent). At the same time, the ruling party of French President Emmanuel Macron – who is sometimes described as the European equivalent of Canada’s Justin Trudeau – is expected to come in second or maybe even third with some 15–16 percent of the popular vote.

The conservative “populists” now governing in Italy are likewise set to win their elections, and this will also probably be true of the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) is under assault in its home country, with fierce attacks being launched by almost all the media. There has even been talk of a possible ban on this party after it reached 20-25 percent support in recent polls.

The “populist” right of the “Make European Nations Great-Again” variety is on the rise across most of Europe. Hence the haste with which the left-liberal political and media elite are pushing through these treaty changes, which would take most powers away from the people.

Interestingly, the European Parliament’s proposals were drafted by German and Belgian MEPs who are members of the Spinelli Group, which is named after the Italian communist Altiero Spinelli. The resolution adopted by the European Parliament on the basis of their report last November in fact refers in its first lines to Altiero Spinelli’s Ventotene Manifesto as their main source of inspiration for making a “united Europe” a reality.

This “Manifesto for a free and united Europe,” which was originally written in 1941, called for the abolition of nations, the removal of borders, the abolition of property, the replacement of democracy with the dictatorship of a pan-European party, and the creation of a new European man free of any nationality.

When the British voted in favor of exiting the E.U. in 2016, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi went on a kind of pilgrimage to Spinelli’s tomb on the island of Ventotene, and this was no coincidence.

Quoting Spinelli’s Ventotene Manifesto, it can be said that the authors and supporters of the 267 proposed amendments to the E.U. treaties “derive their vision and certainty of what must be done not from a previous consecration of what has yet to become the popular conscience, but rather from the knowledge that they are representing modern society’s deepest necessities. In this way they are issuing the initial laws of the new order, the first social instructions directed at the unformed masses. This dictatorship by the revolutionary party will form the new state, and around this state will grow a new, genuine democracy.”

If the democratic nations of Europe are to stop this project being enacted by their liberal elites, they should act now by voting to reject it in the E.U. elections. Once these amendments have been adopted, it will be too late – as the people of Europe will have lost all their political power and influence.

Jerzy Kwaśniewski is the President of the Board and co-founder of the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture and Chairman of the Ordo Iuris Foundation Council. He has extensive experience in civil litigation and penal proceedings focused on protection of civil rights and freedoms, rights of the family, and children’s rights.