Democracy and Sovereignty Are on the Ballot ... in Europe this Week!
The most important European Parliament election in decades, not only for Europe but also for the West.
This is a guest commentary written by my friend Jerzy Kwaśniewski. Please read it carefully and understand that we are in a world-wide fight against truly evil forces. Pray for success and good results.
- Ed Martin
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Democracy and Sovereignty Are on the Ballot - in Europe this Week
The most important European Parliament election in decades, not only for Europe but also for the West
by Jerzy Kwaśniewski, President of Ordo Iuris
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 to the European Parliament.
448 million people live in the 27 countries of the European Union (EU) and 370 million are allowed to vote to choose 720 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). Typically, however, under half actually take part in these elections that are held every four years, which is a much lower level of participation than in the national elections in their respective countries.
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 part of the EU Member States’ national laws now originate at the EU level, and the European Parliament plays a significant role in their adoption, along with the Council of the EU, where the national governments are represented by their various ministers, depending on the subject matter of a given meeting.
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, the EU cannot yet impose gay marriage and free access to abortion upon its Member States, for instance, although its Brussels-based institutions, and in particular the European Commission (the EU’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 EU level requires unanimity in the Council. This amounts to a right of veto for each Member State, whether big or small.
There are other areas where the EU has exclusive or shared competence (i.e., where things are decided solely at the EU level, or where matters are decided at both the EU and the national levels). In order for such laws – which are called directives when they require relevant laws to be adopted by the Member States in order to go into force, or regulations when they apply directly across the whole EU – to be passed, an ordinary majority in the European Parliament and a qualified majority in the Council is required, where at least 55% of the nation-states, accounting for at least 65% of the EU’s total population, must vote in favor.
This could change after the upcoming European elections, however, and 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 EU Treaties: the Treaty on 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 EU so that it falls into the hands of a liberal, enlightened elite, and that it 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 EU 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 EU Treaties, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, was forced upon the peoples of Europe by the governing elites despite its earlier rejection, under another name (the 2004 “Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe”), in two national referenda held in France and the Netherlands. Also, 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 it 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 some countries have to organize referenda because of their constitutions, be assured that the media, which are largely controlled by the same liberal elites who are now pushing for the Treaty changes with the support of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz, will conduct massive propaganda campaigns in order to make sure Brussels obtains the right results.
If this happens, the Member States will have no more right of veto in any area whatsoever, apart from one: the issue of the EU’s enlargement; i.e., accepting new members into the club. 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 EU 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 EU treaties. A country such as Poland will also be forced into allowing “gay marriage,” even though its Constitution, like the constitutions of several other Central European countries that are also members of the EU, defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
In Brussels, the European Commission has been following an official LGBTIQ Equality Strategy since 2020, and is bent on imposing gender ideology upon all EU members. It will indeed be able to do so if the EU Treaties are changed according to the will of Macron and Scholz, as well as that of the Left and the liberals in the European Parliament. Not only do the proposed Treaty changes give the EU new powers over family policy, including by suspending the Member States’ right of veto in this area, but they also give the EU 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 competencies 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 EU 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 EU’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 EU Treaties are ratified by the countries of the European Union. 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 EU laws and/or the EU’s general principles and “values” are at stake. This is already the case, but this will also apply to constitutional issues where they will be required to ignore their respective constitutional courts’ ruling.
Last but not least, the proposed amendments to the EU Treaties would be the last requiring ratification by all EU countries. This is because, per those amendments, any further changes to the EU Treaties will not require the approval of all Member States. Thus, they will be decided by the 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 Right-wing pro-sovereignty parties are going to win more seats, with some of the most spectacular results expected in France, where Marine Le Pen’s “far-right” National Rally could win some 32–33 % of the vote (while another, even more pro-sovereignty and anti-immigration party is expected to win a further 6-8%). At the same time, the ruling party of 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% of the popular vote.
The right-wing “populists” now governing in Italy are likewise set to win their elections, and this will also probably be true of the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the “far-right” 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% 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 EU 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.
Paraphrasing Spinelli’s Ventotene Manifesto, it can be said that the authors and supporters of the 267 proposed amendments to the EU 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. Once these amendments have been adopted, it will be too late – as they will have lost all the power to do so.
About the Author: Hon. Jerzy Kwaśniewski is the President of the Board and co-founder of Ordo Iuris Institute, Chairman of the Ordo Iuris Foundation Council. Architect of the Center for Litigation Intervention of the Institute. Attorney and managing partner of Parchimowicz & Kwaśniewski Law Firm (est. 2008). A graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Warsaw University, a scholarship holder at the University of Copenhagen (international commercial law, comparative constitutional law), completed courses organized by the Center for Ethics and Culture of the Notre Dame University, Catholic University of Leuven.
He has long-term experience in civil litigation and penal proceedings focused on protection of civil rights and freedoms, rights of the family and children's rights.