The European Union: deciding unanimously?

Is political action based on the rule of unanimity possible? The only one of the classics to make use of it, Rousseau, did so in a hypothetical way to logically found a society by means of a contract that disappeared when it was historically re-founded; once established, the body that decided the fate of that rational community, the general will, governed itself by the principle of the majority. Hobbes, for his part, had explicitly refused to reach unanimity in order to legitimise the political power arising from an original social contract: the majority was sufficient and sufficient in this respect.

And if this was the case during the primordial phase of the establishment of a state, what would it not be during its later political life: at most, and depending on the importance of the decisions to be taken, more or less rigid forms of majority were chosen, but they all presupposed the banishment of unanimity. Pericles, Aristotle or Polybius never resorted to it, nor did the modern thinkers who thought of the state on the basis of the fiction of an original social contract.

The facts, on the other hand, accepted the rule of unanimity when it came to creating or enlarging certain political units (leagues, states); moreover, once the foundations were laid, the creature created or enlarged based its functioning on the majority: the Delphic League - the germ of the formation of the Athenian empire - in antiquity or the foundation of the current United States by the thirteen original colonies illustrate this in an exemplary manner.

And yet the EU - that political hybrid that is neither a state nor ceases to be one, that aspires to power through its existence while weakening itself through its organisation, which presents itself to the world with a certain historical pedigree and even a certain imperial daring as it airs its impotence in its inability to speak with one voice and in the absence of a common force of its own to back it up - has elevated it to the throne in its functioning while continuing to conspire, not without a certain air of secrecy, against it by means of the principle of qualified majority voting. A political hybrid who claims to be and does not know what he is saying because he does not know what he wants: the rational-normative heir of the Enlightenment who is driven by the impulses of necessity!

Among the main instruments by which the EU's great politico-cultural artifice undermines its own existence by cultivating its weakness is the paralysing rule of unanimity.
Indeed, when, following its natural instincts, the embryo of today's EU, the primitive European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), became the European Economic Community (EEC) through the 1957 Treaty of Rome, it had long been known that history was carrying a new creature in its womb, something that did not correspond either to the old empires or old leagues or associations of weak powers, or to the new states in any of their possible versions or combinations: central, federal or confederate. Its extension to new domains of economic life, first, and political-social life later, as well as its subsequent extension to other states from the founding ones, showed, as Spinoza would say, that in order to remain in its being it was necessary for it to grow.

The fact that during this double process, decisions were basically governed by the principle of unanimity is part of the same logic that seeks to guarantee the solidity and stability of the institutional edifice with the maximum possible political consensus, as well as to base the legitimacy of the consensus on the universal agreement of the various state wills. Step by step, as Monet wanted, the new creature grew and took shape under the collective protection of the strength of each of its members.

In its current configuration as the EU, unanimity has lost a significant part of its authority, although it preserves selected privileges, insofar as the Council must resort to it in matters concerning common foreign and security policy, citizenship, EU accession, harmonisation of national legislation in fields such as indirect taxation or equality and social protection, etc. But does the importance of the subject matter require unanimity when deciding on it? If the answer is yes, the EU must retrace the steps taken since its founding as the ECSC in the opposite direction; if the answer is yes, it is only fair that the solitary No of Malta, that demographic bomb, should be worth the multiplied Yes of the rest of its members (the power of blackmail that such a measure attributes to those who break the collective rule to follow their own, the national rule, is not even the worst of the evils mentioned here). If the answer is yes, we can wait patiently for the order established by the many conflicts in anticipation of the third world war to fall apart and take another humble step forward; or, in short, if the answer is yes, we Europeans can watch the reconfiguration of the international order from our living rooms, respectfully observing a minute's silence as the Union's coffin passes by.

In my opinion, unanimity should only apply to the issue of EU membership, as it seems inadvisable to want to join a club where not all members are happy to welcome you; but otherwise, in primis in the area of common foreign and security policy, this rule should be abolished, and in this case as a matter of the utmost urgency. The role China already plays within the EU through its special relations with some of its members is indicative of what awaits us in this respect if swift and determined action is not taken. And if it were the only example! In addition, the paralysis inherent in the unanimity method is a permanent attack on the time factor, one of the key elements of political action, as taught by Alexander Hamilton.

To conclude; just as Aristotle had exhumed the iron law of aristocracies and oligarchies in monarchy by revealing how regimes that placed power in the hands of the best or the richest, respectively, lacked arguments to oppose the concentration of such power in the hands of the best or the richest, so too the political artifice of the current EU carved into the development that led to it the secret of the iron law that shapes it: the unitary state in which it ideally recognises itself and to which it secretly aspires, irrespective of any of its above-mentioned conformations and whether or not it figures among its objectives. To dispense with the unanimity rule would not only mean that the creature born as the ECSC has grown beyond recognition, but that in doing so by following its internal daimon it has become sufficiently nationalised to trust in a destiny of its own that embraces all its citizens.

Either the EU is a fiction in the face of the absolute Being of the nation state or the nation state, which creates and maintains a creature that recreates and preserves it, is the fiction! And, in that case, the obstinacy in proclaiming the intangibility of national sovereignty or the survival of a national interest alien to sovereignty and the common interest constitutes the narrow-minded attempt to sacrifice to the old fallen idols the future security and freedom of the European people, as well as their well-being. Bodin and Rohan must be allowed to rest in peace even in these times when delirium is rampant even among the tombs.

Antonio Hermosa Andújar, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Seville, director of Araucaria and member of the Global Academy of Citizens pro Europe.