Keywords

Political scales, when they transcend the state framework, should address the question of sovereignty. For this reason, it is essential to refer to sovereignty in order to consider democracy on a larger scale.

European integration initially contrasted the national vision, based on the state as the only (and identifying) political reference framework, with a supranational vision, in favour of transcending that political framework and constructing a European federation, a United States of Europe. The first vision took for granted that the only possible framework for a democracy was the nation-state, so cooperation between states, while sometimes necessary in different spheres, should be limited to technical and functional issues, without questioning the state-based political framework and the legitimacy of the nation (the people) as the only possible demos. The second vision questioned the latter and indicated the need to construct a new political framework, a scale in keeping with the enormous challenges of the twentieth century that would attain sufficient critical mass to compete with the colossi that had emerged (USA, USSR). This political framework had to be democratic, but the concepts under consideration were inspired by the only available example: the United States. The North American federation, as we know, after beginnings marked by the wide debate among the Founding Fathers as reflected in The Federalist Papers, soon adopted a Hamiltonian approach and accepted the model of nation-state that prevailed in international society at the time, with a largely unique sovereignty. In the opinion of Jürgen Habermas, “today all federations have adapted themselves more or less to the nation-state model; the United States, too, has become a federal state at the latest since the end of the Second World War” (Habermas, 2012: 32).

Thus, European federalism, with a few exceptions such as the young non-conformists of the 1920s, proposed a European federation based upon the North American case. Over time, however, both visions have modified their tenets, evolving as the process of integration advanced.

On the one hand, many nationalists have come to accept the fact that European integration should include strong forms of cooperation between states, including legal obligations that limit sovereignty, more on grounds of efficiency than due to a genuine conviction regarding the need to limit sovereignty. Nonetheless, especially in the wake of the crisis of 2008 and with doubts in relation to the capacity of European institutions to address such challenges, part of the population yearns for a return to the idealised sovereign state. The fear and uncertainty generated by the crisis have encouraged the idea that there is a need to “recover control”, and, in our political and cultural context, this “equates to the sovereign recovery of the nation-state” (Arias Maldonado, 2020: 16).

On the other hand, European federalism has in turn moved away from more ideological and formal models to accept that integration should be based on the solution of specific problems, that it should demonstrate its usefulness in areas where states, on their own, are incapable of effective action. Somehow, traditional European federalism has acknowledged that the problems of the state, which exist and are structural, are not sufficient to justify a European federation, since the latter must demonstrate its usefulness before being accepted by a majority of the population and by governments.

In the current context, marked by two enormous crises in succession (financial and economic from 2008 to 2019 and COVID from 2020 to 2021), the concept of European sovereignty has emerged as a compass to guide continued development of the project of integration as the only response to the challenges facing Europe. In our opinion, this debate is a necessary, but insufficient, innovation with which to tackle these challenges. The European institutions will have to increase their power in some areas in which state governments have repeatedly shown themselves to be incapable of offering a solution. However, the increased power of the EU institutions could entail risks, such as reinforcement, in the name of efficiency, of a technocratic Europe that would ultimately replicate the limitations of the monistic conception of state sovereignty.

This is why the debate over European cannot be restricted to the application of the current notion of monistic state sovereignty at the European level. There is a need for a profound debate that considers a pluralist conception of sovereignty. European sovereignty should be more efficient than national sovereignties – this was the essential reason for the creation of European integration – and should also constitute a conceptual innovation that leads to an increase in democracy. This is the core of the question, as an indisputable principle of European politics should be its democratic nature. It is important to stress this point in a context in which one is witnessing an erosion of numerous democracies and in which some regional (Brazil, Turkey, Iran, etc.) and global (China, Russia, India) powers are more and more inclined to defend undemocratic values and behaviour.

The challenge facing European democracy therefore involves reshaping the old concept of national-state sovereignty in such a way as to make possible the creation of a new European sovereignty, compatible with states and nations, but at the same time capable of creating a solid political framework and of acting effectively in those spheres that are necessary at a European level.

To this end, in this chapter, we will first present a brief reflection upon the evolution of the concept of sovereignty into national sovereignty and upon the contradiction between a monistic and a pluralist conception of sovereignty that, with the triumph of the former, eventually created a contemporary world of nation-states that only posited the possibility of a democracy upon the existence of a single demos. Secondly, we will see how a major crisis within this model, particularly after World War Two, favoured a series of profound innovations that prompted profound political innovation in the countries of Western Europe, the main consequence of which was a questioning of that monistic vision with the proposal, within the European Communities, of a model that involved sharing sovereignty within a supranational organisation. Thirdly, we will briefly review the history of the integration process and observe how, basically since the 1970s, as that sensation of threat faded with economic growth and the thawing of the Cold War, and after the Empty Chair Crisis of 1966, an era began of difficult equilibrium between the supranational and the intergovernmental, marking the future of the integration process. We will then analyse how this unstable equilibrium has entered a profound crisis, fundamentally during the last decade. Finally, we suggest the need for an answer that constitutes an innovation in political and democratic terms, advocating a pluralist European sovereignty.

1 From Sovereignty to National Sovereignty: The Tension Between Monism and Pluralism

During the Middle Ages, the medieval world moved slowly from the idea of the city of God, universal and hierarchical, to a system of compartmentalised and particular sovereignties. The Papacy supported monarchs against the Emperor’s power, thus encouraging the emergence of national powers. When the King of France argued that “rex superiorem non recognoscens in regno suo est imperator” (the king recognises no superior, in his kingdom he is emperor), he was simultaneously declaring two different principles: on the one hand, he was attributing to the king’s absolute power in his territory, and on the other, he was denying the existence of a civitas maxima to which the king would be subordinated (Torres Gutiérrez, 1999: 998).

Moments of crisis, uncertainty and fear encourage political innovation, and the history of the concept of sovereignty provides a good example of this. Thus, the turbulent social, economic and political reality of the sixteenth-century Europe created conditions for a profound transformation, stimulated by religious wars. Sovereignty was, as will become apparent throughout this section, the response designed to end a series of constant wars in which it seemed impossible to identify a definitive victor (Filibi, 2020).

In 1517, Luther nailed onto the door of Wittenberg Church his 95 theses, thereby initiating the Protestant Revolution. The rebellion led in 1524 to the German Peasants’ War, the start of an endless period of wars that would last 173 years, until 1697. This war acquired a particularly fratricidal nature in France, which was ravaged between 1562 and 1598 by continuous religious and political conflict. In this context of chaos, 4 years after the massacre of the Huguenots, Jean Bodin published a book in 1576 entitled The Six Books of the Republic, in which he presented a new concept, sovereignty, “the absolute and perpetual power of a Republic”, intended to reinforce the King’s authority, to mediate between factions and to ensure peace and order. In spite of the distinction between sovereignty and government, he always insisted that “sovereign authority should be absolute, perpetual and indivisible” (Andrew, 2011: 77).

In 1609, Charles L’Oyseau wrote his Traité des Seigneuries, a treaty on the different types of political sovereignty, and stated very clearly that sovereignty is the state’s own Seigneurie, different from and superior to the rest. In the words of Bertrand de Jouvenel, “one can see, then, that sovereignty, as presented by L’Oyseau in 1609, is an extremely vigorous plant”; which can be seen in the États Généraux of 1614, where the idea of sovereignty “is absolutely confused with that of royal power” (Jouvenel, 2000: 189 and 196).

In the middle of another civil war, in England, which lasted from 1642 to 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote a book in 1651 that would be another of the pillars of absolute sovereignty: the Leviathan. Hobbes argued in favour of a social contract and government by an absolute sovereign who would bring an end to war and establish peace. The author, who was born prematurely when his mother heard of an imminent invasion by the Spanish Armada, commented that his life had been marked by fear. Throughout his life he had suffered from the division between factions, and with his work he sought to help to create a power so strong that it might end the state of nature, that endless “war of all against all”.

Without interruption, between 1618 and 1648, amidst numerous wars all over the continent, the Thirty Years’ War again ravaged Europe, involving all the main powers. It was a long and terrible conflict, decimating the population by triggering famine and disease. Finally, the combatants, incapable of winning or losing, completely exhausted, were forced to sign the peace. This was not, however, an act of tolerance or political grandeur; it was simple resignation to the existence of the other. In truth, the Treaty of Westphalia formalised “deferral of a genuine recognition, exploration, and engagement of difference” (Blaney & Inayatullah, 2000: 44).

This process is so central to the history of Europe that even the type of war adapted to it. In the first place, insofar as central power gradually prevailed, “private wars ceased to be tolerated, and war making came to be universally recognized as an attribute of sovereignty”. Thus, there was a phase of wars that might be termed constitutive (among which religious wars could obviously be included), since at stake was what kind of units political subjects would be. Later came a second phase of configurative wars in which the nature of the units was accepted but their precise territorial configuration had to be established. Finally, territorial contiguity was consolidated as an accepted principle, in central Europe at least (Ruggie, 1993: 162–163), albeit with exceptions, such as colonial territories, which in turn made significant contributions to the shaping of the modern European state (Branch, 2010).

The two great bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century introduced substantial changes into the concept of sovereignty but also retained some previous elements that clearly recalled the absolutist nature it acquired from the seventeenth century onwards (Ferrero & Filibi, 2004: 10–11). The monarchic restoration after the Congress of Vienna (1815) appeared to restore the monarchic principle and a certain balance of power on a global scale that would favour the development of a relatively stable system. The era of absolute monarchies gradually faded as tension heightened, and there was succession of revolutionary processes during the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Thus, state sovereignty, embodied by the monarch, was progressively replaced by a national sovereignty embodied by the nation (Ferrero & Filibi, 2004: 11), and although the international order remained relatively stable until 1914 (Filibi, 2020: 122), the very generalisation of the model of nation-state eventually had consequences on the international stage:

In this way, a symbiotic link is established between the state as organisation of political power and the nation as distinctive political and cultural identity of a sovereign people, giving rise to the nation-state as the only socially legitimate form of political community in modernity. Thus, there was a reinforcement of the exclusivist spatiality reflected in the Westphalian formula: to the exclusivity of the state in its territorial jurisdiction was added the exclusivity of the nation as object of political identity. As a result, the society of states is redefined as international society and the units that interact become homogeneous national communities that defend their respective “sovereign” interests, which they regard as supreme. (Ferrero & Filibi, 2004: 12)

The French Revolution was accompanied by a profound transformation of the concept of sovereignty, but maintained a monistic conception thereof which made it possible, with the evolution of the model of nation-state, to develop a standardisation that the old absolutist regimes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could not even imagine, for example, in the development of systems of mass schooling. The American Revolution was different. Firstly, we should see it as a democratic rebellion but also as a war of independence against a European colonial power. In this sense, there was logical opposition to the political transformations that occurred in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards and resistance to monistic conceptions. Following the wide debate on these questions as reflected in The Federalist Papers, the tension between the federal state and the federated states apparent in several of the Supreme Court’s early rulings,Footnote 1 the Hamiltonian approach gradually prevailed, and over time there was acceptance of the model of nation-state predominant in international society of the day and with a near-unique sovereignty. This evolution of the North American state suggests the emergence of a model of political organisation that became the canon, the standard of political legitimacy (Hall, 1999). As the model is consolidated, so is a system of social control that rewards imitation of the model and penalises deviations from the latter (Hurd, 1999).

The widespread implantation in Europe of the model of state-nation during the nineteenth and the early twentieth century facilitated the development of a state that was present in spheres of life (health, education, etc.) from which it was previously absent and fuelled the industrial revolution and a technological change that materialised in technological and military superiority that favoured imperialism and colonial expansion all over the world. Economic change enabled the state to opt for the creation of large companies in strategic sectors that allowed it to plan and develop policies of rearmament with the potential to take war to a new level. The model that led to the hegemony of European powers in 1914 culminated in, after just over three decades and two world wars that changed everything, a new context of Cold War in which the very survival of Europe was at stake.

2 Crisis and European Integration: Beyond Classical Sovereignty and the Supranational Model

European integration and the idea of crisis as an opportunity for political innovation have always been inextricably interrelated. The First World War represented an initial call for attention when it came to considering the European question in a different way. The interwar period as a reflection of a world (and a continent) in transformation sought new instruments with which to address the construction of Europe. Thus, Aristide Briand, French Foreign Minister, proposed the creation of a federal-type organisation in Europe in the framework of the annual meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations held in September 1929, as well as pledging to present the 27 European states that formed the League of Nations with a detailed plan along these lines. This was the origin of the so-called Briand Memorandum, presented on 1 May 1930, which contained a number of original elements with which to articulate ambitious cooperation within the political and economic sphere, though it did not address the issue of sovereignty.Footnote 2 The economic crisis and the emergence of more and more authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, combined with the possibility of a new, armed conflict on a European and global scale, prompted the failure of this initiative.

The Second World War created a suitable framework for the presentation of proposals that in another context would never have been launched, and which went far beyond any kind of cooperation, however ambitious. Thus, June 1940 saw a proposal for the creation of a Franco-British union that would involve the institution of joint bodies for defence, foreign policy, treasury and the economy, among other highly significant measures (Shlaim, 1974). The uncertainty did not disappear when the conflict was over, and the end of the Second World War left the darkest of horizons for a Europe that was devastated, bled dry and deeply divided, and which would endure further suffering with the Cold War. The possibility of conflict, this time nuclear, between the United States and the USSR, with Europe as the most probable theatre of operations, evidenced the need to avoid a Third World War and stimulated political innovation.

The debate over Europe became a central theme and the search for innovative elements imperative in order to provide an answer to the challenges of the era. These elements can be found in a vibrant, thriving European federalist movement that contemplated Europe’s future with a substantially different vision. A good example can be seen in such relevant events as the Hague Congress (1948), where a wide debate culminated with the adoption of three resolutions in the cultural, economic and political sphere. The first important international organisation was the Council of Europe, entry into which was restricted to democratic states (see Chapter 2 of the Treaty of LondonFootnote 3) which included a multitude of innovative elements and practical developments, particularly in the field of human rights, but which was shackled by the fact that it did not address the issue of sovereignty (Dayez, 1949).

The difficulty involved in all the states in Western Europe accepting the creation of new institutions that would address the question of European sovereignty and transcend intergovernmental cooperation is clearly visible in the complex process of the creation of the European Communities. At this stage, innovation materialised in the form of the Schuman Declaration, the ambitious goal of which was that a new military conflict in Europe should be “not only unthinkable but materially impossible”. The key of the proposal was simple but at the same time profoundly innovative: share sovereignty in the framework of a supranational organisation in a limited – coal and steel – but strategic sector, given its close ties with war and processes of rearmament. This method revealed a clear diagnosis of the problem, an innovative solution and the audacity needed in order to put it into practice. Indeed, a monistic notion of sovereignty combined with the development of aggressive (state) nationalisms led European countries into war and disaster (Filibi, 2020). The Schuman Declaration inspired the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952 and, after the failure of the Pleven Plan, which sought to move forward in the sphere of integration in the area of defence, two other Communities (European Economic Community and Euratom) in 1957.

The innovative nature of the Schuman Declaration as a key factor in the creation of the European Communities is regularly highlighted by specialist literature. However, less attention is drawn to the fact that, in the years immediately following the Second World War and prior to the creation of the ECSC, a series of European countries approved a number of reforms, coordinated in their constitutions, which contemplated the possibility of sharing sovereignty within the framework of an international organisation (Brunkhorst, 2016: 15).

Thus, for instance, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949 established in Article 24 that the Federation may, by law, transfer sovereign powers to international institutions (paragraph 1) and that “with a view to maintaining peace, the Federation may enter into a system of mutual collective security; in doing so it shall consent to such limitations upon its sovereign powers as will bring about and secure a lasting peace in Europe and among the nations of the world” (paragraph 2).

The original aspects of the Constitution of the fledgling German Federal Republic can be largely explained by the pressure and influence exerted by powers such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom. However, the 1946 Constitution that gave rise to France’s Fourth Republic indicated in its Preamble that, “Subject to reciprocity, France shall consent to the limitations upon its sovereignty necessary to the organisation and preservation of peace”. The United Kingdom, however, was not prepared to share sovereignty and, realising that the Six were going to proceed without its participation, launched an alternative project, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which proposed another means of moving towards European integration without surrendering sovereignty. Upon confirmation of the failure of a purely intergovernmental method, the United Kingdom applied for entry into the EEC, and this was formalised in 1973 (Filibi, 2019: 135).

The British were not alone in their misgivings with regard to the new institutions that were operating under the premise of sharing sovereignty within a supranational organisation. The launch of the Pleven Plan, with the support of Jean Monnet and benefitting from the momentum of the success of the European Coal and Steel Community, was evidence of the desire to make genuine progress with political integration, but ratification of the European Defence Community, born of a French proposal, was voted down at the National Assembly in 1954. Charles De Gaulle’s accession to power in such an important country as France, in a context of collapse of the Fourth Republic and with the backdrop of the war in Algeria, suggested that difficult times were in store for the then fledgling European Communities. In fact, De Gaulle was in favour of ambitious European cooperation that would embrace such significant spheres as defence, but not at the cost of sharing sovereignty. The Empty Chair Crisis and the subsequent Luxembourg Compromise, which informally recognised the need for unanimity on the Council (in other words, a right of veto) when vital state interests were at stake, constituted a key moment in the history of the integration process.

The economic success of the European Communities attracted new states, which reluctantly accepted the idea of sharing sovereignty within a supranational organisation. Four countries opted to enter in the first round of enlargement, and all except the British subjected entry to referendum in 1972. In Ireland (10 May) and Denmark (2 October), the vote was favourable, but on 25 September the “no” vote won in Norway, and the government decided not to present the Treaty of Adhesion to Parliament for ratification. In the United Kingdom, Edward Heath’s Conservative government lost the elections in 1974, and the Labour Party promised to hold a referendum on the question; this took place on 5 June 1975, and the “yes” vote achieved a significant majority.

The European Communities found themselves at a crossroads in the mid-1970s. The Empty Chair Crisis demonstrated that there was a sector of the elites and of the population that was wary of the new institutions and did not wish to share sovereignty in a supranational organisation. However, the British, who had promoted the EFTA as an alternative to the community method, had to rectify and apply for entry into the EEC, since the latter was an effective means of achieving greater economic development. This tension between the supranational and the intergovernmental and the debates on the need to opt for a (more) democratic or (more) effective Europe marked the ensuing decades in the process of integration.

3 The Quest for a Delicate Balance Between the Supranational and the Intergovernmental: From the Post-Empty Chair “Crisis” to Progress Via the Single European Act and Maastricht Treaty

The more conventional visions of the history of integration tend to describe the period between recovery from the Empty Chair Crisis and the adoption of the Single European Act (1986) as a time of paralysis and stagnation. This vision underlines a reinforcement of the intergovernmental that made it more difficult to take decisions by consensus in a larger club, which grew in 1973 from six to nine members. Moreover, among the new members, Denmark and especially the United Kingdom were particularly opposed to the notion of advancing in a supranational sense. The very creation of the Council of Europe, in 1974, initially as an informal forum,Footnote 4 reveals in our opinion an undisguised attempt to reinforce the intergovernmental and in a way blur the Commission’s role when it came to setting the Community’s future agenda. In short, this period is traditionally presented as one of the major reinforcements of the intergovernmental, but one should not forget that during these two decades, steps were also taken, some of which have not met with the recognition they merit, to move forward with integration in a supranational direction. We would highlight two measures in particular: the constitutionalisation of the Treaties and the fact that in 1977 the decision was taken that the European Parliament should be elected via direct universal suffrage.

European integration did not lose the capacity to innovate, but although, in our view, the idea of sharing sovereignty in a supranational organisation was a positive contribution in a democratic vein, other posterior innovations merit more qualified approval. A good example is to be found in integration via law and “the constitutionalisation of Treaties” as a key factor in the definition of the community legal order. It is worth recalling in this respect that its two basic principles (supremacy and the direct effect) do not appear in the Treaties and have been developed by Court jurisprudence in a series of rulings that began in 1963 with the Van Gend & Loos case. Without going into great detail,Footnote 5 it should be noted that this process was fundamentally innovative but questionable in democratic terms. Specifically, particularly shrewd was the use of the preliminary ruling as a mechanism of (limited) civic participation conceived in such a way as to permit the Court to develop its jurisprudence in order to favour increased possibilities of action on the part of community institutions. For decades, this situation was accepted even by the most Eurosceptical states, on grounds of economic efficiency focused on the central role of the Court of Justice in the functioning of the Single Market, and it is compatible with the complex equilibrium between the intergovernmental and the supranational (Uncetabarrenechea, 2010: 119–122).

The decision to elect the European Parliament via universal direct suffrage was a key moment in the history of European integration. The first elections were held in 1979, and this institution, although it did not wield great powers at the time, played a significant role in driving the process of integration in the mid-1980s, a circumstance that is sometimes under appreciated by specialised literature. The legitimacy of a first Parliament elected via universal suffrage, which culminated its mandate with the adoption in 1984 of a draft Treaty on the European Union (known as the Spinelli Project), represented a challenge to an increasingly intergovernmental process of European construction and reinforced the need to extend the integration process:

This was, without doubt, an important reinforcement of the democratic legitimacy of the European Community, enabling this institution to become an actor with the capacity to make political proposals, as was demonstrated with the adoption in 1984 of the draft Treaty on the European Union (Proyecto Spinelli Project). Given the absolute control of integration and of EU institutions on the part of governments, the Spinelli Project involved the drafting of an exclusively parliamentary text, without any intervention by governments or the Commission, and was adopted by very large majority: 258 votes in favour, only 35 against and 23 abstentions. The political challenge was radical, since the European Parliament sought direct ratification of the text by national Parliaments. The governments of the member states reacted at the Council of Milan in 1985, invoking the article that established that revisions of treaties should be implemented via an intergovernmental conference, and immediately convening such a conference that would approve the Single European Act. (García de Enterría, 1995: 12–13)

The adoption of the Single European Act (1986) and shortly afterwards of the Maastricht Treaty (1992) initiated a period of major advance in the integration process with, for example, a Parliament that with every reform of the Treaties has acquired further competences but also the creation of an EU with increasing power, viewed with mistrust by growing sectors of European society. Increased integration did not necessarily mean a reversal in the intergovernmental dimension, and it is worth recalling that Maastricht included the first “opt-out” clause in the Treaties, permitting the United Kingdom to join the Economic and Monetary Union whenever it chose to do so.

The peculiarities of the integration process, along with growing criticism of European institutions, have led some authors to establish a (false) dichotomy between democracy and efficiency. The logic of this process of integration has created an institutional structure that prioritises negative integration and a liberalising approach and makes it difficult to define actions of positive integration (Scharpf, 2000: 64–96). The liberalising action promoted by Court of Justice jurisprudence is of a binding character, while, for a long time, it has been almost impossible to adopt corrective measures due to the need for unanimity on the Council. Even now, with the extension of the qualified majority, it remains a difficult process, and a broad consensus is still necessary (Scharpf, 2000: 86). Added to this is the fact that any reform of the Treaties requires the unanimity of the Member States; in other words, the reality is that any Member State can veto any change that it regards as detrimental. Thus, for example, and referring to a question that is very much on the agenda today, it is difficult to imagine a reform of the Treaties that involves the EU playing a more active and decisive role in the field of taxation being accepted by countries like Ireland, Luxembourg or the Netherlands.

The situation became even more complicated with a change in direction in the process of integration. Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn has pointed out that during the period in which the Single Market and subsequently the Treaty of Maastricht were adopted, there was evidence of the supremacy of what was termed the “neo-liberal constitutional project” vis-à-vis two other rival projects labelled social-democratic and neo-mercantilist, respectively (Van Apeldoorn, 1998). A crucial factor in order to understand the hegemony of neoliberalism both within the Single European Act and in the Treaty of Maastricht is to be found in the fact that the ground rules that drove the liberalisation of markets and the way in which Economic and Monetary Union is defined are clearly laid out in the Treaties and can only be modified subject to approval by all the Member States. By contrast, the qualitative leap that occurred in cohesion policy in the shape of the incentive offered to the poorer Member States to persuade them to accept both Maastricht and the SEA requires tough negotiations every 7 years within the multiannual financial framework. In a favourable context, these nations are in a stronger position to negotiate their support for these reforms, in what may often be seen as a form of “selling” their backing:

… los instrumentos de política pública de los que dispone la Comisión Europea y las restricciones de competencias y de recursos de la Comisión impuestos por la sovereignty de los Estados miembro implican que la Comisión puede ser eficaz a la hora de promover la liberalización del mercado pero no a la hora de legislar la política social o de empleo a nivel europeo (…). Por contra, la Comisión ha progresado poco en sus esfuerzos por fomentar inversiones masivas de infraestructuras en el transporte transeuropeo como medio para crear empleo, en gran parte debido a que carece de autoridad para movilizar los enormes recursos financieros que se requieren. Allí donde existen recursos significativos para fomentar la cohesión -los fondos estructurales de la Comunidad- estos recursos han funcionado mucho más como pago colateral para “comprar” la inserción al mercado único de los Estados miembros más pobres que como distribuidor más extenso de oportunidades económicas entre individuos, grupos o regiones dentro de los Estados miembro. Por otra parte, estos recursos son escasos en comparación con los enormes fondos que podrían dedicar las autoridades públicas de los Estados miembro a objetivos regionales o sociales de no existir la regulación restrictiva de la Comunidad. (Smith, 1999: 128)

The growing criticism and questioning of the European project at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this century prompted, on the one hand, reinforcement of the hegemony of neoliberalism in EU policies and on the other a moderate introduction of civic participation which did not include the possibility of modifying central issues on the Community agenda (Uncetabarrenechea, 2010: 128). There was increased criticism by broad sectors of European citizenry, particularly during the first decade of this century, which materialised in the failure to ratify the European Constitutional Treaty following the negative result of the referendums held in France and the Netherlands in 2005.

4 From Intergovernmentalisation of European Integration to Poli-crisis: Different Responses to Two Recent Crises (2009 and 2020)

The European response to the crisis of 2009 elicited deep dissatisfaction insofar as it was perceived as neither democratic nor effective. In this respect, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was requested, as an external agent, to participate in a process of disciplining countries on the periphery of the Eurozone that found themselves in serious difficulty. The word troika lost its original meaning within the small world of experts in European integration, related to the rotating presidencies of the EU Council, and gained notoriety when the time came to respond to the crisis in which two key EU institutions participated, the European Commission and the Central European Bank, which were joined by an international organisation (the IMF). Paradoxically, the International Monetary Fund, clearly summoned to play the role of inflexible promoter of orthodoxy characteristic of its responses to the crises of the 1980s and 1990s, adopted a more open and flexible stance than the European Commission itself and a number of European governments. With the addition of the concessions made to David Cameron prior to the Brexit referendum, there was growing dissatisfaction with this way of building Europe, and neither a broad sector of European citizenry nor the European Parliament itself hesitated to voice their criticism and opposition.

All the limitations of this technocratic, liberal way of building Europe, with a gradual reinforcement of the intergovernmental dimension, were evidenced after Brexit, and the need for radical change was defended even by key institutions like the European Parliament. Criticism of the European attitude in the crisis of 2009 in relation to the periphery of the Eurozone grew steadily, and Juncker, addressing the European Parliament in a session held on 15 January 2019 to mar the 20th anniversary of the euro, regretted the “insufficient” solidarity in response to the Greek crisis and insisted that “we are insulting” Greece.Footnote 6

The crisis in Europe has to be reconsidered in such a way that the basic concepts of democracy adapt to the context of this complex new reality of the European Union and a globalised world, in which profound political transformations are taking place (Innerarity, 2017: 11–12). Almost inevitably, we will have to think of democracy with the state as the fundamental framework, but in a global context marked by crisis and uncertainty, we must reconsider democracy in other terms. Similarly, it is time for change and audacity when driving political change. It is not enough to think of Europe as the appropriate scale to provide an effective response to crisis in a context marked by (post)pandemic. The temptation to sacrifice the debate on democracy in the name of efficacy may lead us into a reality in which we have neither.

The return to an idealised context of sovereign democracies in a Golden Age of the Welfare State is unfeasible for various reasons. A major obstacle is to be found in a world dominated by vast multinational corporations and numerous investment funds that have gradually transformed the reality of the global political economy on the basis of defence of their own interests (Picciotto, 2011). In this respect, Habermas warns of the danger that “technocratic regimes will continue to proliferate under the innocent label of “governance” as long as sources of democratic legitimation are not successfully tapped for supranational authorities as well. A trans nationalization of democracy is overdue” (Habermas, 2015: 57).

Going back in time, seeking protection in an idea of sovereignty that serves as a refuge from challenges, dangers and uncertainties present at every level in a (post) coronavirus context offers a false sense of security. As will be seen in the next section, it is not sufficient merely to move from state to European sovereignty; it is also necessary to define the outlines of a pluralist European sovereignty.

The weaknesses revealed by both the European Union and Member States in managing the pandemic have encouraged the development of debates that a year or so ago would have appeared impossible. The European response to the current crisis, though it has not met all our expectations, for example, in the issue of Eurobonds, has proven to be substantially different, as evidenced by the adoption of the new multiannual financial framework (2021–2027) and of the EU instrument/strategy for recovery in the wake of the pandemic (Next Generation EU). This new Budget includes extremely innovative elements if compared with its predecessors and provides a more solid base for the implementation of positive and humanitarian measures over years that promise to be decisive (Crowe, 2021). However, we should not underestimate the role that a corporate world can play in the short, medium and long term with regard to designing an international society favourable to their interests. A context of increasing external debt may accentuate the weakness of states and lead to growing subservience to the interests of these corporate groups on a global scale.

Ultimately, the necessary positive reassessment of the public as one of the major future challenges facing the EU should not be confused with a return to the state, which would be a mistaken strategy in response to the enormous challenges of a (post) COVID context. In the European arena and in geopolitical terms, European states (even the largest and most powerful) are too small to play a significant role on a global scale.

We find ourselves in a context of profound crisis that may favour transformations and innovations that are not always positive in democratic terms. This situation, marked by uncertainty and fear, presents us with a global ecosystem favourable to the development of more or less authoritarian “solution” that sacrifices democracy for the sake of security and efficiency and implies a regression in democratic terms at a global level. In the context of the EU, this risk is reduced but still exists. One might say that there is a double temptation when contemplating the past: on the one hand, to abandon or marginalise the EU in order to seek refuge in the state in the hope of magically returning to the Western Europe of the 1950s or 1960s and on the other to opt for a more or less partial return to the old technocratic method that involves a clear commitment to efficiency to avoid complex debates on sovereignty and democracy. As we shall see in the next section, it is not enough to propose a debate on European sovereignty on purely pragmatic grounds while barely taking into account democratic considerations – a debate that, ultimately, is simply a more elaborate and sophisticated formulation of that second temptation referred to above. In our opinion, both stances would be mistaken and counter-productive. It is time for a clear analysis of the democratic debate, and, as will be argued in the next section, consideration must be given to a pluralist European sovereignty as a formula that seeks to find a suitable balance between democracy and effectiveness.

5 A Democratic and Effective Response: Towards Pluralist European Sovereignty

Crisis has always been a powerful incentive for reflection and political innovation. As we have seen, European integration was based upon the principle that state sovereignty should be shared. This was an essential element of the French proposal made by Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet. It was certainly an extraordinary innovation. The French government’s proposal (Schuman Declaration), to share sovereignties, closed the circle initiated by Jean Bodin 300 years earlier. Paradoxically, the very same concept that emerged to end the religious wars in 1648 was regarded in 1948–1950 as the cause of the nationalist wars of the twentieth century (Filibi, 2020: 123).

On the one hand, European integration made it possible to begin to speak of a European sovereignty, understood as the application of the concept that originally appeared in modern European territorial states on a larger scale, likely to prove more effective in solving certain problems that European states were no longer of tackling on their own: from ensuring peace to appropriately regulating the functioning of the increasingly international markets. In this respect, one can cite various authors who began to speak of the United States of Europe, in clear allusion to the United States of America. A good example is the article by Albert Dayez, published in the weekly newspaper Le Phare Dimanche on 7 August 1949. This text, entitled “A quand la ‘souveraineté européenne’?” (When will European sovereignty be?), indicated that the only way of constructing a European Federation was for governments to agree to share their sovereignties and create a sovereignty of a European scope (Dayez, 1949). Without a doubt, this was a major innovation, insofar as it applied the context of sovereignty, previously confined to a state ambit, to Europe as a whole. Dayez’s conception of sovereignty was not very different from what already existed among states; he simply attempted to apply it on a larger scale.

However, as the integration process advanced and states began to share more and more sovereignty, concern led to a new angle of debate. National governments acknowledged their inability to address many issues on their own and understood that only by sharing their sovereignties could the latter become effective tools. The increasing power of the European institutions, particularly apparent following the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty, was a cause of concern for many European citizens. The Danish “no” in the first referendum on the Maastricht Treaty and the narrow victory of the “yes” vote in France provided clear evidence of this disquiet and placed the spotlight on the debate on the democratic deficit in the EU in specialised literature. The problem became more acute this century when the Union institutions began to lose their aura of effectiveness, especially after the crisis of 2009.

Criticism of the monistic conception of sovereign power is not new. John Gerard Ruggie (1993) observed that one of the characteristics of political modernity is the single point of view – the notion that power corresponds to a perspective of a sole subjectivity. The experience of European integration favoured the development of a critical vision of sovereignty. Thus, in the 1990s, authors like MacCormick (1999), Bellamy and Castiglione (1997) or Walker (2003) questioned the very epistemological and conceptual foundations of sovereignty, particularly via a sole subjectivity in the sphere of European integration. In this sense, MacCormick noted in 1993 that in the recently created European Union, it was just as impossible for Member States to accept the possibility of a sovereignty exclusive to the Union as it was for the latter to accept that the sole sovereignty was that of the states themselves (MacCormick, 1993: 5). In this respect, monistic interpretations of sovereignty were incapable of explaining or understanding the situation of European integration in the 1990s:

It seems obvious that no state in Western Europe any longer is a sovereign state. None is in a position such that all the power exercised internally in it, whether politically or legally, derives from purely internal sources. Equally, of course, it is not true that all the power which is exercised either politically or normatively is exercised by, or through, or on the grant of, one or more organs of the European Community. (MacCormick, 1993: 16)

The questioning of the monistic vision of sovereignty in light of the evolution of European integration in the 1990s increased the possibility of going further. The traditional perspective of sovereignty could only conceive of the EU as either an international organisation or a state, albeit it its early stages of formation. Both visions coincide in the sense that they do not conceive of sovereignty beyond the state, since the latter, by definition, is neither divided nor shared (Avbelj, 2014: 349). Rather than the aforementioned traditional visions of sovereignty or that of those who believe that the very concept of sovereignty should be abandoned, Matej Avbelj underlines the advantages of what he calls a “post traditional” vision, which constitutes a redefinition of European sovereignty in pluralist terms (Avbelj, 2014: 353–359). According to this conception, the EU can be “a non-statist federation: a union”, “composed of 27 territorially sovereign States” and “a functionally sovereign supranational level” (Avbelj, 2020: 301).

In a similar direction, Sophie Heine speaks of the relationship between European sovereignty and federalism, indicating that this duality was necessary in order to rescue political agency, the effective capacity to act (Heine, 2015). Thus, she claims that “a euronationalist perspective would create artificial divisions between a valued ‘us’ and devalued ‘them’, thereby opening the door to all sorts of exclusions and discriminations” (Heine, 2015).

In the British referendum held on 23 June 2016, 52% voted in favour of leaving the EU. The concessions offered some months earlier to Prime Minister David Cameron were to no avail, and that “Europe à la Carte” with an increasing governmental bias revealed all its limitations and shortcomings. At an institutional level, the European Parliament adopted a very active role in its attempts to resolve the crisis, and, thus, its Committee on Constitutional Affairs approved a document on 20 December 2016 establishing a diagnosis of the EU’s problems and an outline of the changes that needed to be made, including modifications in the Treaties, in order to solve them. It is significant that this document was adopted as a European Parliament resolution in its plenary session on 16 February 2017, as part of a battery of three resolutions that addressed the future of the EU: how to make the best use of the Treaty of Lisbon, what changes to introduce in the treaties and questions regarding EU funding. It is noteworthy that, although it did not appear explicitly, the document applied an implicit notion of European sovereignty.

On 26 September 2017, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, delivered an important speech at the University of Sorbonne (Paris), entitled “Initiative for Europe”,Footnote 7 in which he explicitly appealed for a European sovereignty, compatible with French sovereignty. Almost a year later, on 12 September 2018, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, entitled his contribution to the debate on the state of the European Union “the hour of European sovereignty”.Footnote 8

Since that moment, the concept has acquired greater presence in academic literature, appearing in diverse papers, speeches and articles. By way of example, we could cite two particularly significant papers. On the one hand, in June 2019, Mark Leonard and Jeremy Shapiro published a text entitled “Strategic sovereignty: How Europe can regain the capacity to act”, in which, like Sophie Heine some years earlier, they referred to the concept as the best instrument to facilitate effective capacity on the part of the European Union to act in a constantly changing and increasingly hostile international context. On this occasion, the concept coined was strategic sovereignty (Leonard & Shapiro, 2019).

In a context marked by European states’ inadequate response to COVID-19, one could mention a European Council of Foreign Relations paper as an example of the success of the concept of sovereignty applied to the European scale, in this case in reference to “health sovereignty” (Hackenbroich et al., 2020).

Given the abundance of examples, the concept of European sovereignty appears to be here to stay. In all cases, there is a call for sovereign capacity on a European scale, though no one denies that states will continue to be sovereign (Heller, 2019). A common thread in the arguments defending this concept is that of recovering the capacity of public authorities to act, in a very difficult context, on major crises and profound geopolitical changes. As noted in the previous section, the response to the currency crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic has been substantially different to that of 2009, and there is growing acceptance that Europe is the appropriate scale of action to respond to the challenges of a future marked by uncertainty.

The European Union is again experiencing moments of change, the magnitude of which is still unclear. A conference was recently launched on the future of Europe (with a year’s delay, as it had been scheduled to begin in May 2020), but the initial sensations have not been as positive as initially appeared, and disagreements between European institutions and governments threaten the result in a democratic process that was originally marketed as a dialogue on an equal footing between the institutions of the Union and citizens and civil society (Aldecoa, 2021).

Ultimately, European sovereignty has the potential to overcome the historical shortcomings of state sovereignty, provided this does not involve transferring the old model of monistic state sovereignty onto a European political and geographical scale. In order to prosper, it should be born with the will to develop a pluralist vision of sovereignty, not merely a discursive strategy aimed at giving greater capacity of action to the Union without addressing in parallel manner a substantial advance in democratic terms. European sovereignty presents the possibility, conceptually speaking, of significantly enriching European democracy, but this will only be possible if this question is on the agenda and is taken seriously from the very beginning.