116 / 150
THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
116
monetary integration (Section A, “Economic
Governance”) and social cohesion (Section B,
“Competitiveness”). Yet the most important
thing was what appeared in the second para-
graph of Section C (“Sovereignty”): “The refer-
ences in the Treaties and their preambles to the
process of creating an ever-closer union among
the peoples of Europe do not offer a legal basis
for extending the scope of any provision of the
Treaties or of EU secondary legislation. They
should not be used either to support an exten-
sive interpretation of the competences of the
Union or of the powers of its institutions as set
out in the Treaties”.
The seriousness of the Agreement of the
Heads of State and Government results from
comparison of the text with this other one, in
Article 1 of the Treaty on European Union: “This
Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creat-
ing an ever-closer union among the peoples of
Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as
possible and as closely as possible to the citizen”.
What the United Kingdom’s Conservative
government achieved, then, was to get the
members of the Union, who until then had
been resolved to “continue the process of creat-
ing an ever-closer union among the people of
Europe”, to declare for the first time and unan-
imously that their resolve was not legally bind-
ing. In other words, it did not bind them to-
gether.
Ditching the resolve to make Europe ever
more integrated also raised the possibility of
making the union among the people of Europe
ever looser, that is to say, of breaking it up.
In a surprise result, the British people decided
in the referendum of 23 June that the United
Kingdom should leave the Union, which neither
the British Conservative government nor the
Union institutions wanted. They had been poorly
informed of the fact that with the Decision of
the European Council the United Kingdom
could gain even more national sovereignty.
The negotiation of the withdrawal agree-
ment that the EU and the United Kingdom have
to sign will be long and difficult (it will last at
least the two years provided for in Article 50 of
the Treaty on European Union). Nor is the Union
expected to offer any concessions that prompt
other countries to seek exceptions or explore
the same exit route, particularly if there are vic-
tories for ultranationalist parties in national
elections. Therefore, a reinforcement of the
Union’s political authority and integrationist in-
clination will be necessary.
Brexit weakens Europe, yet at the same time
it spurs us to revive the debate on its political
union.
Towards the revival of the debate on
political union
From the creation of the Delors Committee in
1988 to the inception of the European Union in
1992, the acronyms EMU (Economic and
Monetary Union) and EPU (European Political
Union) were in common use and the mention of
one frequently appeared along with the other. It
was the title given to the two intergovernmental
conferences in preparation of Maastricht. The
plan of the then President of the European
Commission, in tune to a certain extent with
some of the Europeanist leaders of the day, in-
cluded bringing about EMU at the same time as
EPU in the shape of a federation of nation states.
After Maastricht, a period began that ended
in the failed attempt to provide Europe with a
political Constitution in 2005. The failure was
partly overcome by the Lisbon Treaty in 2007.
Since then and until now, institutional initia-
tives and the political debate on European