States retain sovereign right to be stupid

For the neo-Nazis, the skeptics and the mere idiots of Europe, the good news arrived just in time for Christmas: The European Union has failed to violate the sovereign right of states to act against their own self-interest. Praise be.

In fact, several offerings of this very sort have been made before. On this most recent occasion, glad tidings came in the form of Poland taking yet another merry slide down the hill of elected authoritarianism. The governing party, which since 2015 has adopted about a dozen measures attacking Poland’s independent judiciary, was pushing ahead with yet one more to kneecap it. The EU, which tends to frown upon violent assaults on the rule of law, warned Poland that if it continued violating basic EU principles, the union might warn it again — but formally this time. For this the EU was accused of exercising its powers arbitrarily (an accusation, one cannot help but notice, that is not entirely dissimilar to that traditionally levelled against politicians who wrest control of judicial powers).

It could have been a triumph for those evil forces of oppression that ask independent, rational actors to honour commitments they have made freely and of their own volition. But hark! Poland signed the bill into law, temporarily defeating the EU’s tyranny over, er, tyranny.

Of course, the threat to nationalist masochism has not been completely extinguished. The EU can theoretically take away Poland’s voting rights — its voting rights, that is, in the body that EU skeptics such as the ones governing Poland criticize on the grounds that the EU destroys state sovereignty. Luckily for Poland, however, Hungary, a sovereign state, may prevent this attack by the union of 27 other

Glad tidings came in the form of Poland taking yet another merry slide down the hill of elected authoritarianism.

sovereign states against — what else — state sovereignty.

It’s almost enough to make you think that state sovereignty is still going strong, even in a group where independent countries exercise their own power to pool certain other powers so as to make themselves more powerful still. What a relief for nationalist critics of the EU and indeed of all bodies with the words “regional” or “international” in their statements of purpose.

Of course, when independent actors come together, the whole always has some power over each individual part. For violating the terms of the group that it consented to join, a state may be publicly shamed. It may be taken to the European Court of Justice. It may be required to pay a fine. It may even be stripped of its voting rights.

But critically, being penalized for violating EU principles and laws is not proof that members states have no power. It is evidence that all member states have at one point decided that even if being in a union sometimes comes at a cost, limits are sometimes the price of freedom, for states are more powerful together than alone.

Few costs can force a state to act in its own interest, besides. The power of the nationstate to chart its own course remains largely intact, however suicidal that course may be. By insulting the EU, defying it and even leaving it for fear that it compromises their sovereignty, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Poland have each successfully demonstrated that they are in the final analysis quite sovereign indeed. So sovereign, they have the power to make themselves weaker.

Fascists and blockheads take heart: It remains the general prerogative of fools to act foolish. Their ability to do so is as much a testament to the limits of bodies such as the EU as it is to the limits of human intelligence.

Now why we would ever, through sheer ignorance and force of will, elect to make ourselves poorer and more isolated and altogether less free — that is a question for the new year.