Brussels, Paris, Berlin Want to Get Rid of Nation-States in the European Union

The idea that unanimous support among member states should not be necessary for foreign policy decisions is gaining traction in the EU. The end-game is to get rid of nation-states, a former German diplomat told RT.

The concept of at least some foreign policy decisions being made by the EU without universal backing from member states was floated recently by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. He suggested the change during the Munich Security Conference last month. Some German officials have also spoken in favor of the proposed reform.

In particular, Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth told Der Spiegel that the unanimity principle exposed the Union to malign foreign influence. Juergen Hardt, an MP and foreign policy expert, suggested to the magazine that switching to a simple majority would “increase the EU's ability to act.”

The suggestion is part of a drive within the bloc to subjugate national governments to the decisions made by Brussels, veteran German lawmaker Willy Wimmer said. Wimmer also served as state secretary for defense, and later became vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“We face critical decisions in the European Union these days. I think there is a major obstacle to the development of the EU because Brussels – mainly France and Germany – want to get rid of the nation-states,” he said. “[Bringing together nation-states] had been the founding principle in the European community as we know it since 1956. This principle [is something] that the Polish people, or the Dutch people, the Swedes, the Spanish and also the Germans are not willing to go astray from.”

Wimmer, whose mainstream political career dwindled after he started to criticize the German government for its support of NATO military intervention in Yugoslavia, said the bureaucracy in Brussels wants more power to impose controversial decisions on member states, such as recognizing Kosovo as an independent nation.

“They wanted to see Kosovo, the Serbian province, as an independent state. Five countries within the European Union didn’t agree, [including] Spain, Cyprus and others. To overcome this development, they have the idea in Brussels to get rid of the voting in the EU as we have it today,” he explained.

The convenience of such an arrangement was highlighted in this decade by the refugee crisis of the 2015, which split the EU into two camps, the politician said. Some nations like Germany were willing to accept hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from the wars and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa.

Others, mainly in Eastern Europe, saw those people as just economic immigrants, bringing with them problems for hosting nations, so they refused Brussels’ plan to distribute the refugees among member states according to a Brussels-ruled quota.

“[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel made a decision by herself – not by the German parliament and not by the German law – to open up the German borders,” Wimmer said.

“They want to change the internal laws in Europe just to make it possible for German decisions or French decisions to overrule the independence of countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic or Slovakia.”