Where do federal EU powers end and where do Member State competencies start? This crucial question of the Union was debated at the Danube Institute on Thursday, 26 March, during a panel discussion titled Beyond the Treaties: The EU’s Silent Power Grab.

Ministerial Commissioner at the Hungarian Ministry of European Union Affairs Boglárka Bólya; Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute Father Mario Portella; and Deputy Director of Research at MCC Brussels Philipp Siegert took part in the discussion. It was moderated by Head of Operations at the Danube Institute Gergely Dobozi.

Mr Dobozi started the panel by pointing out that the EU have been moving closer to a federalist central power ever since the landmark decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the case Costa v ENEL in 1964, which ruled that EU laws have supremacy over Member State laws. Since then, the European Union has been an increasingly political body, the moderator added.

Visiting Fellow Father Mario Portella, Deputy Director of Research at MCC Brussels Philipp Siegert, and Head of Operations at the Danube Institute Gergely Dobozi (L–R) PHOTO: Tamás Gyurkovits/Hungarian Conservative

In response, Ms Bólya declared that deeper integration should be based on the political choice of Member States, not CJEU rulings. She then stated that there are two main schools of thought regarding the Union: of those who want a ‘United States of Europe’, and of those who want a ‘Europe of nations’. She also warned that if major changes are implemented in how European institutions operate without any changes to the EU treaties, those treaties will eventually become meaningless.

She also noted that the last major EU treaty agreed by the Member States was the Lisbon Treaty of 2007, thus, that is what the competencies of the nations and the Union should be defined by.

Ministerial Commissioner Boglárka Bólya PHOTO: Tamás Gyurkovits/Hungarian Conservative

Father Portella talked about the ‘principle of subsidiarity’, which is an EU doctrine that calls for social, political, or organizational issues to be handled at the lowest level possible. As he pointed out, this idea originates from Pope Pius XI in the 1930s, the time of the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, and he intended it to be a safeguard against an overbearing central government. The EU, however, now does not adhere to that principle.

The Father also drew attention to the double standards of Brussels: while Poland has a stricter immigration policy than Hungary, the latter country gets fined €1 million per day for immigration violations, the former had all of its cohesion funds unfrozen right after the leftist Tusk administration took over. As Ms Bólya shared, all it took was a 1.5-page ‘action plan’ on the new Polish government’s part to unlock the EU funds.

‘While Poland has a stricter immigration policy than Hungary, the latter country gets fined €1 million per day for immigration violations’

Mr Siegert told the audience that the CJEU was originally intended to be the ‘guardian of the treaties’ and was actually the combination of three different dispute settlement bodies morphed into one. Another useful function of the European court is to facilitate the single market, he added. Mr Siegert also declared that ‘the Member States are the masters of the EU treaties, not the European courts’.

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