London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Sep 19, 2025

Europe’s war over sovereignty is just beginning

Europe’s war over sovereignty is just beginning

Whatever happened to Michel Barnier? As the head of the EU negotiating team on Brexit, the patrician Frenchman became famous for his insistence that the EU must never deviate from its core principles - including the supremacy of European law and the free movement of people.
Now Brexit is done and Barnier has moved on. He is running for the presidency of France and has adopted many of the ideas he once rejected. Supremacy of EU law? Barnier now has his doubts. Immigration? Barnier is calling for a moratorium of up to five years. The European ideal? Barnier warns that Germany has become too powerful within the EU.

One possible explanation for this curious volte face is that the former EU commissioner has reflected deeply on the Brexit negotiations and decided that the Brexiters had a point. An alternative theory is that Barnier has reflected deeply on his own ambition to be president of France — and has decided that the shortest route to power involves a sharp right turn, followed by a swift reversal over his own principles.

It is possible that a really good lawyer could make the statements of the two Barniers sound consistent. His current demand for a moratorium on immigration, for example, applies only to arrivals from outside the EU. But one of his former close colleagues in Brussels tells me: “What he is saying now, for example on the European Convention on Human Rights, is clearly different from what he was saying during the Brexit negotiations.”

The Barnier story is about more than the cynicism of one man. It says something important about politics in Europe. The backlash against Brussels is not confined to France. In different forms, it is cropping up all over the EU — from Warsaw to Budapest to the German constitutional court in Karlsruhe. The supremacy of EU law, a principle established in the 1960s that is fundamental to the European project, is increasingly under challenge.

One key reason for these challenges is that the EU has expanded its powers into policy areas that used to be at the heart of the nation state: borders, budgets, currency and civil rights. As a result, many politicians chafe at having to accept European legal supremacy on subjects, such as immigration, that are deeply controversial at home. This problem is compounded by the fact that the EU club now has 27 members — making it harder to agree on a common rule book that suits everyone.

Over the past 20 years, the EU has been engaged in a rolling argument over where sovereignty and power is best located: Brussels or the nation-states? This was an issue when French and Dutch voters rejected a proposed EU constitution (championed by Barnier) in 2005 because it was too integrationist. The power of the EU to demand change in a nation state was also controversial throughout the Greek debt crisis.

Sovereignty was the central issue in the Brexit campaign in Britain in 2016 — highlighted by the Leave campaign’s winning slogan: “Take back control”. Control of borders, a crucial issue for the Brexiters, has also been central to the arguments of Eurosceptics in Hungary, Poland and France.

The fact that Brexit is widely perceived as a failing project means that no other countries are currently considering leaving the EU. But the question of the powers of Brussels and the supremacy of EU law are popping up in other guises. In 2020, the German constitutional court ruled that the European Central Bank’s policy of buying the bonds of EU nations was illegal, suggesting that German judges could over-rule their European counterparts. Although Karlsruhe eventually backed off (as it tends to), its ruling encouraged the Eurosceptic governments in Poland and Hungary.

The Polish constitutional court — at the prompting of the government in Warsaw — recently ruled that Poland’s constitution outranks EU law. Unlike the Germans, the Poles were willing to escalate the conflict into an outright confrontation with Brussels.

The case is complicated by the fact that the Polish government is, in many respects, acting in bad faith. The ultra-conservative Law and Justice party has packed the court with its own loyalists — something that Brussels regards as a threat to the rule-of-law in Poland. The issues of the primacy of EU law and of the independence of the Polish judiciary have become intermingled — although, logically, they are distinct questions.

With Brussels currently threatening to cut off the flow of funds to Warsaw, there is a strong chance that the European Commission and the Polish government will eventually compromise. But, as the French election illustrates, the broader question of whether too much power now resides in Brussels will come up in other guises.

Previously it has always been assumed that power struggles between Brussels and member states would generally be resolved in favour of Brussels. “Ever closer union” seemed inevitable.

The strategic and economic arguments for deeper European integration remain powerful. But the politics look less and less favourable. Eurosceptic revolts in Britain and Poland are one thing. But when Barnier, the epitome of the “good European”, turns into a nationalist the political ground is clearly shifting. The next constitutional settlement in the EU may favour nations, not Brussels.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
×