United States of Europe? Draft amendments to EU treaties

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- A group of left-wing MEPs has prepared several hundred amendments to the treaties expanding the powers of the European Union and weakening the role of member states.

- The proposals would allow the EU to promote gender ideology, influence the content of school curricula, and dictate solutions to states on environmental protection, abortion or the fight against discrimination.

- Implementation of the postulated changes would lead, among other things, to the removal of references to "women and men" from the treaties and their replacement with the term "socio-cultural gender."

- Implementation of the proposals would also entail giving the Union exclusive jurisdiction over environmental protection.

- The amendments also envisage the introduction of the institution of an EU referendum, through which, among other things, future changes to the treaties could be made without the consent of all member states.

- Meanwhile, under its competence to regulate health care, the Union would be able to limit or even abolish protection for the lives of unborn children, forcing states to legalize abortion.

- The document's preamble cites the 1941 Ventotene Manifesto, authored by Italian Communist Altiero Spinelli, founder of the European Federalist Movement.

- On Wednesday, the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote on a report with a draft resolution on the issue.

- If the Committee adopts the report, the draft resolution will have to be dealt with by the European Parliament in plenary session, which will be the formal start of the procedure for amending the treaties.
 

Amendments in the spirit of the radical left

The European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee (AFCO) has published a report with a draft European Parliament resolution proposing amendments to the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Its authors are five MEPs from Belgium and Germany: Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe faction), Prof. Sven Simon (European People's Party faction), Gabriele Bischoff (deputy leader of the Socialists and Democrats faction), Daniel Freund (Green faction) and Helmut Scholz (Left faction). The authors propose 267 amendments to the EU treaties. The scope of the amendments is extremely broad, including expansion of EU competencies in the fields of climate policy, energy, security, economy or social policy, modification of EU legislative procedures, strengthening of the role of the EU Court of Justice, revisions to the rules for conducting EU foreign and security policy and many others. The AFCO committee is expected to vote on the report as early as Wednesday.

Particularly disturbing are the proposals to remove references to "women and men" in the treaties and replace them with the term "socio-cultural gender" (gender). This is a clear attempt to introduce gender ideology into the EU treaties, according to which gender is not just a biological fact, but primarily a personal and subjective identity that each person chooses for himself or herself at his or her own discretion. This ideology, by blurring the boundaries between the sexes, undermines one of the foundations of society, creating confusion, promoting discriminatory practices and harming the health of those suffering from gender identity disorders. The proposed amendment confirms previous positions of the Ordo Iuris Institute, in which it pointed out that gender ideology is incompatible with EU and international law, which use the concept of gender in the biological sense.  

Also controversial is the demand for the EU to take over exclusive jurisdiction over environmental protection and biodiversity. As the law currently stands, in the former area the EU shares powers with member states, and in the latter it has no competence at all. Adoption of this amendment would strengthen the EU's already extremely strong position in the field of climate policy.

The proposed changes also involve expanding the catalog of competencies shared by the EU with member states to include education, industry, health care and civil defense. While at first glance such a change might seem to leave states with a lot of leeway still, in practice shared competencies allow the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament to adopt regulations and directives that are binding on all member states, even if not all have agreed to them. For example, under the competence to regulate education, the EU could indirectly influence the content of school curricula. In turn, under its competence to regulate health, the Union could reduce or even eliminate protection for the lives of unborn children by forcing states to legalize abortion. After all, the concept of "health" has a specific meaning in the practice of international institutions and also includes so-called sexual and reproductive health, by which is also meant the possibility for a woman to kill her child.

There is also some concern about expanding the use of the so-called ordinary legislative procedure, under which the Council and the European Parliament can adopt universally binding secondary legislation by qualified majority. One proposal envisages abolishing the requirement for unanimous votes in the Council, for example, when passing discrimination legislation, with the result that majority EU member states expressing support for gender ideology will be able to impose it on countries in the minority (such as Poland or Hungary).

Expanding the powers of EU bodies

Also of concern may be the call for simplification of the procedure provided for in Article 7 TEU for suspending membership powers to those states that violate EU values such as "freedom," "democracy," "equality, "human rights' or "rule of law." The vagueness of these concepts means that EU institutions are free to interpret them, which raises the risk of repressing states for political reasons, under the guise of protecting EU values. Currently, however, this procedure is dead - as the Council of the Union can only suspend certain powers of a member state after obtaining the prior approval of the European Council, which must be unanimous, which is extremely difficult to achieve in practice. When such a procedure was initiated against Poland, it could count on Hungary's veto, and when it was initiated against Hungary, they could count on Poland's veto. The proposed amendment would allow the Council of the Union to suspend powers by a qualified majority, subject to confirmation by the CJEU of a violation of EU values by the country in question.

It would also have the negative effect of strengthening the power of the European Commission, symbolized by its renaming as the "European Executive." This represents another step in the systemic evolution of the Commission, which will increasingly resemble a European government rather than an institution of an international organization of sovereign states.

There are also doubts about the introduction of the concept of an EU referendum, through which, among other things, future changes to treaties can be made without the consent of all member states. While the institutions of direct democracy make sense in domestic conditions, they are inadequate for international decision-making - if only because more numerous nations can outvote smaller nations this way.

The proposed changes are all the more worrying in the context of the 1941 Ventotene Manifesto, cited in the preamble to the proposed resolution. Its author was Altiero Spinelli, before World War II an activist in the Communist Party of Italy, and after the war a founder of the European Federalist Movement, MEP and Commissioner for Industry in the European Commission. Spinelli saw the sources of totalitarianism, militarism and wars in the very existence of nation-states. In his view, federalization of the continent should solve these problems - regardless of the will of Europeans expressed in plebiscites. The document explicitly refers to "the dictatorship of the revolutionary party" as a tool for the introduction of a "new, true democracy." In essence, the manifesto is an ideological statement of commitment to communism (though not Stalinism, which Spinelli dissociated himself from, treating it as a "perversion" of an idea he still considered right). In 2019. Ordo Iuris Institute published an analysis on the Ventotene manifesto.

A communist model for Eurocrats?

On the other hand, the extension to 12 months of the deadline for a member state to respond to a so-called "reasoned opinion" of the Commission submitted in connection with a suspected violation of treaty obligations seems positive. This is the first stage of the treaty's existing so-called "infringement procedure," which allows the Commission, in cooperation with the Court of Justice, to punish countries that violate EU law (e.g., late implementation of a directive).  Currently, it is the Commission that sets a deadline for a state to respond to its opinion, which in practice is sometimes too short. A step in the right direction would also be to give minority factions in the European Parliament the power to preemptively challenge acts of EU law to the CJEU.

Other MEPs also tabled their own amendments, including Jacek Saryusz-Wolski (Law and Justice, European Conservatives and Reformists), who proposed, for example, the creation of a "Chamber of Subsidiarity" in the CJEU, made up of the presidents of the constitutional courts of the member states, to make sure that the Court does not overstep the limits of its powers granted to it in the treaties. However, since Jacek Saryusz-Wolski belongs to a minority faction in the European Parliament (the ECHR has only 62 out of 751 seats), his amendments do not have the slightest chance of being accepted by the majority. The authors of the report in question are in a much stronger position, representing factions with a total of 518 votes.  

Voting soon

The report by the five deputies is only a prelude to the multi-stage procedure for amending the treaties. If the AFCO Committee adopts the report on Wednesday, the proposed amendments will then have to be dealt with by the European Parliament in plenary session. Although the report's authors represent factions with a clear majority, the adoption of the proposed amendments is not yet certain, due to conflicts of political interests within the factions, which are made up of MEPs representing different member states.

Only a decision by the European Parliament will formally initiate the procedure for amending the treaties provided for in Article 48 of the EU Treaty. In simple terms, it can be said that any treaty change requires the consent of all member states - ratification with the consent of national parliaments (in the case of the ordinary procedure) or a unanimous decision of the European Council (in the case of the so-called "footbridge procedure").

If the European Parliament accepts the proposals presented in the AFCO Commission's report, they will go to the Council of the Union and then to the European Council, which will be able to decide to convene a convention on the matter, with the participation of representatives of national parliaments, heads of state, heads of government, the European Parliament and the European Commission.