Introduction
In the course of history, the basis of political universalism has been on the assumption that human beings are no longer plausible. The arguments supporting universalism have for a long time taken lightly the common core of humanity that surpasses every social or historical context. Universalist critics argue on the basis of the complicated role that both culture and tradition play in all human judgments.
However, it is difficult for human beings to reject cultures and practices as an inherent part of humanity and instead purchase on other ways of living politically. Critics view universalism as only necessary for defending the interests of the Western democracies including human rights.
Modern critics believe that an appropriate universalism must consider the very multiplicities of our cultures and traditions that the old universalism so much ignored. This paper seeks to establish whether the European integration process since 1950s reflect Carl Schmitt’s critique on universalism.
The concept of political: enemy and friend
In 1927, an essay entitled “the concept of the political” found its way in the local dailies. The paper was published by Carl Schmitt.
The essays by Carl Schmidt were built upon the ideology of Woodrow Wilson who asserted in an address on the conditions of peace on January 8, 1918, that ‘the final war for human liberty’ could be justified in upholding ‘the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak”.
It is upon this notion that, ‘the structure of international justice’ was built. Wilson asserted that the principle necessitated the acceptance of the principle of national self-determination and consequently, the territorial re-arrangement of Europe and its colonies.
Wilson’s 14 point principle called for a general association of nations of the world to “…be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike” (Tokár, 2001).
To this end, President Woodrow Wilson legitimized the principle of human rights and grasped the notion of abstract humanity. In fact, Wilson called for the formation of the ‘league of nations’ which should include great and small states. As evident, Wilson accepted the reality of pluriverse of sovereignty and as such, stated that they were equal but with politically distinct humanity.
For Wilson, the protection of humanity, democracy and human rights, freedom, justice and self-government were the only justification for war. In effect, Wilson was arguing that there had to be a difference between ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ wars. He rationalized that in just wars, remaining neutral was not a possibility.
Carl Schmitt’s reflection on international politics was a criticism of Wilsonian ideology coupled with the defeat of German in the WWI. His essays on international politics were intercalated with polemical political commentaries that were published in newspapers with the aim of contributing to political debate and mobilization. Schmitt was displeased with the principle of ‘humanity’ and ‘universalism’ as adopted by Wilson.
According to Schmitt, ‘humanity’, ‘is not a political concept’. Political motives and actions could not be reduced to ‘humanity’ but to a relationship between friend and enemy. Enmity and friendship were differentiated by the utmost level of intensity of a union or a separation.
Schmitt argued that politics derived its energy from a variety of human efforts would it be religious, economic, moral, ethical and so on. Each of these endeavors transforms itself into a political agenda ‘if it is strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy’ (Tokár, 2001).
The quality of the political lay in the decision, in which the alien or the other, is said to negate one’s own existence and thus necessitates to be defined as being different, and hence an enemy. It is against this enemy that war must be conducted.
This war may justly and rightly result in the extermination of the enemy. Schmitt drew attention to the west which he said had become the holder of monopoly of political possibility of physical killing.
It is upon this decision that one became labeled either as an enemy or a friend, ‘The state as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies’ (Schmitt, 2007).
Schmitt conceptualized that war emanated from enmity. It is ‘existential of negation of the enemy’. Because war is inevitable in the history of the humans, eternal peace is an inconceivable dream. Schmitt considered this a dominant problem of international politics.
He stated that the sovereign equality of states was an essential component of wars as it ensured the relativization of enmity and safeguarded against a prejudiced notion of war that would ultimately discern between ‘just wars’ hence ‘just enemies’ and ‘unjust wars’ and so ‘unjust enemies’.
Schmitt’s political background to this reasoning was built upon the Versailles and war guilt and much later, Nuremberg and Tokyo and the resulting war tribunals to try criminals of war. Accordingly, Schmitt reasoned that the principle of sovereign equality had been desecrated by the Treaty of Versailles and, therefore, Germany suffered wrongly.
Schmitt was continually unconvinced by the invocation of the ‘sovereign equality’ of states as a way of resolving against the emergence of war. This made him conceive that the era of nations was coming to an end. As earlier stated, Schmitt perceived that the state was the monopolist of political decision.
It acted as the highest entity as to prevent all antagonistic groupings from leading to life-threatening enmity, i.e. from provoking each other in a civil strife. However, Schmitt saw the state as becoming a captive of social groups. This is what he called the societalization of the state which resulted from democratization (Schmitt, 2007).
Theorists of the 19th century saw the state withering away in the rise of economic and civil societies. In fact, all aspect of life had become politicized as political will was seized by political parties which represented the interests and motives of the economists. The emergence of these ‘total states’ meant that the state could not be distinguished from all other kinds of affairs.
Based on this notion, Schmitt saw Germany as the only ‘total’ state in a purely qualitative sense. Such a state was easy to set apart from the ‘quantitatively total state’. He saw Mussolini’s regime ‘stato totalitario’ as a good example of ‘qualitatively total state’.
He saw this type of state as the one capable of distinguishing friends from enemies and, therefore, could not allow hostile forces to it or those that led to its division to advance within it. Such a state, he suggested, was ‘total’ in both intensity and political energy, unlike a ‘quantitative total state’ that lacked the capacity to resist social alignments.
Total states arose due to two different reasons; a total state could occur as a result of weakness to have lost its monopoly of making decisions under the influence of political parties and interests of organized groups.
The other way is through the total state resulting from strength; such a state is in tune with the capabilities of modernity such as technomilitary instruments. An example was the fascist victory experienced in Italy as a ‘qualitatively total state’ became established.
Schmitt theorized that ‘liberal’ universalism achieved from what democratization had already achieved from within. He called this a wholesale attack on state sovereignty. He viewed the crisis in Germany at the time as the one that have originated from its position under the treaty of Versailles.
The dictate had changed his country into a ‘debtor nation’ and an outlaw state whose sovereignty had been restricted while a part of it remained under international rule. Germany had been demilitarized and subjected to foreign intervention (Schmitt, 2007).
Wilsonian ideology of national self-determination was no longer applicable to Germany. The people of Germany were no longer subjected to their political existence as a state, but the state had instead become an object.
He cited Britain’s intervention in Egypt, the US in the Caribbean and France’s engagement in the Middle East. Likewise, the treatment of Germany was unjust in the spirit of war defeat, rather, it was an element within the emerging system of liberal imperialism (Bartelson, 1995).
The Rise of a Spatial Revolution
Schmitt’s analysis of the Monroe doctrine revealed that it held a candid political feature. The doctrine emanated from a concern by Britain and the US that European powers would try to restore the dominance of Spain in Latin America colonies. Most of these states were newly independent. The doctrine was founded on the notion that both the old and the new worlds were distinct systems and had to remain as such.
The US was given mandate to resist any attempts to colonize the western hemisphere. Any such attempt would be interpreted as a hostile act. If the European power abstained from intervening with the American space, on its part America would abstain from intervening outside her space (Antaki, 2004).
To Schmitt, the Monroe doctrine was expressing the idea of Grossraum, a large area in which ‘alien’ authorities’ intervention was restricted.
Schmitt likened this idea to that of the British Empire which was made up of uneven possessions scattered across the globe and that were without any clear concept of political legitimacy. Therefore, the Monroe Doctrine endorsed the supreme control by the US of the American subcontinent.
The Woodrow Wilson policy changed the Monroe Doctrine to something universal. Wilson’s ideology of liberal democracy and associated ideas were put in the place of geopolitical principle of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine as regarding to space was an in opposition to new ideology that neglected space and instead emphasized on an abstract world and a capital market.
The blending of the Monroe doctrine with the league of nation, the goals of the universalism put in forth by the US were made into an international law. After the league was formed, de facto powers in the western hemisphere were handed over to the US. At the same time, the US was allowed to intervene in the affairs of European politics (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
The Universalist concept became coherent when in 1928 president Coolidge uttered that ‘an act of war in any part of the world is an act that injures the interests of my country’. In 1932, the Stimson Doctrine introduced the principle of non-recognition of any territorial borders that were put in place through force.
In addition, rather than the US recognizing the ‘open door policy’ in China, the US made Japan aware that it would not honour any treaties that affected the rights of the US citizens living in China. This included those treaties and agreements which were related to sovereignty, independence, territorial or otherwise. This was the final show that the door was now open to America’s intervention all over the world (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
As of 1942, the details of these developments were now clear to Schmitt; these were the interests of the world capitalism. A particular order of the world (nomos) had finally come to an end, and a new spatial revolution was introduced.
The ‘nomos’ of the earth
The nomos of the earth, its appropriation, distribution and use had begun during the initiation of European colonisation and was built along global lines. The ‘raya’ was a distributional line that divided new lands among Portugal and Spain. Another distributional line was the ‘amity line’ which was based on the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis of 1559.
This line partitioned the earth in a space with “ius publicum Eupaeum” gaining the space between European countries that had their own governments and the space lying beyond the amity line. This was the space where international law was not in operation and a ‘state of nature’ ruled (Antaki, 2004).
Finally, the Monroe Doctrine established the third line of self-isolation. Spatial order of the earth occurred during the time when the state in Europe had just welcomed a spatial revolution in Europe. A new European order was created. What was more significant to Schmitt at this time was that European world order broke into two; the land and the sea.
The land itself was partitioned into closed sovereign state, whereas the sea remained devoid of any territorial sovereignty. As a result, two forms of war arose; the land wars fought on a coherent distinction between friend and enemy. On the sea, there was no difference between a combatant and a civilian; a notion of total enemy arose.
The nomos of the earth which began in the 16th century was of a global appeal and was distributed between the land and the sea. Its legitimacy became degraded beginning in the 18th century as the difference between civilised and uncivilised peoples came into force. Later on, this distinction was no longer feasible and the concept of ius publicum Europaeum ended. This was largely as a result of technological advancement that had shrunk the world (Antaki, 2004).
The Jus Europaeum and the new European nomos
In 1943, Schmitt wrote another essay “The plight of European Jurisprudence. This essay was written at a time as ‘the nomos of the earth’. In the “Plight of European Jurisprudence”, Schmitt assesses what he saw as a state of art of the European Jurisprudence and asserted concerning the nature of the European community in regard to its actual and predictable legal framework.
The mushrooming legal positivism, he wrote, had shaped and determined the advancement of the informal European legal community. In the “Plight of European Jurisprudence”, Schmitt assessed what he saw as a state of art of the European Jurisprudence and asserted concerning the nature of the European community in regards to its actual and predictable legal framework (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
This model was blended by a state that willed to implement these laws. Schmitt’s positivism position saw laws as being important in that their validity was identical to their enforcement.
He argued that Europe had been politically torn by the war WWII and thus no significant basis for law seemed plausible. By this statement, Schmitt meant the individual European states and their perception of a shared legal order they depicted (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
The EU and the integration of European Community
Today, the institutionalization of the European Union law fails to reflect what Carl Schmitt predicted as the common European legal system. This is because from what we see today, the EU lacks a common political will to implement the European law. In fact, there is no such a law.
However, if today was the year1943 that would be so. Schmitt went ahead to combine his critique of the state of jurisprudence in Europe with a corresponding attack on the institution of jus publicum European law of nations.
Currently, looking at state law and the international law, one notices that these two have been torn apart from each other. The two have different sources of law and procedures. There is a separation of the internal and the external law. Instead, a kind of political realism unites the EU.
The internal and the external are distinct spheres and share neither conceptual nor practical communication with each other. Contracts and agreements arrived between the EU states are not different from those made between two non-EU states. Although two EU states may enjoy an international agreement between them, what they would do with a non-EU state is only a matter of coincidence.
On the absence of coherent legal order and the assessment of international legal, Schmitt’s assumptions are largely amalgam rather than an interconnected legal system. In essence, Schmitt himself underscores that the EU share a legal system common enough to result in the basis of a common legal community (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
Sovereignty in Modern Sense
What Schmitt seemed to be looking for was the basis of a common jurisprudence founded on a certain historical rather than geographical path. However, must we not reason that the common ethical, political and cultural foundations of the national legal systems within the EU fulfill Schmitt’s criteria and therefore necessitating another Jus Publicum Europaeum as unnecessary?
But if Schmitt’s European legal system fails to meet his Jus publicum Europaeum, then there is no any difference from the two (Axtmann, 2007).
The new European nomos
During the 20th century, sovereignty spread geographically in an extraordinary manner and a revitalization of its meaning occurred. Currently, the whole world has been completely covered with sovereign states. This seems a big step when compared to the situation it was at the beginning of the century.
During the beginning of the 20th century, colonization was a common feature and sovereignty was only a privilege of the ‘civilized’. This pattern was completely altered by the decolonization movement. Between 1945 and 1989, there were more than one hundred states that were born.
Another twenty states arose as a result of the breakdown of the former USSR. The idea of self-determination set forth by Woodrow Wilson in 1918 has been haunting the world ever since.
Different results have been witnessed ranging from peaceful to violent independent movements and at times ethnic cleansing has been observed. Sovereignty is no longer an abstract idea and something for the elites but a basic right for all human beings and every nation which has a right to rule its territory and its people(Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
The concept of sovereignty can be defined as the independence of a state and its recognition by the international community. This is referred to as ‘external sovereignty’ or much better ‘international legal sovereignty’. It infers that a state is acting as a distinct entity on the international arena without any intervention from foreign power.
Although universal is geographical, external sovereignty is not absolute. However, it is being relativized by globalization. This is the increasing of the levels of cultural and legal interdependence inspired by technological and economic development. However, legal barriers limit the exercising of external sovereignty.
The Briand-Kellogg pact of 1928 prohibits states from waging wars against each other. Again, the advancement in weapons of mass destruction especially the nuclear weapons make wars a deadly option. This depicts how normative and factual boundaries edge(Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
In the sense of the reasoning provided earlier in this paper, sovereignty is thus easy to quantify. A state is said to be sovereign if it acts independent of international intervention and is recognized by the rest of the states. Additionally, sovereignty is definable in the sense of “internal” sovereignty.
Internal sovereignty is taken to mean the existence of a single, stable and supreme state power structure within the boundaries of a state, unobstructed by other players. To this extent, it is evident that the limits of internal sovereignty are far much better than those of external sovereignty.
For example, the Germany Democratic Republic as it was in the 1980s with its total control of the economy, religion-like state ideology, regulating the lives of its citizens, was as sovereign as any other liberal state in Europe.
Although it is evident that majority of states have not had total control over their territories, states must and should be in a position to maintain a public order within its boundaries and gain respect from a majority of its citizens.
Relativity is an inevitable feature of every sovereign state. There lacks a totally sovereign state in the world; free from factual pressures and normative restrains. Sovereignty is not only a form, and to be sovereign, a nation must exercise supreme authority in areas such as defense, foreign policy, police and justice.
However, it is difficult for a state to exercise total control over other areas like in the economy. All states, whether having state controlled or liberal economies are regarded as sovereign.
History teaches us that sovereignty can be comprehended in both factual and legal sense. In the legal sense ‘de iure sovereignty’ is the form of sovereignty defined by law. On the other hand, factual, or ‘de facto sovereignty’ refers to actual power possessed by a state in its endeavors.
In the case of nuclear weapons, each and every country has the right to follow its foreign policy as it is in the international law and many other individual state constitutions. However, states with differing military powers have varying possibilities to follow their interests.
The United States of America and Andorra, although both sovereign states and thus equal, have different importance on the international scene. Sovereignty lacks a legal definition and it is alright to use sovereignty to refer to de iure and de facto sovereignties (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
Power versus Force in European integration
As noted by Holmes (2000), a special characteristic of the way of power European integration changes the sovereignty of its constituent states that it lacks a way to physically enforce in a European level. The difference arises when a comparison is made between the historical background of the rise of nation state and the rise of the EU. Nation-states arose from the pre-modern order of a variety of centers.
During that time, the power of the state was among many competing forces, church and local landlords were amongst them. However, the sovereign states were capable of monopolizing their powers within their territory and fighting off rivals.
With the hunger for more and more powers, the state became an organization and included a lot of people and a large amount of resources. Human resources were also utilized as armies, police and the judiciary. Apart from being sovereign on the paper, nation-states created a large form of enforcement (Holmes, 2000).
The EU
The European Union sharply contrasts the above picture. It derives its authority from its member states. It was formed through a sequence of international agreements but the original sovereignty comes with the member states(Tokár, 2001). Again, in places where the EU has total sovereignty, it has little or no physical apparatus. This is evidenced by several facts.
Firstly, the legal means of the EU, that is, the use and the enforcement of the community law is determined by the member states. The EU courts in member states are not separated from those of the federal courts that exist with state courts in the US. The EU has only one court of justice found in Luxembourg.
In terms of human resources, the EU has very little staff. Majority of the staff are employed by member countries. Their number can only cater for the central administration and lacks agencies outside Brussels (Tokár, 2001).
Financially, the EU has a budget of less than 1% of the member states GDP. This cannot be compared to the budget of its member states.
In terms of enforcements, means of enforcement of its laws does not exist like would be seen in a nation-state. That is, it lacks a police force or an army of its own.
This is the enough evidence to prove that when speaking of the sovereignty of the EU, it must be of a different nature other than the archetypal nation-state sovereignty.
Even though, with all this in force, EU does have authority in legal sense by creating legal norms that are superior to those of the member states, that is, member states do not enjoy legal supremacy in areas allocated to the EU. The nature of EU sovereignty has the features that follow.
First, there are no internal borders within the member states and there is a free flow of goods and people, services and capital that are backed up by the founding treaties.
Second, all citizens of all member states are citizens of the union and they have rights to do anything that appertains to a citizen of a union, like participating in candidate elections and vote in both municipal and the European parliament elections (Foucalt, 1976).
Regulations, directives and decision making do not take into consideration the notion of state sovereignty, taking the case of regulation and directives. Those that are adopted are qualified by the majority voting in the council, because there should be connection between the member states. In the case of decision making, it takes into account the nationals of the member states who are not its subjects.
If the majority voting was a method of decision making common in international relations with no impact on sovereignty, it would have been much easier than actually it is now. The recent nice summit showed that member states were defending strongly the right in areas such as those in tax policies, social security, visa and structural development funds, with the very fact that the members should be at least their sovereignty.
There is no such things like “important” or “less important” decisions as both tend to take into account the interest of the other member states, regardless the area of concern (Tokár, 2001).
The most important development is the emergence of the separate legal system, the “EU law” or “community law”. There is a no separation of the internal and the external laws. Instead, there is a kind of political realism unites the EU.
The internal and the external are distinct spheres and share neither conceptual nor practical communication with each other. Contracts and agreements between the EU states are not different from those made between two non-EU states.
We find that the community law can be validated by member states law which must be validated by the international law.
The federation is a relevant legal system on the international level. But this is not the case with EU, which derives its powers from then member states and not the reverse of it. The EU was created by the member states so that it is used for their own good, for example, to determine their goals, entitlements and scope of actions. Even though the community law is created by supranational body, it is enforced by the member states.
The EU has powers to regulate certain areas but it cannot be said exactly what kind of decisions would be taken by each setting. Sovereignty in the EU shows how power can be constituted not in conjunction with the law but in accordance with the basic legitimacy that is more basic than any other law.
In other words, sovereignty can be perceived as the subject to subject cycle, the cycle of power and powers, and the cycle of legitimacy and law. Sovereignty, therefore, assumes the existence of three elements; subject who has to be subjective, the unity of power that has to be founded, and the legitimacy that has to be respected (Foucalt, 1976).
Decision making in the EU is that the element causing concern about this mechanism, qualifying the majority voting in the council is not affecting the sovereignty of the state members. The council of the European Union as a decision making body does not alienate from the member states. All the members are represented, that is, there is no effect of decision making without a member.
Sovereignty incorporates the competence to pass the ultimate binding decisions, certain matters and the right to delegate the competence to other bodies or states with maintaining the right to reclaim for it. It cannot exist as only the right, also even if the sovereignty is formally affected by delegation, the political risks of reclaiming certain powers can discourage a state from taking such a step(Tokár, 2001).
Rather than deriving powers from sovereignty, operators of dominion should be extracted, meaning that rather than starting with the subject we begin with the power relation itself with the effective relationship of dominion.
In the “Plight of European Jurisprudence”, Schmitt assesses what he saw as a state of art of the European Jurisprudence and asserted concerning the nature of the European community in regards to its actual and predictable legal framework. European integration changes the sovereignty of its constituent states that it lacks a way to physically enforce in a European level.
Although it is evident that majority of states have not had total control over their territories, states should be in a position to maintain a public order within its boundaries and gain respect from a majority of its citizens. A state is said to be sovereign if it acts independently of international intervention and is recognized by the rest of the states. Additionally, sovereignty is definable in the sense of “internal” sovereignty.
Internal sovereignty is taken to mean the existence of a single, stable and supreme state power structure within the boundaries of a state, unobstructed by other players. Again, in places where the EU has total sovereignty, it has little or no physical apparatus.
It is recognized that the legal acts of the European community and the impact on the member states and the impact on their citizens is incomparable to any international organization. The community legal order is given by the decision of the European court of justice which is then accepted by the member states (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
Modern critics believe that an appropriate universalism must consider the very multiplicities of our cultures and traditions that the old universalism so much ignored. Schmitt was continually unconvinced by the invocation of the ‘sovereign equality’ of states as a way of resolving against the emergence of war.
This made him conceive that the era of nations was coming to an end. Schmitt assess what he saw as a state of art of the European Jurisprudence and asserted concerning the nature of the European community in regards to its actual and predictable legal framework.
Sovereignty in the EU shows how a power can be constituted not in conjunction with the law but in accordance with the basic legitimacy. All citizens of member states are citizens of the union and they have rights to do anything that appertains to a citizen.
Relativity is an inevitable feature of every sovereign state. There is a lack of a totally sovereign state in the world; free from factual pressures and normative restrains. Sovereignty is not only, the nation must exercise supreme authority in areas such as defense, foreign policy, police and justice in order to be sovereign. However, it is difficult for a state to exercise total control over other areas, such as the economy, for example.
All states, whether having state controlled or liberal economies are regarded as sovereign. Although universal, external sovereignty is not absolute, it was relativized by globalization. This is the increasing of the levels of cultural and legal interdependence inspired by technological and economic development. However, legal barriers limit the exercising of external sovereignty.
However, must we not reason that the common ethical, political and cultural foundations of the national legal systems within the EU fulfill Schmitt’s criteria? The EU shares a legal system which is common enough to result in becoming the basis of the common legal community. There is a separation of the internal and external laws. Instead, a kind of political realism unites the EU.
The internal and the external are distinct spheres and share neither conceptual nor practical communication with each other. Contracts and agreements arrived between EU states are not different from those made between two non-EU states.
There is a separation of the internal and the external law. The internal and the external are distinct spheres and share neither conceptual nor practical communication with each other (Odysseos, & Petito, 2007).
Regarding international law, James states that domestic law of each state and international law form is one system of norms. In his opinion, the dualistic view is teaching that domestic law and international law are two distinct system of norms and international law can become part of the state law as reception is nothing else than a hidden monism.
The simultaneous existence of the legal systems of several states is only possible in case that there is another system coordinating the validity of different domestic legal systems. This system is international law and the Grundnorm of international law, that every state is supreme among its borders makes the coexistence of distinct legal systems.
In his analysis, Valki concludes that international law has never produced a definition of sovereignty; even the international legal documents signed under the umbrella of the UN, which are supposed to infringe it, only define it in a negative way, Saying what sovereign states cannot do, that is, what sovereignty is not (James, 1999).
Conclusion
Since 1950s, the European integration process has reflected Carl Schmitt’s critique on universalism. It has shown that it can use power with the other member states for their own benefit, and also letting the member states partake in that good. The member states are given various opportunities like participating in elections both internally and to the European parliamentary seats.
We also found that sovereignty incorporates the competence to pass the ultimate binding decisions certain matters and the right to delegate the competence to other bodies or states while maintaining the right to reclaim it. It cannot exist as only the right to, even if the sovereignty is formally affected by delegation. The political risks of reclaiming certain powers can discourage a state from taking such a step.
The European Union also allows its member states to get involved in decision making so that their grievances are taken into account. In most cases, all nations in the European Union must agree on whatever proposals and decisions being made, whether political or economic.
In addition, member states can make decisions about another member state but the decision can only have legal teeth and legitimacy if the affected member endorses the same.
The union has become quite intertwined economically to the extent that member nations can no longer decide to act unilaterally.
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