At the root of the matter of Britain's secession from the Union, I submit, is a starkly Euro-skeptic, or Anti-federalist, ideology that viewed the E.U. as a network to which the sovereign state of Britain belongs, as PM David Cameron said before the secession referendum. Unfortunately, this view ran up against the reality of the E.U.'s federal system in which the federal level too had some sovereignty. Even the mechanism of qualified majority voting involves a loss of sovereignty for the state governments. The discordance can be heard in a speech given by William Hague of the British
government at the end of May in 2013 in which he advocated that state legislatures should be able
to block E.U. laws proposed by the European Commission.[1] At the time, a state
legislature could use a “yellow card” to object to a proposal that could
presumably be better legislated and enforced at the state level. Hague wanted a
“red card” option that a state legislature could use to block legislation. This proposal reflects the Nullification Acts passed by the government of South Carolina in the early 1830s, which prompted the U.S. to resist strongly as the union itself could have unraveled. Aside from the exogenous ideology itself in the E.U., two problems with Hague’s proposal can be identified. I contend that the problems stem from, and thus can point to, the underlying ideology that is inherently at odds with modern federalism, in which dual-sovereignty is a prominent attribute.
Should the state legislatures dominate the EU's legislature? The British state government says yes. Would the Union wither and die? Source: mapperywordpress.com
The full essay is at "A Euroskeptic Government in the E.U."
1. “William
Hague Demands Right to Show ‘Red Card’ to European Union,” The Huffington
Post, May 31, 2013.
