To leverage the combined power, or united front, that is possible in Europe, the European Union was established in the waning years of the twentieth century. Roughly thirty years later, the power of the state governments at the federal level still compromised the leverage, especially in foreign affairs and defense. Even in sanctioning trading partners, even qualified majority voting in the Council of the E.U. can be said to have negatively impacted the ability of the E.U. Commission, the executive branch, to leverage the political muscle of the E.U. against other countries. State-level political agendas could essentially hold any possible leverage hostage. It may be worth thinking about why a qualified majority vote in the Council of the E.U., which represents the state governments, rather than in the E.U.’s parliament, which represents E.U. citizens, was necessary for trade sanctions to be applied to duty-free imports from Israel. That state-level political or economic interests could possibility trump applying economic leverage to stop Israel’s genocide and holocaust in Gaza, as well as Israel’s military attacks on other countries in the Middle East can be an indication that the state governments have too much power at the federal level. For if the E.U. is only an aggregation of states, without the whole being more than the sum of the parts, then the whole sans the aggregate cannot very well enact leverage on foreign actors abroad, even those whose behavior has been nothing short of atrocious.
The full essay is at "The E.U.'s Proposed Sanctions Against Israel."
