Immobilizing E.U. Holdings of Russian Assets

By invoking Article 122 of the E.U.’s basic law, a clause that had been used most significantly during the Coronavirus pandemic and in the 2022 energy crisis, the E.U. in December, 2025 finally circumvented the twice-threatened veto by the state of Hungary and indefinitely froze €210 billion of assets of the Russian Central Bank that had been within the E.U.’s territory since Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine nearly four years earlier. I contend that the European Court of Justice, the E.U.’s supreme court, could apply a rational basis in a judicial review of the triggering of the emergency-conditioned article, especially because the Commission invoked the article in order to obviate Hungary’s threatened veto. Because every E.U. state except for Belgium and Hungary were for freezing the assets until Russia such time as Russia ends its militaristic aggression and compensates Ukraine financially for damages the Belgian and Hungarian state governments were violating the informal norm of consensus in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. Like the U.S. Senate, the European Council, which also represents the states, is like a club of sorts. The problem facing the Commission is that violating a norm is not a legal basis for obviating a threatened state-veto by invoking an emergency clause of the E.U.’s basic law, especially if no emergency actually exists after nearly four years of the invasion. Even though I am personally in favor of the E.U. obviating Hungary’s serial obstructionism that may be, at least in part, retaliation against President Von der Leyen’s Commission for having penalized the Hungarian government financially for having violated E.U. law, legal reasoning should not succumb to the gravity of the “black hole” of personal opinion.  There may be nothing so much like a god as a general on a battlefield, with power over life and death, but neither the European Commission nor myself is a general. In short, the Commission’s legal justification in invoking Article 122 is tenuous at best, even though countering Hungary’s Viktor Orbán’s abuse of his state’s veto-power in the European Council and the Council of Ministers was needed for the E.U. to be able to function within its enumerated competencies (i.e., powers).

The full essay is at "Immobilizing E.U. Holdings of Russian Assets."

The E.U.’s Borders Held Hostage by the State Veto

With E.U. states like Germany, Austria and Poland becoming increasingly active in patrolling their respective borders at the expense of the Schengen Agreement, it makes sense that the proposed E.U. budget announced in July, 2025 includes more money to protect the E.U.’s borders from illegal crossings. This is important because reinstituting controls on the borders of states contributes toward the visual of the E.U. coming apart geographically. Such a set-back may be worse for the E.U. than the secession of Britain was; in fact, letting that state go arguably strengthened the Union because the British government consistently refused to admit that the E.U. is more than a network of countries that the UK happened to belong to, which was the view of the former governor, David Cameron.

The full essay is at "The E.U.'s Borders Held Hostage by the State Veto."

Negotiating from Weakness: The Plight of the European Union

To go to much effort to construct an economy on the scale of an empire only to refer instead to the economies within such a union, whether the E.U. or U.S. is to pay excessive homage to an ideology that can be termed Euroskeptic and anti-federalist, respectively. To refer to economies in one union and the economy in the other is just one means by which an ideology can distort a person’s reasoning and perception without the person being conscious of the underlying logical inconsistency. Such an inconsistency is incurred not only in “having it both ways” in the E.U. being a common market even as the states are referred to as economies even though many share a currency and thus a central bank, but also in referring to the federal system as if it were a mere “bloc,” or “network.”  In all of these cases of ideological word-games, the E.U. itself is minimized and thus implicitly marginalized from within. With Russia invading Ukraine and Israel eviscerating the Muslim residents of Gaza, self-marginalization for ideological purposes is indeed costly. Even referring to the federal official who is in charge of foreign policy as a “high representative” is implicitly denigrating and thus counter-productive to the E.U. being able to stand up to Putin and even Netanyahu in 2025.

The full essay is at "Negotiating from Weakness."

E.U. President Von der Leyen Survives A No-Confidence Vote

Falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass on July 10, 2025, the no-confidence vote on President Von der Leyen of the Commission in the E.U.’s parliament mustered only 175 representatives in favor while 360 voted against the motion and 18 abstained. Although commentators discussed whether the president was weakened anyway, a more important matter relates to the politics of the vote as distinct from the Parliament’s institutional interests as they relate to the Commission and the European Council. I contend that the Parliament, which represents E.U. citizens, has a vital interest that is vital to the E.U. itself in maintaining a balance between the collective power of the representatives of the citizenry and the power the state governments at the federal level. Parties making deals with Von der Leyen on policy positions undercut the vote as a means of holding the Commission to maintaining that balance.

The full essay is at "E.U. President Von der Leyen Survives A No-Confidence Vote."

Putting a State in Charge of the E.U.

If only Ukraine could become the 51^st member-state of the U.S., rather than the 28^th state of the E.U., given the veto of Viktor Orban of the E.U. state of Hungary on the E.U. annexing Ukraine. Besides the inherent problems that come with relying so much on the principle of unanimity in the European Council and the Council of the E.U., mislabeling the prime minister of the state that chairs the legislative committees known collectively as the Council of the E.U. as the E.U. president not only marginalizes the federal officials, including President Von der Leyen, who, as the head of the E.U.’s executive branch, can rightfully be considered as the president of the European Union. In contrast, government officials of a state chairing legislative committees can hardly be said to collectively be the “presidency” of the European Union. Behind the promotion of this fallacy is the anti-federalist, or Euroskeptic, political ideology that misconstrues the E.U. as merely a network of intergovernmental relations between the states.

The full essay is at "Putting a State in Charge of the E.U."

On the 2025 Political Convention of the European People’s Party

Competition within a pollical party and recognition that a political party is indeed a political party are essential or at least advantageous to any political party in a democratic system. Moreover, a republic, even if it contains smaller republics but is not just them in aggregate, deserves to be recognized as such rather than implicitly relegated by erroneous nomenclature that is designed to appease skeptics so they won’t rise up to resist the federal republic itself. “Let the chips fall where they may” is, I believe, an expression from gambling. Another expression comes from playing cards: Call a spade a spade. These two expressions evince truth and power, whereas hiding behind false notions is sheer weakness. Much of my writing on the European Union is oriented to strengthening it, as well as to gleam lessons for both the E.U. and U.S. by comparing and contrasting them as federal empire-scale unions of states.

The full essay is at "On the 2025 Political Convention of the European People's Party."

Resolved: The E.U. Should Join NATO

I contend that the European Union rather than its states should be in NATO. Besides eliminating duplication from the E.U. having a nebulous observer status while the states are formally in the alliance, the increasing role in defense being played by the Commission, including there being a Defense commissioner (secretary/minister), calls for being formally in the alliance. Whereas the U.S. began as a military alliance of sovereign states, the E.U. can trace its beginnings to the European Economic Community. Both unions have since incorporated powers or competencies beyond the respective starting points. For the E.U. this has meant moving beyond economics and trade to include social policy and, last but not least, defense. It is in NATO’s interest to adapt to this change. Lastly, that the E.U. and U.S. are both instances of (early) modern federalism, which at its core has the attribute of dual-sovereignty wherein both the federal and the state levels enjoy at least some governmental sovereignty, whereas NATO, as an international alliance, is confederal in that all of the sovereignty resides in the members of the alliance, justifies the E.U. being a member of NATO rather than being misinterpreted as a comparable international organization as the state-rights Euroskeptics like to believe.

The full essay is at "The E.U. in NATO."

Turkey Abusing Asylum-Seekers: Implications for E.U. Statehood

Over 90% of Turkey is not located in Europe, and yet for years the sovereign state has sought accession in the E.U. in spite of Turkey’s non-European culture. That the E.U. did not act in a timely way on Turkey’s application can be taken as a de facto “no.” Reports of abuse of political-asylum seekers in E.U.-funded centers in Turkey may suggest that the country’s government has interpreted the delay as a “no,” or that the country is unintentionally thwarting its own chances on becoming a state in the union. The E.U. was hardly blameless, as the Commission casted off any responsibility for enabling the abuse by funding the centers where it was occurring.

The full essay is at "Turkey Abusing Asylum-Seekers."

On Electing a U.S. President: The Case of President Biden’s Age

One of the reasons why the delegates at the U.S. Constitutional Convention devised the Electoral College to elect the federal president was that they thought that even at 7 million, the population of the U.S. back then was too large for the even just the propertied people, who could vote, to know the candidates very well, if at all. At over 300 million, the U.S. population during the presidential reelection campaign of Joe Biden had to rely on the mass media and the political elite, including statements by the White House, for information on whether the sitting president was too old to serve viably in a second term. The limited number of presidential electors in the states would presumably be small enough that they could have the opportunity to size up the candidates in person. But with electors from fifty rather than just thirteen states, such an opportunity would not be likely. So given the exponential growth of the United States both in terms of member states and their respective populations, the originally anticipated benefit of the Electoral College would not still hold even if the two major political parties had not taken over the College. Even if the states’ respective electors were able to spend enough time in person with the candidates, the parties had ensured that those electors could not be autonomous and thus exercise their judgment. Instead, judgment could only be made at a distance by the massive American electorate whose perspectives have been very vulnerable to intentional manipulation through and even by the media. Put another way, the American people have been vulnerable to making a bad choice based on faulty information. This makes American representative democracy itself vulnerable.

The full essay is at "On Electing a U.S. President: Biden's Age."

Chinese President Xi Exploits a Vulnerability of the E.U.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Europe in May, 2024 “amid concerns in Europe over Chinese support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and European markets being flooded with cheap Chinese electric vehicles.”[1] Although these matters were at the time properly matters for the E.U. rather than its states, Xi oriented his visit to the state level, and in particular to states including France and Hungary that had “special bilateral relationships” with China.[2] In other words, the Chinese leader sought to exploit the E.U.’s vulnerability wherein state governments have sufficient sovereignty to undermine the federal level. I contend that the state leaders should have refused to meet with Xi, redirecting him to meet with federal officials.

The full essay is at "China Exploits a Vulnerability of the E.U."

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1. Yuchen Li and Wesley Rahn, “Did China’s Xi Jinping Expose Disunity in Europe?” Deutsch Welle (DW.de), May 10, 2024.
2. Ibid.