Europe will navigate in dangerous waters in the future, both economically and militarily. Member states crucially need the EU to quickly bolster their economies, especially in high tech and military capacities, through large-scale loans for example. Yet the EU decision making is in a deadlock, as it requires unanimity (among 27 and potentially 30+ members in the future) for major issues. It is easy to adopt bold general objectives, but difficult to decide on precise implementing legislative and budgetary acts.
Moreover, the rules adopted by the EU have increasingly been circumvented in recent years, including on core EU issues, such as the Single Market, the Eurozone and Schengen. With no changes, the EU is thus in danger of slowly unravelling. This is not irreversible, however. Five options to allow the EU to react swiftly could be considered.
Two of these options aim at preserving the unity of the 27, but appear to be unrealistic. The first would be revising the Lisbon Treaty decision-making. The second option would be activating the Lisbon Treaty passerelles to use more qualified majority voting.
A third option would be for a group of member states to create, by treaty, a new small Political Community with bold aims and means. However, this would raise complex legal problems.
Finally, a group of willing and able member states could decide to act together, either within the EU framework, by using possibilities of enhanced cooperation and PESCO (fourth option), or outside the EU framework, by using intergovernmental forms of cooperation (fifth option). These two last options could, if successful, open a pathway to breaking the deadlock and halt the EU’s decline
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