“Americans’ instinctively refuse to recognize as legitimate any international organization, law or treaty that claims any authority over Americans above the U.S. Constitution,” says Todd Huizinga in this week’s Acton Commentary, “particularly if that organization, law or treaty contradicts the Constitution or violates Americans’ constitutional rights.”
In the American system, it is because sovereignty rests in the people that the U.S. government does not have a right to transfer sovereignty to any other organization, government or group of governments. But in the EU, the member states have been ceding ever more sovereignty to “Europe” since the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. Sovereign power is exactly what the European Union exercises over the national governments of the EU member states. And again, for EU elites it is not just about Europe. Their vision of supranational governance is a global one, and that is why a political and moral clash between the American idea of democratic sovereignty and the EU’s agenda is unavoidable.
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