States’ Rights? Germans Push to Abolish National Vetoes in EU, Hand Greater Power to Brussels

Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrives for a meeting of the European Council at The Euro
LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

EU member states will be transformed into “tax colonies” if the foundational treaties of the European Union are torn up to end national veto safeguards, critics say, as Germany’s Europhile Chancellor has demanded that powers described as a building block of an “EU empire” be implemented to help fight Russia.

Olaf Scholz, Germany’s now-heavily embattled Europhile Chancellor, has demanded that every EU nation be stripped of its power to veto legislation pushed through by Eurocrats in a move that one elected representative has said would effectively mean the end of “national sovereignty” within the bloc.

Scholz made the demand as he and his government come under more and more pressure over Germany’s climate policies and intervention in the war in Ukraine, both of which have led to the country facing a crippling gas crisis which is now looking likely to throw it into a major recession.

Instead of trying to reverse course on the issue, however, Scholz and his colleagues appear to be doubling down on their desire to push for a climate-crazy centralised EU, with the Chancellor now demanding that the bloc strip its members of the ability to veto legislation, in part to better hold off the likes of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“No more selfish blockades of European decisions by individual member states. No more national solo efforts that damage Europe as a whole,” Scholz said, calling for measures that have previously been described as elements that would lead to an “EU Empire”.

“We simply can no longer afford national vetoes, for example in foreign policy, if we want to continue to be heard in a world of competing great powers,” he continued, before going on to say that Germany will put itself into a “leading” role in this brave new pan-European project.

While Scholz calls the veto power “selfish”, it doesn’t change the fact it is a key brake on the European Union, giving the smaller member states a last-ditch emergency opt-out should they find themselves being railroaded by Europe’s mega members like France and Germany into policies they disagree with.

European leaders, frustrated at the ability of small nations in the EU to disrupt their grand plans, have been trying to do away with this safeguard for many years.

The call for national vetoes to be done away with again has been met with criticism, with one German elected representative within the EU parliament saying that the measure would effectively mean the end of “national sovereignty” for Germany, along with other EU nation-states.

“The statements of chancellor Scholz prove that he is committed to the abolition of Germany, and Berlin’s unconditional surrender to Brussels,” Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) MEP Dr Gunnar Beck told Breitbart Europe.

“The abolition of national vetoes, especially in foreign policy and taxation, which are enshrined in the Treaties, protect the pillars of national sovereignty,” he continued. “If national parliaments have no say over their tax policies, they are tax colonies. If they have no say over their foreign policy, their armies are mercenaries serving foreign interests.”

Dr Beck — a member of the Identity and Democracy Group in the EU parliament — went on to call on Scholz to “respect the Treaties” of the European Union, adding that “when it comes to foreign policy and Russia” NATO is an organisation under which interested EU member states can be better unified.

Scholz’s call for the ability of individual EU member states to veto decisions made in Brussels to be done away with is highly likely in response to Hungarian resistance to certain taxation reforms, with Viktor Orbán’s administration in Budapest being very clear that they will never pass any measures that endanger the prosperity of their own people.

This has already prompted an angry response within the halls of Eurocrat power, with MEPs voting to see the national veto replaced due to it supposedly having “consistently hampered progress in many key tax policy areas” and “perpetuating harmful tax practices and social injustices that prevent the Union from functioning effectively”.

Beck was quick to slam the move at the time, releasing a press release slamming the push towards replacing the national veto with qualified majority votes as a way of enshrining a system of “taxation without representation in Europe”.

“This means that the EU could shape the German tax system completely against the will of the Bundestag and the federal government,” the German MEP previously said.

“It would degrade Germany from an EU member state to a tax colony of the EU empire,” he went on to say.

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