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Shift authority to use Article 7 from the Council to the ECJ

Hoo boy.

I don’t think that Article 7 being used at all is a good idea, and I think that the earlier threats to use it were a really bad idea from a political standpoint; whether or not someone agrees with something that their political leadership is doing, I think that virtually nobody in a state likes being threatened with having their political power stripped. I think that a lever to strip political power from a member state in a federation is an extraordinary power – normally a federation ensures some powers to a member state, and thus cuts right through that. I am not actually sold that the EU should have Article 7 at all, and I think that one could make a very serious argument that shifting away from the veto in one way or another may simply eliminate the need for Article 7.

I think that, in general, the power to remove political power from individuals or member states is extremely ripe for abuse, and also think that the bar for which it has been threatened so far is much too low. I think that it should not have been attempted short of an existential threat to the EU, and I do not believe that anything so far has met that bar.

I also think that moving it from the Council to the ECJ probably makes it considerably more likely that Article 7 is used, which I think is the opposite of the direction that things should go.

All of that being said, from a purely-technical standpoint, the question of whether-or-not a member state is in violation of elements of the treaty is probably a legal question, and as such, probably the ECJ is a better place to put that decision than a political body; as written, this should be a technical legal call, not a political decision.

Overall thoughts

I think that overall, it’s not an unreasonable summary to say that it weakens the individual member states, weakens the EU executive, and strengthens the European Parliament.

There are some things that I think are definitely good ideas, and some things that I’m skeptical about in there. Some things that I think are going to be very hard to get agreement on.

It seems like a pretty large package of changes, and many of these don’t have much direct connection. I do wonder whether it might be easier to put them through as individual changes. For example, I think that renaming the President of the European Commission to be the President of the Union is probably a relatively-uncontroversial change; having that sit around in limbo while discussions over much-more-momentous and fundamental changes are made to the power structure of the EU seems like it might not be such a great idea.