Is the European Union a country?
It’s a bit of strange question, with an easy answer but a difficult explanation.
The answer is no.
The European Union is not a country, but… you can move between countries without passing through border control, work between countries without a Visa, and they use the same currency, and there are elections to a single parliament, and there’s a single government, and there are official languages, and a single economic market, a single aviation market, and… this is beginning to sound awfully like… a country.
Let’s do a recap of how the EU works.
This is the European Union.
There are 28 member states including the UK which has voted to leave the EU, but just hasn’t yet gone through the process to leave.
Of those, these are in the Schengen Zone meaning that there are no border controls between them.
That means that a typical border crossing in the EU looks like this.
These four are legally obliged to be in the Schengen Zone but just aren’t, and these two have opt-outs in their treaties that exempt them from being in the Schengen Zone.
These countries are part of the Eurozone meaning the euro is their sole legal currency.
These guys are obliged to join the Eurozone once they reach a certain economic target, which they haven’t, and these two have opt-outs exempting them from the Eurozone.
Each member country of the European Union elects its own Members of the European Parliament, known as MEPs, but the Parliament can’t make laws by itself.
Laws are proposed by the European Commission, who kinda work like an executive branch.
They then go to the Parliament who, if they approve it, send it to the council of the European Union.
While the Parliament represents the people of the European Union since the MEPs are elected by direct election, the Council represents the Governments since its made up of a rotating roster of national ministers.
If a proposed piece of legislation makes it through both the Parliament and Council of Europe, it becomes law.
So that’s how the European Union works, at least a massively simplified version, but how do countries work… or rather, what makes a country a country.
Well calling a country a country is a bit misleading because the word “country” can mean a lot of things.
What you’re probably thinking of when I say country is sovereign states—France, Japan, the US, etc—but there are non-sovereign states that are countries.
Scotland is a country, indisputably, but it’s not a sovereign state.
It’s a part of the Sovereign State of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
So, once again, what makes a country a country?
Well, there’s something called the Declaratory Theory of Statehood that sets out four criteria for statehood.
The first is “a permanent population”—a country is not a country without people so it needs people in its territory permanently.
The EU easily has this.
More than half a billion people live within its borders.
If it were a country, it would be the third most populous on earth and have one of the second highest gdps in the world.
The second requirement is a defined territory.
It’s a common misconception that a new country can only form on unclaimed territory—according to the declaratory theory a sovereign state can be created in an area where another sovereign state already exists.
Just look at North and South Korea—both claim the territory of each other and yet they’re both sovereign states.
The European Union has a territory, but its a bit fuzzy.
Any territory that you can call EU territory is also territory of other entities, the countries that make up the EU.
But that doesn’t necessarily stop the EU from having a territory.
Going back to the example of the UK, the official sovereign state—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—really doesn’t have any of its own territory.
Any territory of the UK is part of England, Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland—each countries by themselves.
The US is in a similar situation.
States act kinda-like mini-countries and there really is no federal territory that is not part of a state’s territory.
Especially given its open border policy, the EU’s territory is in function indistinguishable from that of any sovereign state.
The third requirement is a government and the government can’t just be a puppet of another sovereign state.
The government needs to have whats called “an essential core of independence.”
As I’ve mentioned, the EU has a government but for a few reasons the EU government is different from that a sovereign state.
Here’s the problem, the EU’s government is not independent.
The power comes from below, as in the power comes from the member states.
The power of most sovereign states also comes from below, but in that case its the people that give a state power.
In the case of the EU, since power is granted by sovereign states, those states are really above the EU in power and therefore the EU government is a subservient government.
That violates the criteria for a truly independent government.
Although, what’s the difference between this and UK government then—the country of countries?
The United Kingdom is also made up of countries so isn’t their government subservient?
Well, in the EU, there is a system and structure to leaving, whereas in the United Kingdom or really any other country, the entities within the sovereign states cannot leave without
a change in government structure and procedure.
When parts of sovereign states leave sovereign states, they do so typically without a legal right but rather a moral right.
It’s called “the Right to Revolution” according to the philosopher John Locke.
When a government no longer serves the people, as in it fails to protect the rights of the people or becomes the entity that people need protection from, there is a near universal moral understanding that the people can either overthrow or leave that government.
Members of the EU can choose whether or not to continue membership on a legal basis rather than a moral one.
The whole structure and system was set up by the member states, so even though it is overseeing the states, the power originates from the states it oversees.
The continued existence of the EU relies on the will of its members to continue the system.
That is never the case with an independent government.
That being said, while the origin of power may be different, the EU government functions in most ways like any other government.
It has different branches, agencies, economic systems, leaders, and more, so while its different, the EU does partially fulfill the government requirement for statehood.
The last criteria for statehood outlined in the Declaratory Theory is “the capacity to enter into relations with other states” and the EU absolutely has this.
There are ambassadors to the EU, ambassadors of the EU, embassies of the EU, embassies to the EU, intergovernmental organizations between the EU and non-EU countries, treaties
between the EU and non-EU countries, and more.
While most foreign relations are handled by individual member countries, there are absolutely foreign relations of the EU as a whole.
So, the European Union has fulfilled each criteria for sovereign statehood on out list, but it still isn’t a state.
Here’s the problem: statehood, as in being a sovereign country, is not a natural phenomenon.
No part of nature creates countries.
You can call salt salt if it’s made of Sodium Chloride.
That’s the requirement for salt being salt and we can’t change that.
That how nature makes salt.
We created the idea of countries.
They’re a social construct, so society decides what is a sovereign country and what is not.
While we can lay down a number of requisites for statehood, they are just guidelines to achieve the final goal—society’s acceptance of a country.
We can’t just say these criteria make a country a country unless individuals believe in those criteria since countries, like all social constructs, only work if there’s a collective belief and following of that system.
It’s similar to money.
Money only works if everyone believes that pieces of paper equal value.
Countries only work if everyone believes that certain imaginary lines separate who and what leads people.
In the case of statehood, you can’t just ask every person in society whether or not they think a country is a sovereign country.
There are socially accepted countries already and therefore those act as a proxy for society to decide whether a country is sovereign or not.
A countries sovereignty is judged off of how many other sovereign countries recognize its sovereignty.
The European Union is not a sovereign state because nobody accepts it as one.
While it may function in many ways like a sovereign country, it is not one because sovereignty is neither its goal or desire.
This shows you just how difficult it is to define what a country is.
Supranational organizations like the EU act like countries, but at the same time… so do some subnational entities—as in parts of countries.
Most specifically in the US.
States have a level of sovereignty that blur the line between what is part of a sovereign country and a county itself.
What is the difference between a state in the United States and a country.
They fulfill almost all the criteria that you just heard about so that’s why I asked the question “Is the United States a Country” in my another post.
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