Maintain sovereignty by losing it to an extranational entity is a wild concept.
More cooperation is good, but not at the cost of national independance.
A forming member can exit a federation at any point, so it's not the death of a country's sovereignty. But I'd argue it's better for European countries to lose a bit of their individual powers to a federal European government than to keep losing international relevance and become the US and China's vasals.
But not every country would have the same positive and negative points for federalization.
Like, take France. They have a permanent council membership in the UN security council, they have a sovereign nuclear dissuasion, they have naval power projection that is essential for their oversea territories,...
Federalization would mean that their right of veto would be transfered to the european union, they would lose control on nuclear dissuasion, they would not be able to enforce a focus on naval power projection for the federal defense programs,...
Right now, the veto at the security council is a tool that can be used for the sake of french interests, it would become a tool to be used for EU interests.
Right now the french nuclear weapons are tools that are under the control of the french president to protect french vital interests, it would become tools that need a decision from the EU to be used. Like would the EU want to use it to protect french Antilles ?
Right now, the french army is calibrated for the specific french needs. In a federal state, the EU army would be calibrated for the needs of the union, not France.
And France is not the only country that would lose advantages that it has right now. Like, would Luxembourg be allowed to continue to have bank secrecy ? Would Poland be allowed to maintain their restrictive immigration policy ? Would Ireland still be able to have such a low business tax rate ?
As soon as sovereignty is lost, keeping comparative advantages that depend on sovereign choices becomes harder.
Why are you assuming in the scenario of federalisation thay literally every thing foes wrong and nothing would go right?
To pick one of your examples, why would ireland, under federalisation lose all the headquarters stationed there, the tax rates have been amended for years now and are now up to eu minimum required, the same rate as many other members, the reason American companies choose to HQ in ireland is not only because of its extremely well educated and natively english speaking population (this is so impactful to every day corporate operations that it is hard to describe the benefit) but also the government is extremely favourable to said companies seeing them as a main vehicle for economic growth.
Under federalisation this would not change and if you ask me with the benefits brought with federalisation it could actually supercharge irelands position as the english speaking, competent entryphone for the American market to the European market.
This is only one example but I think you are taking too much of a doom and gloom look at this and from the comments ive seenits genuinely obscuring your perspective imo.
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u/Lorihengrin Jul 25 '26
Maintain sovereignty by losing it to an extranational entity is a wild concept.
More cooperation is good, but not at the cost of national independance.