Coronavirus has exposed the EU’s greatest flaw

Politics begins and ends with sovereignty: the duty and right to make the legitimate final decision. We have seen this clearly during the pandemic. In every country, people have come to depend on their governments, whose authority rests on acknowledged sovereignty. This is as true, or even truer, in democracies: while monarchs and aristocrats could dispute sovereignty – and, where it suited them, divide up the cake amongst themselves – in a democracy there can only be one ultimate sovereign: the people. No sovereignty, no democracy.

For years we have been told the illusion, if not a fraud, that sovereignty can be ‘pooled’. Who takes the final decision when sovereignty is ‘pooled’? If we cannot answer that question, then it shows the fallacy.

Some have argued that there have been historical examples of pooled sovereignty, often citing the Holy Roman Empire, which exercised a largely theoretical judicial supremacy over Germany until it was abolished in 1806.