Respecting the Rights & Sovereignty of Member States
The European Union has overreached. It has become too centralised, too ambitious, and too out of touch with ordinary citizens. Only this eurorealist agenda offered by the ECR will achieve positive results and meet the expectations of the peoples of Europe.
There should be a profound reflection on the current state of Europe leading to a fundamental review of the functioning of the European Union.
The European Union must change; the status quo is not an option. Some argue that the solution is more Europe; others that the solution is no Europe. But the ECR believes that neither federalist fundamentalists nor anti-European abolitionists offer real solutions to the problems faced by Europe today.
The ECR instead offers a bold alternative vision of a reformed European Union as a community of nations cooperating in shared confederal institutions in areas where they have some common interests that can best be advanced by working together. A new institutional settlement should therefore be sought that recognises that the Union’s democratic legitimacy derives principally from its member states alone and that the concepts of subsidiarity, proportionality and conferral must be fully respected.