EU model – negotiating a new concept of sovereignty

Abstract

European Union (EU) is considered to be a successful model of transfer of exclusive national sovereignty from its Member States to the EU institutions. However, this transfer was happening gradually and up to present has not yet been finished. At the economic level, process that is titled deepening of the European integration, started from customs union, than through common market and finally single market (EU) with the single currency, euro, which is not embracing all Member States. At the political level, the EU has not yet built central political authority with supranational powers that would overcome national jurisdictions of Member States. The Lisbon Treaty of 2009 tried to upgrade the complicated structure of mixed sovereignty divided between Member States and the EU institutions, by cancelling three pillars and forming single legal personality of the Union. Nevertheless, there are voices in the EU Member States from public officials, scholars and wide public, that traditional concept of national sovereignty is more recommendable to respond to modern challenges of contemporary world. Improving the EU model of sovereignty obviously has its limitations, because it is difficult to imagine a paradoxical perspective in which Member States will give up their sovereignty.