The European Union emerged in the late 20th century as a limited post-Cold War project to bind sovereign nations through economic cooperation, prosperity, and peace. It has since evolved into a centralized governance system that looms over them. What began with treaties and markets now rules through regulation, judicial supremacy, and ideological enforcement, displacing democratic accountability at the national level.
The consequences are clear: Europe’s share of global GDP has fallen from nearly 25 percent in 1990 to roughly 14 percent today, productivity has stalled, defense investment has lagged, and reliance on American military power has deepened—even as Brussels’ authority has steadily expanded. If integration was meant to generate strength, it has instead managed Europe’s decline. The question is no longer how to reform the EU, but whether Europe can recover without it.
President Donald Trump has long argued that alliances function only when partners retain real responsibility for their own security, economies, and political decisions. Europe’s experience over the last two decades vindicates that view. The continent’s central weakness is not excessive nationalism, but the steady displacement of national sovereignty by supranational institutions that wield power without democratic accountability—and increasingly without political neutrality.
Polish president Karol Nawrocki has emerged as one of the few European leaders willing to confront this reality directly. In a major speech at Charles University in Prague, Nawrocki outlined a reform agenda for Europe rooted in sovereignty, democratic legitimacy, and strategic realism. His critique deserves attention in Washington because it exposes how centralization has enabled ideological capture in Brussels and weakened Europe as a transatlantic partner.
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At the heart of Nawrocki’s argument is a blunt truth: authority in the EU has expanded faster than democratic consent, and it has been captured by a narrow governing ideology. As he warned, Europe has become “a union that increasingly decides about nations, but less and less with nations.” Power has migrated upward to institutions structurally insulated from voters, while accountability has steadily eroded.
Brussels no longer governs as an honest broker. The European Commission operates instead as an ideological policy engine pushing progressive priorities beyond the reach of national parliaments. The EU’s Court asserts supremacy over national constitutions, while a left-leaning European Parliament locks in regulations of everything from energy and justice to freedom of speech—all immune to voter correction.
Nawrocki’s warning is clear: when decisions on borders, energy security, speech regulation, and even elements of foreign policy are made by institutions shielded from voters, democracy becomes performative. Europe risks becoming, in his words, “a structure that forgets its democratic foundations while claiming moral authority over its nations.”
His reform proposals are designed to reverse that trajectory.
First, Nawrocki has called for defending unanimity in core policy areas touching sovereignty. The expansion of qualified-majority voting allows ideologically aligned coalitions within EU institutions to override dissenting nations—even when those nations are acting on clear electoral mandates. From Washington’s perspective, governments stripped of control over core policies are unreliable partners abroad.
Second, Nawrocki has emphasized equal national representation, including the principle of one commissioner per member state. This is not symbolic. Without it, EU governance tilts toward demographic and economic dominance by the largest states—whose governing elites are often the most invested in centralization and ideological harmonization. A Europe perceived as both hierarchical and ideological will fracture politically and weaken strategically.
Third, Nawrocki has argued for rolling back institutional arrangements that concentrate power without electoral legitimacy, particularly the permanent President of the European Council. “Europe cannot be governed permanently by those who never stand before voters,” he said. Leadership divorced from elections is not technocratic efficiency; it is democratic erosion.
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Most importantly, decentralization would directly break the left-liberal monopoly that now dominates Brussels. Centralization has allowed progressive policy agendas to be locked in at the supranational level, immune to national electoral shifts. Conservative governments are tolerated so long as they administer Brussels’ priorities—but punished when they challenge them. Returning authority to member states would restore political competition, pluralism, and genuine democratic choice across Europe.
For the United States, this matters profoundly. America does not ally with regulatory processes or ideological bureaucracies. It allies with sovereign governments capable of making decisions, honoring commitments, and absorbing political costs.
President Trump was right to reject the Brussels model.
Ultimately, Europe would be stronger without the European Union. The EU has not unified Europe; it has weakened it—hollowing out democratic legitimacy, centralizing power in unaccountable institutions, and substituting bureaucratic control for strategic seriousness.
A Europe organized around sovereign nation-states cooperating freely—through NATO, bilateral trade, and voluntary political alignment—would be more democratic at home and more credible abroad. It would spend more on defense, act with greater strategic clarity, and negotiate with the United States as a partner rather than as a regulatory bloc hostile to American interests.
President Trump was right: sovereignty is not a threat to Western unity but its precondition. A post-EU Europe of strong, self-governing nations would be less dependent on American power, more capable of defending itself, and far better positioned to sustain a durable, balanced transatlantic alliance.
This piece originally appeared in The National Interest
