Europe is a country - by Noel Maurer

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Europe is a country<br>The European Union is just a federal government without an executive

Noel Maurer<br>Aug 02, 2026

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The European Union is basically a national government with a legislative and judicial branch, but no executive.<br>I know, that sounds like a bold claim. It just happens to be true, with (as usual) a few exceptions. Now, it’s a claim about functions, not form. And it says nothing about whether Europe has a national consciousness, enjoys formal sovereignty, or possesses democratic legitimacy. The claim rests only on the answer to three simple questions:<br>Who can make binding general rules?

Who can say what those rules mean and decide if they’ve been broken?

Who commands the men with guns that carry out the rules?

In the classic framework, legislative authority means the power to create binding general rules. Judicial authority means the power to interpret those rules and decide whether private parties or public officials have broken them. And the executive power means the ability to enforce those rules, ultimately by resort to violence. European institutions have the first two authorities. Moreover, as I’m going to try to convince you, they have about as much of those two authorities as in any federal state. What they don’t have (with, to repeat, a few exceptions that we’ll get into) is anyone capable of directly carrying them out.<br>That will sound wrong to many of you, of course! When I ran my formulation through a computer, it told me that I was wrong because the treaties assign “executive” and “implementing” functions to E.U. institutions. But few of those “executive” institutions really carry out executive functions. It’s a bullshit use of the term, to be blunt.<br>In the United States, armed FDA agents can break down your warehouse door if you violate federal law. Federal uniformed officials perform customs checks and track down illegal entrants. The EPA investigates and fines; Washington doesn’t order Alabama agents to investigate and fine you. And, of course, there’s the military.

FDA special agent Robert Maes looks for illegal tanks of nitrous oxide during Operation No Laughing Matter<br>The European Union isn’t like that at all. What the E.U. calls “executive functions” aren’t really executive functions, because Brussels doesn’t directly enforce the law in any real sense.1 No European officials are standing around collecting customs duties, and if you have some illegally labeled sausages in a warehouse, it’s not armed agents from the European Food Safety Authority that show up.<br>This post has four parts. First, we document the missing executive machinery. Second, we show that the legislature and courts have about as much authority as they do in other federal states. Third, for completeness, we discuss the few areas where European officials can act directly on private entities. Finally, we address the constitutional objections: the E.U. can only exercise specific conferred powers, national courts hear most European cases, member states can unilaterally secede, parliament can’t initiate legislation, and treaty amendment is very hard — none of which really distinguish the Union from other federations.<br>Like the European Union, we’re reluctant to exercise the powers we need to collect our own revenues, so please subscribe!

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Where’s the executive?

In the United States, some FDA agents carry firearms, arrest people, and execute search warrants. Federal customs officers inspect goods and detain people. Federal environmental officials investigate violations. The federal government collects its own taxes, runs its own prisons, prosecutes criminals directly, and commands armed forces. Even the postal service has an armed branch. The states also do (most) of these things, but Washington has its own large coercive machine.

If you think the European executive is located in the building to the right, then you are sadly mistaken (Brussels, Belgium, 2008)<br>Other federations organize the details differently but all of them have the machinery to directly coerce their residents. Canadian provinces have rather more power than American states, but the country still has a federal tax agency, border service, police force, prison system, and military.2 German states enforce much of federal law on behalf of Berlin, but the country still has a federal custom service and federal police force.<br>Not so the European Union. Article 291 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union begins thus: “Member States shall adopt all measures of national law necessary to implement legally binding Union acts.” In other words, the E.U. writes “union acts” but doesn’t carry them out. Rather, Brussels instructs national governments to write European law into their own legal codes and enforce it using their own bureaucracy. The next paragraph lets the Commission adopt “implementing acts” when uniform conditions are needed, but that...