Empire of Law: The EU’s March Beyond Democracy

  • 18:30 - 20:00 (followed by a reception)
  • Monday 17th November 2025
  • Central Brussels TBA

(Please note: the dress code is smart casual or business attire. Sports shoes and jeans are not permitted and a jacket is required for men)

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The EU and its precursors were designed to create a permanent drive for the extension of competencies and integration. As some have quipped, riffing off Einstein, EU integration is “like riding a bicycle: you either keep moving forward or you fall off.” Over time, this dynamic has produced what critics call integration by stealth or, more bluntly, competence creep.

This debate examines how the EU’s institutional machinery — the Commission, the European Court of Justice, and other supranational actors — has steadily expanded its reach through reinterpretation of treaties, judicial activism, and bureaucratic initiative. In doing so, it has weakened national sovereignty and eroded democratic accountability.

For some, this is baked into the institutional design of the EU: “ever closer union” really does mean just that. Others highlight the role of increasingly creative legal rulings which have enabled the centralisation of power in Brussels. But the EU has found even more innovative ways to gather vast power in the centre, from an “act first, argue later” approach to the symbiotic relationship between Brussels’ institutions and a stage-army of NGOs always calling for more and more intervention.

Perhaps the EU’s singular achievement has been to steadily centralise power whilst paying lip-service to the concerns of member-states. Concepts like “subsidiarity”, “EU competency” and “rule of law” suggested that the EU was concerned to limit the power of centralised institutions. Yet in reality, subsidiarity became a rationale for extending EU authority, the EU quickly expanded its range of competencies, and the idea of the rule of law was invoked only to challenge those who objected to Brussels’ overreach.

Join MCC Brussels for this important discussion about legal reinterpretation and bureaucratic expansion pushing the Union beyond its mandate. Are member states still masters of their own laws, or has the EU become a self-perpetuating political machine? Are there any prospects for a return of power from the centre to the member-states?  Or will Brussels’ expansion become only ever more creative?

Speakers include:

Boglárka Bólya LLM, Ministerial Commissioner, Ministry of European Union Affairs (responsible for the promotoin of sovereignty reform); former Deputy State Secretary, EU Relations; former adviser, President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani

Michael von der Schulenburg MEP, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, NI

Dr Philipp Siegert, deputy research director, MCC Brussels; author, MCC Brussels' report, EU Competence Creep: Pushing Supranationalism Beyond Democratic Legitimacy? (forthcoming)

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