“The greatest challenge of our times”

In recent years, references to the common good have become increasingly present in the discourse of the leaders of the European Union (EU). For example, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has condemned the “selfishness of nations only looking after their own interests”, calling for a revival of the “spirit of cooperation” that has long “defended the common good of the world”.¹ Similarly, the former German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has stated that the primary purpose of the EU “is to come to results which are to the benefit of our community”, emphasising the need to overcome “national egoisms”.² Several other national leaders have made calls and pledges in favour of “the greater good” in areas as varied as accessing COVID-19 vaccines and responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the EU level, the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned against the “poison and deceit of nationalism” and stated that “Europe must move forward as one”.³ His successor, Ursula von der Leyen, has, in turn, issued a call for the member states “to join forces for our common good”.⁴ In his capacity as president of the European Council, Donald Tusk went as far as to say that acting and thinking for the common good “may perhaps be the greatest challenge of our times”.⁵

Yet anyone contrasting this discursive concern for the common good with the reality of EU politics may be somewhat disappointed. The many crises that have befallen Europe in the last decade have unveiled sharp differences of opinion and considerable power struggles among member states. For example, EU member states have failed to agree on quotas to allocate refugees, fallen short of establishing a permanent financial mechanism with sufficient firepower to address future economic crises and viewed with suspicion large-scale EU defence cooperation initiatives responding to the United States’ retrenchment from some aspects of global security. The fragmentation of the political scene is also apparent in the sharp divides between north and south, west and east, which have become increasingly evident in member states’ sub-groupings, the Visegrad Group and the so-called “PIGS” being two illustrative examples.⁶ This fragmentation has triggered debates about a “two-speed EU” and even a “multispeed Europe”.⁷ At the same time, the unprecedented event of Brexit has increased the threat of EU fragmentation and has generated fears that it could be followed by a “Frexit, Nexit or Oexit”.⁸ Given this political landscape, is there room to seek an EU-wide common good? If so, how can it be effectively pursued?

The emergence of nationalist discourse in several member states has jeopardised a robust understanding of the common good in at least three ways.⁹ To begin with, nationalist leaders have consistently challenged what seemed to be widely shared EU values, including the rule of law, freedom of speech and equal treatment of citizens. By emphasising the cultural diversity across European states, these leaders have made many EU citizens lose sight of their common values and goals. For example, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has vowed “to protect Hungary’s Christian culture” from “any supranational business or political empire”.¹⁰ Second, nationalist parties tend to assess the merits of EU policies exclusively from the standpoint of national gains and losses at the expense of a broader European perspective. According to this view, a desirable EU policy is a policy that serves national agendas. All too often, this leaves EU institutions and their decision-making processes helpless in the face of powerful national interests. Third, nationalist governments have focused on promoting the well-being of their citizens while disregarding the well-being of citizens of other member states. Despite covering a diverse spectrum of ideals, nationalist platforms share a scepticism towards multilateralism, particularly in its most advanced form of political and economic integration.¹¹ Therefore, nationalist leaders have aimed at regaining sovereign control and have rejected further European integration.

Against this background, the following questions arise: Is there a “European common good” in any meaningful sense?¹² What values, if any, are shared by all member states? What consequences should there be if a member state (or its government) no longer shares the set of common values? How should EU institutions put EU values into practice? How can decision-making at the EU level move further beyond the logic of national interests? Finally, how can EU citizens acquire a greater “concern for the whole, a dedication to the common good”?¹³

To approach these questions in the political and legal language of the EU, the research puzzle presented in the following sections draws on three undertheorised notions from the Treaty on European Union (TEU). These are (i) EU values, (ii) an institutional framework to promote EU values and (iii) creating an ever closer Union.¹⁴ Why do these notions matter? In the first instance, EU values can help us understand what goods the EU seeks to realise. They constitute the moral DNA of the Union, structuring its collective choices and offering practical guidance in the face of difficult trade-offs. Therefore, clarifying the substantive content and practical implications of EU values is essential. Second, despite the endorsement of common values, the predominance of national interests has prevented collective action in critical fields, such as tax competition and tax avoidance. This prevalence means that, under the current EU institutional framework, the pursuit of the common good is not always safeguarded. Thus, the question of what institutional arrangements, if any, could facilitate the adoption of policies for the common good deserves careful treatment. Third, it is likely that EU citizens will only be willing to mobilise the means to seek the common good together if they become ever closer. This prospect raises the question of what conditions might strengthen the civic bonds among Europeans.

Before getting into each of these issues in detail, I should clarify what I mean by “common good” in the context of EU membership.

What is the common good?

By the common good, I mean the conditions and goals that benefit the EU as a whole, not just a limited group of member states or EU citizens. Note that this definition should not be swiftly equated with the rule of maximising aggregate utility, which could generate highly uneven distributions of well-being across member states.¹⁵ A question that follows is how much well-being the common good should entail for each individual unit of concern. The answer is not straightforward. On the one hand, realising the common good may entail costs in terms of individual welfare. Consider the cases of nurses, firefighters and police officers, who often risk their lives for the sake of the common good. These examples suggest that, at least under certain conditions, the common good has priority over individual well-being. On the other hand, certain types of involuntary sacrifices seem incompatible with the ideal of the common good. Consider the case of carrying out promising but unethical medical experiments on patients. This example suggests that the common good is not an ultimate good – that is, it should not be sought at any cost. For these reasons, this book will rely on the following definition of the common good: the conditions and goals that benefit the EU as a whole without imposing impermissible harm on some EU citizens or member states.¹⁶

A key challenge addressed in this book is how EU politics could tackle these conditions and goals more consistently.¹⁷ However, it should be acknowledged that the issue of what policies are desirable from the standpoint of the common good is not always straightforward. To begin with, the pursuit of the common good is underpinned by a high level of epistemic uncertainty. For example, when civil authorities commit to reforming the financial system to prevent future economic crises, it may not be clear what policy package will produce the intended effects. Crucially, the pursuit of the common good implies difficult normative choices. Consider the case of climate change. Even if member states agreed on the need to address this pressing issue, they would still be faced with complex trade-offs that cannot be readily adjudicated through scientific criteria alone. In other words, determining desirable policy requires value-based judgements.¹⁸ This conclusion suggests that however committed to the pursuit of the common good member states are, they will likely have conflicting views on what it actually entails. In the context of EU membership, this predicament seems to be recurrent, given the diversity of political models, social practices and cultural backgrounds across the member states. Therefore, the following question is unavoidable: Does diversity within the Union warrant talk of a common good of the whole EU?

I shall argue that diversity is not a definitive objection against a shared understanding of the common good in the EU. In Chapter 1, I will argue that public values – understood as the values enshrined in the fundamental laws of a polity, such as constitutions and international treaties – provide actionable guidelines regarding what conditions and goals a society considers desirable. For example, public values such as the rule of law, pluralism and accountability, endorsed by many liberal democracies, ought to be translated into a set of concrete requirements regarding the functioning of public administration and the judicial system. Note that all citizens of a given polity are expected to uphold its public values, regardless of their individual preferences and worldviews. By bridging the substantial moral differences amongst citizens, public values create a common standpoint against which both individual conduct and public policies ought to be assessed. I shall claim that when the public values endorsed by a group of states overlap or when they explicitly endorse common values through international agreements (as in the EU), it is possible to derive a transnational understanding of the common good. I shall add that it is plausible to articulate at least a minimalistic global common good, whereby very diverse states share some basic conditions and goals, such as preserving the international system and protecting the planet.¹⁹

I have suggested that EU values offer guidelines regarding what types of conditions and goals ought to be pursued by the Union.²⁰ A question that follows is how these conditions and goals can be fulfilled in the present-day EU. Any compelling answer needs to accomplish at least two important tasks. The first is to identify the institutions through which the common good can be pursued at the EU level. Indeed, the configuration of competences and decision-making rules of EU bodies has a decisive impact on the shape of EU policy outcomes.²¹ An illustrative example is the unanimity rule applied by the Council of the European Union (“the Council”) in certain policy areas. Under this rule, the interests of a single member state can defeat those of the entire Union without needing to provide any reasonable justification. For example, in order to shield its nuclear energy sector from competition, successive French governments have barred the electrical grids and gas pipelines of central Europe from being connected to Spanish ones through French territory. This ban has meant the EU is much more vulnerable to disruptions of energy supply, as the acute energy crisis triggered by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia later came to demonstrate. How could the authorities of member states think and act more consistently beyond national interests? What institutional reforms, if any, could facilitate the adoption of EU policies for the common good?

The second task involves advancing effective strategies by which the civic bonds among EU citizens could be consolidated. Aristotle famously argued that the common good presupposes a background of “civic friendship”, understood as “a bond of reciprocal good-will between fellow citizens, expressed through norms of civic behaviour, such as mutual recognition of moral equality, mutual concern and mutual defence and support”.²² This bond ensures that citizens consider the impact of their preferences on one other’s well-being while deliberating on alternative courses of action. Furthermore, individuals who regard themselves as connected by civic bonds are typically more willing to accept sacrifices for the sake of their community than those who feel like distant strangers. This willingness is important because, as we shall see, advancing the common good of the whole EU may come with a cost for the citizens of some member states.

However, the EU political landscape described above seems to reveal a great deal of mistrust rather than civic friendship. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, in his capacity as president of the Eurogroup (the meeting of finance ministers of the Eurozone member states), made this lack of social empathy particularly clear when he stated that financially distressed member states should not expect to be assisted after having spent all their money “on drinks and women”.²³ How can civic bonds amongst Europeans be strengthened?

Three contested concepts in the Treaty on European Union

EU values

In this section, I will briefly outline the tensions underpinning the three disputed concepts mentioned above. Let us begin with EU values. The TEU states that “[t]‌he Union’s aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples”.²⁴ Yet what are these values? The TEU lists several, including “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights”.²⁵ According to the TEU, “[t]hese values are common to the member states in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail”.²⁶ However, this direct equivalence between EU values and national values seems puzzling. If EU values are so similar to national values, why do they sometimes clash? Even when member states formally subscribe to common values, such as solidarity and non-discrimination, they seem to disagree regarding their meaning and policy implications. For instance, some member states have referred to the programme of financial assistance to Greece as a clear demonstration of European solidarity, while others cite it as evidence of an absence of solidarity.²⁷ Thus, despite European leaders’ recurrent appeals to EU values, this notion remains ambiguous and undertheorised. In what sense, if any, can we speak of EU values? What conditions need to be fulfilled for EU values to be realised?

While the EU seems eager to export its moral standards through policy instruments such as trade deals and association agreements, member states’ basic moral consensus has been called into question in recent years. Indeed, the EU openly states that “[o]‌ne of the most important aspect of EU trade policy is that – alongside protecting European businesses and consumers – it is promoting the EU’s principles and values”.²⁸ However, in recent years, the multiple episodes of noncompliance with EU values involving the governments of Hungary and Poland have shown that the authority of EU values can be challenged. Indeed, Hungary has been charged with a “serious breach of the values on which the Union is founded”, notably freedom of speech, freedom of association and equal treatment of individuals.²⁹ In view of this and other challenges to what Ian Manners has dubbed the “normative power” of the EU, President Ursula von der Leyen considered the goal of “promoting the European way of life” as one of her six political priorities.³⁰ However, her choice attracted sharp criticism, raising additional questions. Are EU values European by definition? What should the relevant test for compliance with EU values be? What measures should be taken if a member state (or its government) no longer shares EU values?

An institutional framework to promote EU values

The TEU also states that “[t]‌he Union shall have an institutional framework which shall aim to promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests, those of its citizens and those of the member states”.³¹ A question that follows is what type of institutional framework can best implement EU values, particularly in areas where national interests appear to be divergent?³² Note that adopting ambitious EU policies for the common good requires not only the endorsement of common values but also a pragmatic agreement regarding what resources are to be mobilised and what interests are to be compromised to achieve this purpose. Achieving such an agreement can be particularly challenging when the distribution of the costs and benefits of policy proposals that promote the common good is asymmetrical. For instance, in the domain of agriculture policy, member states frequently team up in terms of winners and losers, funders and recipients, generating power struggles that jeopardise crucial EU reforms. Consider the case of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), where a few member states with powerful farming interests delayed for decades a reform that was widely regarded as much needed. How, then, can EU institutions effectively prevent, or move beyond, these deadlocks with a view to achieving the common good?

According to the TEU, the responsibility to promote the common good of the whole EU lies with the European Commission.³³ However, its ability to achieve this goal is clearly limited under the current institutional setting. An episode related to COVID-19 crisis management can illustrate this point. In April 2020, the Commission presented a roadmap for a coordinated lifting of the containment measures against the pandemic.³⁴ Note that, in the context of freedom of movement, coordination is critical to ensure that any pandemic is successfully contained. Yet, eager to manage the crisis without EU interference, several member states discredited the Commission’s initiative and pursued their own plans instead.³⁵ Similar episodes have been observed in a number of policy fields where the Commission’s powers are limited or non-existent.³⁶ However, the way forward to unblock important reforms conducive to the common good is not obvious, at least if the path towards political centralisation is to be avoided. In fact, the Commission is already charged with being too powerful and undemocratic.³⁷ This judgement suggests that increasing its powers might be normatively undesirable and politically unfeasible. How can EU institutions effectively overcome internal divisions and political deadlocks? What institutional reforms, if any, could bring the pursuit of the common good to the heart of EU policymaking?

Creating an ever closer Europe

A question that follows from the previous sections is the following: Why would national governments accept making further sacrifices for the common good of the entire EU? The answer seems ultimately contingent on whether their national constituencies can develop a greater concern for each other’s well-being, thus supporting such collective efforts. Thus, the preamble of the TEU established the goal of “creating an ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe”.³⁸ According to the Schuman Declaration of 1950, this goal is to be attained gradually “through concrete achievements” that “create a de facto solidarity” amongst Europeans.³⁹ Yet, despite several arguably remarkable EU achievements – including the period of peace since 1945, the longest in the history of the European continent – the bonds among EU citizens are currently fragile, if not fraying. This limited level of solidarity is illustrated by the rise of nationalist platforms in the member states. By the end of 2019, nationalist parties had collected at least 15% of the votes in nine member states and participated in several government coalitions.⁴⁰ This political landscape has led Jean-Claude Juncker to speak accurately of a “retreat into our own corners”.⁴¹ Is this development an inescapable consequence of growing individualism in Western societies and the loss of a sense of community membership?⁴² Or can EU leaders do something to reverse this tendency? If so, what “concrete achievements” could bring Europeans ever closer?

In the face of high levels of Euroscepticism, in 2020, President Von der Leyen launched a Conference on the Future of Europe aimed at building “a joint vision of the direction the EU should take in the next decade and beyond”.⁴³ A bold and widely endorsed agenda seems critical to mobilising EU citizens around the pursuit of the common good. I will argue that this vision should address a number of social arrangements that currently prevent the emergence of stronger civic bonds amongst EU citizens. Indeed, in Chapter 4, I shall argue that the following conditions jeopardise civic friendship within the EU polity: (i) fierce competition amongst individuals, leading them to see each other as competitors rather than fellow citizens; (ii) pronounced socioeconomic inequalities, creating cleavages within society; (iii) scarcity of meaningful opportunities for political participation in EU politics, leading to a widespread sense of disempowerment by the citizens; (iv) multiple barriers against freedom of movement, restraining cross-border social interactions; (v) limited information regarding the functioning of EU institutions and the rights and duties linked to EU citizenship, and; (vi) lack of clear guarantees of mutual assistance in the event of an armed conflict. I will claim that appropriate EU policies could overcome these conditions. Before overviewing the arguments presented in this book, I should briefly introduce the scholarly literature with which the latter is in dialogue.

Unanswered questions in the literature

This project is situated within two key branches of literature: (i) communitarianism and (ii) EU normative studies. While the notion of the common good has been present throughout the history of political thought, its implications for modern liberal democracies have been addressed notably by scholars of communitarianism.⁴⁴ In a variety of approaches, communitarians stress the importance of social bonds, criticising an atomistic understanding of civil society whereby the interests of individuals have precedence over the common good.⁴⁵ Communitarian accounts are usually articulated on the grounds of self-governing communities, such as the city-state and the nation-state. For communitarian authors, these delimited political units provide two critical elements: (i) the background of social relations that shape individuals’ identity and (ii) the democratic institutions that allow for a meaningful deliberation concerning the common good. Most communitarians have strikingly avoided passing judgement on the EU case.⁴⁶ However, a communitarian reading would typically question whether the EU qualifies as a community, given the lack of a shared European identity and the disempowerment of citizens resulting from the supranational EU institutions.⁴⁷ Therefore, so the communitarian argument would go, the pursuit of a European common good may be both normatively undesirable and politically unfeasible.

However, the view that the EU does not qualify as a community disregards salient facts about the Union and presupposes an overly narrow understanding of community. First, the claim that EU citizens do not share a common identity has been challenged. For some authors, European identity encompasses Roman and Christian heritage, the collective memory of the struggle against totalitarianism, and shared symbols and meanings, such as Mediterranean cuisine.⁴⁸ Second, as I shall argue, the idea of community does not necessarily need to be conceived in terms of language, culture and history. Alternatively, it can be articulated on the grounds of normative bonds constructed by like-minded states. As I shall claim, states with overlapping moral outlooks share common values, rules and principles despite their citizens’ sociological and cultural diversity. Finally, the supranational character of EU institutions may be more of an advantage than an obstacle when it comes to empowering citizens and “restoring control over the forces that govern our lives”.⁴⁹ Indeed, the interdependencies resulting from economic integration and globalisation imply that member states have a very limited capacity to achieve their own goals alone. Acting at the EU level, as I shall argue, has the potential to empower member states to pursue effective policies that more closely translate the will of their citizens.

Similarly, the ongoing “normative turn” in EU studies has not yet sparked a debate about the common good in the EU.⁵⁰ Normative works on the EU have addressed issues such as democratic legitimacy, EU citizenship and constitutionalism, which are related to, but not substitutes for, a debate on the common good.⁵¹ As an illustrative example, the most significant collection of essays addressing the philosophical foundations of the EU contains no reference to the notion of the common good.⁵² This lack of interest is striking, at least if we assume, as does John Rawls, that the pursuit of the common good is the ultimate purpose of government.⁵³ The need to address this issue is even more pressing if we consider the degree of cross-border interdependence in the context of EU membership. Why, then, have EU scholars not examined this topic? In addition to the pervasive influence of rational choice theory and neoliberalism, which have been sceptical towards the notion of the common good, there are conceptual difficulties in articulating this notion beyond the nation-state. Consider, for example, the following questions: On what grounds can we speak of a regional or global common good? Can we distinguish the European common good from, say, the South American common good? What if realising the common good of the EU would jeopardise the pursuit of the common good of other regions?

This book will address these questions in depth. I will argue that shared understandings of the common good within groups of two or more states will be thicker or thinner depending on the extent to which their public values overlap. For instance, Spain admittedly has more in common with France than with North Korea. This moral proximity should make it easier for the Spanish and French authorities to examine transnational challenges from a common normative standpoint, as well as to agree on what should be done to address them. However, I will claim that a basic level of moral agreement between states as different as Spain and North Korea can still be found when it comes to addressing certain fundamental global challenges, such as climate change and HIV/AIDS. I will argue that regional associations play a leading role in realising the global common good since they foster cooperation between neighbouring states that face similar geopolitical challenges and are in a privileged position to assist each other. I will claim that EU values are distinctive because they translate particular understandings of liberal democracy, social welfare and environmental protection. Furthermore, I will argue that it is impermissible to pursue the common good of a state or a region by critically endangering the common good of other states or regions. In the next section, I explain how I intend to solve the puzzle that I have been outlining.

How to solve the puzzle?

The questions I have raised can be summarised as follows: How can the common good be realised in the present-day EU? I have also introduced three sub-questions: (i) On what grounds, if any, can EU values be regarded as a meaningful and common moral standpoint amongst the member states? (ii) What type of institutional framework could best realise the common good in the EU? (iii) What conditions can foster (or jeopardise) the development of stronger civic bonds amongst EU citizens?

To address these questions, I will be seeking normative guidelines concerning the Union’s political configuration, namely its decision-making rules, the allocation of competences across different levels of government, the rules governing the relations between the EU and the member states, the public reasons that can be used to justify EU policies, and so on. The caveat “present-day EU” indicates that this book takes the current configuration of the EU as its starting point, following the so-called practice-dependence approach.⁵⁴ Accordingly, my proposals will be articulated in terms of incremental change to the status quo instead of assuming that the EU could be redesigned from scratch through exhaustive social engineering. Doing so should improve their feasibility while providing a concrete roadmap for action.⁵⁵

The structure of the book follows closely the research agenda that I have outlined. The first two chapters focus on the question of what the common good means in the context of EU membership. The first chapter develops a conceptual framework to analyse the problem of the common good in the EU. I thoroughly discuss the notion of public values, and I explain the advantages of my approach with a view to articulating the common good beyond borders. The second chapter focuses on EU values. I explain why the EU should be regarded as a normative community and analyse the distinctive features of EU values. I discuss several recent challenges against EU values, as well as the appropriate EU response to them. I also explore a few key preconditions for EU values to be realised in a globalised world. The last three chapters address the question of how the common good can be realised in the EU. Chapter 3 analyses the challenge that divergent national interests pose to achieving the common good of the Union and presents two complementary strategies to deal with this problem. Chapter 4 introduces a few proposals for EU institutional reform to advance the common good. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses a set of “concrete achievements” that could strengthen the civic bonds among Europeans. I thus discuss the conditions that can either foster or jeopardise a concern for the community, and I present a roadmap for action.

An overview of the argument

Let me now summarise the main arguments presented in the following chapters. This book presents the EU as a community of states that have endorsed a set of shared public values through voluntarily ratifying the EU treaties. I argue that EU values allow for the mapping of certain key conditions and goals that member states jointly consider desirable, thus translating a shared conception of the common good. Notably, these include consolidating liberal democracy, enabling decent standards of social welfare and ensuring a high level of environmental protection. I claim that EU values are not European by definition; they have been built through decades of public debates, policymaking and judicial decisions and have been gradually translated into concrete institutional practices, such as universal access to healthcare and education.

However, I claim that EU values face a number of serious challenges. Under conditions of contemporary globalisation, much of the power to shape the EU’s future has been transferred to non-state actors, which pursue agendas that are often at odds with the common good. For example, it has been reported that large data analytics firms played a role in influencing the outcome of the Brexit referendum. In a similar vein, credit rating agencies wield considerable power over some member states by evaluating their debt using methods that are rarely (if ever) subjected to public scrutiny. At the same time, EU-based multinational corporations that shift their manufacturing to countries with weak welfare systems pose a threat to the viability of decent standards of social welfare as this outsourcing often leads to lower labour standards and significant reductions in tax revenue. These and other challenges have clearly jeopardised the EU common good.

I argue that the most effective and desirable way for European states to address these challenges is not to reclaim sovereign control, as many nationalist platforms have suggested, but to join forces to restructure the international environment in which they are embedded. The scope of its political institutions and the size of its common market empower the EU to realise the common good beyond borders in at least three ways. First, representative institutions such as the European Parliament and the Council can host transnational debates on cross-border interdependencies that cannot be effectively addressed by national democracies, such as those related to climate change, food supply and energy security. Second, the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provide supranational enforcement mechanisms that can be used to implement ambitious agendas for the common good. Third, economic integration gives EU member states higher leverage to persuade business and investment actors that jeopardise the public interest through the threat of restricting their operations in the world’s largest internal market.

In view of these potentials, I claim that EU member states could jointly establish a set of bodies with the critical mass to shape globalisation, enabling EU institutions and member states to realise EU values and contributing to the global common good. Focusing on the social dimension of the European Model, I propose the creation of three institutions: (i) a European Transnational Tax Authority; (ii) a European Credit Rating Agency; and (iii) a European Agency for Fair Trade. Furthermore, I argue that the EU should put in place more robust safeguards against internal breaches of EU values, including enforcing the TEU provision regarding the suspension of the voting rights of non-compliant member states in the Council of the European Union and creating a procedure through which chronically non-compliant member states could be ejected from the Union.

However, I claim that to pursue the common good of the whole EU effectively, EU institutions will also need to be better equipped to promote the convergence of national interests and solve political deadlocks. I argue that two complementary strategies should be pursued to achieve these ends. First, building on Robert Putnam’s two-level game theory, I claim that EU actors should play a more active role in the processes through which national interests are formed at the domestic level.⁵⁶ By giving the EU a stronger voice in national debates – where the broader European picture often remains underrepresented – the perspective of other member states might be more smoothly incorporated into national positions and might also recruit broader public support. In practice, this would mean that the Representations of the Commission in the member states would act as the face of the EU at the national level, representing the general interest of the EU in the domestic public spheres.

Second, I claim that Brussels’ policymaking needs to be reformed to facilitate the resolution of conflicts of national interests and to prioritise the pursuit of the common good. Concrete proposals presented in this book include: (i) directly electing the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission; (ii) abolishing the unanimity rule in the Council; (iii) creating an EU Citizens’ Assembly with agenda-setting powers; (iv) adopting transnational lists for the elections for the European Parliament and upgrading the institutional links between the European Parliament and national parliaments; (v) ensuring the impartiality of the bureaucratic apparatus of the European Commission with regards to interstate disputes; and (vi) creating an advisory body of former presidents of EU institutions. Altogether, these institutional reforms could bring the common good to the heart of EU policymaking.

Furthermore, I argue that the EU should establish the conditions that would permit concern for the common good to flourish amongst EU citizens. I present an agenda aimed at strengthening the bonds of civic friendship in the EU, which includes the following proposals: (i) establishing a robust social level playing field to moderate competition among EU workers, notably by launching an EU labour code; (ii) reducing socioeconomic inequalities in the EU; (iii) enhancing the opportunities for citizens’ participation, namely through the aforementioned Representations of the Commission and the EU Citizens’ Assembly; (iv) reducing barriers against freedom of movement, notably by launching an EU-wide programme of administrative simplification regarding free movers; (v) creating a common curriculum in all EU schools, which would allow EU citizens to acquire knowledge of their rights and duties and develop competences which are crucial for being politically engaged members of the EU polity; and (vi) strengthening the bonds of mutual military assistance and scaling up the existing programmes of defence cooperation. By delivering this set of concrete achievements, the EU could be a solution for, rather than a cause of, the current anxieties at the national level.