All I see in the news is Hungary being a thorn in the side of the EU. Why can’t they just kick Hungary out of the EU?
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Basically, this is due to the EU not being a nation and Hungary being one. Hungary as a nation has rights, the EU does not. A nation always has one very important right: the right to govern themselves, SOVEREIGNTY.
For the EU to work while maintaining the sovereignty of their members (their capacity to govern themselves FREELY as a nation), it’s important that decisions are made democratically and applied only consensually (ie, the Euro was approved but not everyone joined the Euro). No one is forced to do nothing, which means that Hungary can avoid adopting changes that the EU mandates, which means we can’t adopt measures that require specifically Hungary to be there (mainly war measures).
For this democracy to sustain itself, it’s important that stronger members can’t abuse weaker members, which is why kicking out someone is not even contemplated – because at some point, it could be used as coercion by the stronger members.
If coercion could be used, then the EU would be violating the sovereignty because the decisions are no longer made without interference, they’re being “manipulated” and they’re losing their “freedom” as a nation.
This has the side effect of creating an inverse scenario – because we’re not able to kick them out, they’re able to be a pain in the ass. But given that the EU is not a nation, no sovereignty is being violated.
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