Lecture by Miguel Roncero Martin
University of Washington, EU Democracy & Security Symposium
June 9, 2026
Guntis Smidchens: Welcome to podcasts hosted by the Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle.
The following lecture was hosted by UW’s Jean Monnet EU Center of Excellence, funded by the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only.
On June 9, 2026, at the University of Washington, we invited Miguel Roncero Martin to share his thoughts in our symposium titled Security of European Union Democracy Institutions.
He is a political scientist by training and joined the European Commission in 2018.
Miguel Roncero Martin currently works at the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, focusing on the EU’s Arctic policy during the 2025-2026 academic year.
He is an EU Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies.
His lecture is titled Security of EU Democracy Institutions: Past, Present and Future.
Miguel Roncero Martin: Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for being here in this room, and thank you, Julio, for coming all the way from Spain.
Since this is also the last event that you are representing at the Jackson School, I would like to thank the Jackson School for hosting me this academic year.
One note before I start is that I am speaking in my personal capacity, so anything I say is my personal opinion only and cannot be attributed to the European Commission or the European Union.
What I am going to talk about is democracy, not necessarily security or geopolitics.
I am not going to go into what may be important moving forward in the current context of the European Union, but I want to speak a little about how the European Union is structured and how it works, at least from my perspective.
I am not talking from the perspective of someone who works at the EU, but as a citizen who sees both angles: the perspective of a citizen and that of someone who also sees a little of how it works from within.
This might be a somewhat idealistic view. You are welcome to challenge me later. I am happy to take questions, but I think it is important to be realistic, even when discussing ideals, when it comes to what the European Union is and what it is not.
Let me start by discussing what it is.
The European Union is a unique democratic project. There is no precedent in human history, and it is a project that has been 75 years in the making.
This year we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States and also the 75th anniversary of the European project. Not the European Union itself, but the broader European project.
The European Union project is ongoing. This 75th anniversary is not an endpoint. It is simply one year in a continuing process with no end in sight.
This is important because it is a new form of transnational governance in which 27 member states are working together to determine the best ways to govern collectively.
We are not talking about a federation or a confederation. The term often used is “supranational union,” which may sound obscure, but essentially it means 27 sovereign states that came together, established rules, and decided how they would govern certain matters collectively within Europe and their territories.
An incredibly innovative aspect of this project is the concept of shared or pooled sovereignty.
The 27 states remain fully sovereign, but in certain areas they have agreed to pool sovereignty and govern collectively. In other areas, they retain sovereignty individually, such as security policy.
This means we have the competences of the European Union, which define both the areas where the EU can act and the extent of its authority.
Some competences are exclusive, such as trade. In trade matters, the European Union acts as a single entity rather than 27 individual states coming together.
When it comes to trade, there is not 27. There is one European Union.
This is important because the collective weight of the single market and the EU economy, roughly $20 trillion and the second-largest economy in the world, acts as one bloc rather than 27 separate economies.
Another innovative aspect of the project is the principles on which the European Union is based: conferral, proportionality, and subsidiarity.
Conferral means that the European Union can only do what the treaties authorize it to do.
The treaties function as the EU’s constitutional texts. If the treaties do not grant a power, the EU cannot exercise it.
Proportionality means that any action taken must be proportionate to the issue being addressed.
Subsidiarity is a key principle and a particularly important one. It means that issues should only be dealt with at the European Union level if that level is the most appropriate and effective for addressing them.
I often use the example that the European Union is never going to regulate traffic in Brussels, even if officials experience traffic there every day. Traffic regulation is a local matter and therefore a local competence.
That is what subsidiarity means.
Both the European Parliament and national parliaments are very committed to maintaining subsidiarity, and they closely monitor EU actions in this regard.
Then we have the institutions.
Like national governments, the EU has a division of powers.
The executive function is carried out by the European Commission.
Legislative power is shared between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament.
The Council represents the member states, in a way somewhat comparable to the U.S. Senate.
The European Parliament represents citizens, similarly to the U.S. House of Representatives.
We also have the European Council, which brings together the 27 heads of state and government.
It is important to note that the European Council is not a legislative body. It is a strategic and policy-setting body.
As Julio mentioned, this means the 27 leaders meet and make decisions, often through consensus.
An equivalent comparison would be if the United States had all 50 governors meeting regularly to agree on strategic matters.
When you have 27 equals sitting together, some decisions are naturally difficult.
However, I would argue that this highlights the necessity of dialogue, cooperation, and genuine understanding.
Moving forward, the European Union is an integration project based on consent, not coercion.
At no other point in history have sovereign states voluntarily come together to form a new type of political entity and then had other sovereign states continually seek membership.
This continues today. Ukraine wants in. Moldova wants in. Countries in the Balkans want in.
This is one of the few political projects in the world where membership continues to grow.
As our High Representative has said, we cannot be doing too badly if people still want to join.
The European Union was also conceived as a project for peace, prosperity, and well-being.
That was the purpose behind the original communities of the 1950s: the European Coal and Steel Community, Euratom, and the European Economic Community.
These institutions were designed to ensure peace in Europe and help rebuild the continent after the war while encouraging economic growth.
This does not mean democracy was absent from the outset.
Democracy was embedded in the project from the beginning through dialogue among member states, agreements among sovereign nations, and decisions made by democratically elected leaders.
Over time, democratic participation was expanded through measures such as direct elections to the European Parliament and mechanisms like the European Citizens’ Initiative established under the Lisbon Treaty.
In many ways, this followed Jean Monnet’s vision that Europe would be built gradually, first through economic integration and then through integration in other areas.
I would therefore argue that the European Union has been democratic from the beginning.
Its legitimacy comes from democratically elected leaders and from treaties negotiated and ratified by national parliaments.
Another point I would like to cover is that geopolitics and democracy are different things.
This is important because discussions about the EU often confuse geopolitical decision-making with democracy or a supposed lack of democracy.
These are distinct questions.
You may need democracy to sustain geopolitical effectiveness, but they are not the same thing.
Critics often argue that the European Union is slow, particularly when decisions require consensus.
They may argue that this creates weakness abroad.
That is a geopolitical argument, not a democratic one.
Whether the EU is effective externally and whether it is democratic internally are separate questions.
For example, the unanimity requirement in common foreign and security policy means that all 27 member states must agree.
They must sit down together, discuss issues, and arrive at a common position.
Frankly, I think that is about as democratic as it gets when 27 sovereign states agree collectively on their course of action.
Of course, systems can be abused.
The system is designed to function in good faith.
When that does not happen, there may be situations where certain member states prioritize national interests over collective interests.
That is not necessarily a failure of the system itself, but rather a misuse of a system built on shared interests and cooperation.
In areas such as trade, where the EU has exclusive competence, decisions can be made much more quickly through qualified majority voting.
The rules are clear.
If enough member states representing enough citizens support a proposal, it moves forward.
There is no requirement for unanimity.
Another point worth highlighting is that the European Union is unprecedented in human history.
As a result, comparisons often fail.
It is not a state, a monarchical union, a federation, or a confederation.
Any comparison with those models is likely to be incomplete because the EU does not fit any existing template.
There is really no established category for the current European project.
It is a first of its kind.
This model has inspired other organizations around the world, such as the African Union.
Others, including Mercosur, may not be following the EU model directly, but they have certainly observed and learned from aspects of the European experience.
What makes the EU particularly remarkable is that it brings together peoples with very old histories and identities, some stretching back thousands of years.
Greece is an obvious example. Many countries that draw upon the Roman tradition can trace elements of their heritage back over two thousand years.
We have very old peoples and identities in Europe, yet a new political framework has been created to bring them together.
That new framework is the European Union.
Again, it is something genuinely new.
Comparisons with traditional nation-state models inevitably fall short.
What is interesting is that European citizens themselves seem comfortable with this arrangement.
According to recent Eurobarometer surveys, roughly 75% of EU citizens report feeling attached both to the European Union and to their own member state.
In other words, many people feel simultaneously Spanish and European, Greek and European, or Estonian and European.
These identities are not contradictory. They are complementary.
We are not discussing legal citizenship here. We are discussing how people perceive themselves.
If Europeans themselves embrace this dual identity, then it is difficult for others to argue that such a shared sense of belonging does not exist.
The design of the European Union does not always favor speed.
That is a conscious trade-off in favor of legitimacy and collective agreement.
The objective is to bring people together and encourage cooperation rather than impose decisions from above.
I would also argue that during moments of crisis, the European Union has delivered.
Jean Monnet once suggested, and I am paraphrasing, that Europe would be forged through crises and would be defined by how it responded to them.
We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic, during the energy crisis of 2022, and now in relation to Ukraine.
The EU can sometimes appear reactive, but when critical moments arrive, it has generally delivered results.
Whether those results satisfy everyone is another question.
Making the EU faster could also make it weaker, more centralized, and potentially less attractive to member states and citizens.
We do not know for certain.
However, if around 75% of citizens feel connected to the Union, the current project must be doing something right.
A more centralized EU might undermine the voluntary nature of membership and cooperation that lies at the heart of the European project.
It could run contrary to the idea of a union of equals.
There are, of course, real tensions.
One concerns the relationship between national identities and a broader European identity.
Is Europe made up of 27 separate peoples, many peoples beyond that, or a single European people?
As I mentioned earlier, most Europeans do not seem particularly troubled by this question.
They are comfortable saying, “I belong to my nation, and I am also a European citizen.”
Another tension involves balancing power and legitimacy.
How do you distribute authority in a way that remains attractive, effective, and democratic while also allowing timely action, particularly in geopolitics?
Sometimes that balance comes at the expense of speed.
That is a real trade-off.
As I mentioned, security and geopolitics are different from democracy and democratic decision-making.
We should not confuse one with the other.
Both are necessary, but they are not the same thing.
Security remains one of the last core competences of the nation-state.
According to Max Weber’s famous definition of the state as the entity that claims the legitimate use of force, defense and security remain central elements of statehood.
If member states were ever to transfer full authority over security matters, their nature as sovereign states might change significantly.
That remains a hypothetical discussion.
For now, security remains a national competence within the European Union.
That is the framework within which geopolitical decision-making currently operates.
To conclude, I actually appreciate it when people become frustrated with the European Union because it shows they care.
People who truly do not care tend to be indifferent. When people become engaged, frustrated, it shows they care.
It shows that they have a different vision of the EU that they would like to see, and I appreciate that.
I appreciate that. But I also think we should not judge the current European Union project against the wrong template or the wrong standards.
Ironically, when it comes to transnational democracy and building transnational democracy, the EU, as often happens, is setting standards not only for itself but also for the rest of the world.
The Brussels Effect also plays a strong role when it comes to transnational democracy.
Just to finish, I would like to remind you that the European Union’s motto is “United in Diversity,” and I believe that diversity is a strength of the EU, not a weakness.
Thank you very much.
Guntis Smidchens: You have been listening to Miguel Roncero Martin speaking at the Symposium on Security of European Union Democracy Institutions, recorded at the University of Washington in Seattle on June 9, 2026.
This lecture and podcast were produced by the UW Jackson School of International Studies, supported by funds from the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Washington, the European Union, or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency.
Neither the University of Washington nor the European Union can be held responsible for them.
You also heard the European anthem’s big band version, composed by Pierre Lange and Bertrand Vigier and performed by Pierre Lange, Joe Krenker, and Jean-Gilles Charvot.