There is a growing impression that Europe`s major powers are planning to take over the European Union, an undertaking that would pose a fundamental threat not only to Europe`s political balance and the enlargement process, but also to the values on which the European Union was founded and which have sustained it to this day, writes Speaker of the Georgian Parliament on the social media.

"According to the German Foreign Minister, twelve countries have already joined Germany`s initiative to abolish the principle of unanimity in EU decision-making. If this initiative is implemented, the European Union will, almost certainly, be transformed from a union of equal member states into a union ruled by the major powers.

Membership of the European Union is not an end in itself. This is true neither for its current members nor for candidate countries. Brexit is the clearest proof of this.

Membership is a means by which a country can protect its national interests more reliably, expand its opportunities and acquire a degree of influence over international decision-making that it could not attain through its size, economic weight and political resources alone.

For smaller states, the principal guarantee of this opportunity is the principle of unanimity.

It is precisely the unanimity rule that ensures that the voice of a small country is not lost amid the interests of the major powers and the arithmetic of the majority. It gives a small state the right to block a decision that would be harmful to it and to demand that its national interests be taken into account. If the principle of unanimity is abolished and decision-making becomes entirely dependent on the will of major powers or entrenched majorities, smaller countries will lose this fundamental instrument. They will no longer be able to protect their vital interests when those interests do not coincide with the political agenda of the majority.

In such circumstances, the issue would no longer be one of sharing part of a country`s sovereignty through EU membership - a voluntary and balanced choice currently made in pursuit of broader economic, political and security objectives. Instead, it would amount to the almost complete loss of genuine sovereignty.

A state that can no longer block decisions harmful to it, and upon which obligations may be imposed against its will, gradually loses not only its freedom to make decisions, but also its very statehood. From an independent political entity, it is reduced to a small region or province within a much larger political system.

Such a model may be advantageous to the major powers, since their size, economic weight and political influence already give them a considerable advantage in the decision-making process. For smaller countries, however, it would be a catastrophic change.

The question will therefore become increasingly urgent: what is the point of membership if its principal benefits and instruments of influence are taken away from the outset?

EU membership is important precisely because it enables a country to support decisions that benefit it, advance its own interests and prevent decisions that would cause it harm. If a country is deprived of these possibilities, the European Union itself is stripped of its significance as a means of protecting national interests. Consequently, both the political appeal of membership and its fundamental rationale disappear.

Moreover, under such conditions, remaining outside the European Union might even prove more advantageous for a small state, since it would at least retain the freedom to make its own independent decisions.

Nor should it be ruled out that one of the indirect objectives of this discussion is precisely to halt enlargement.

It is becoming increasingly clear that no one is contemplating the admission of new members into the European Union in its current form.

Candidate countries are being offered not equal membership in the existing Union, but membership in a pre-emptively altered system in which they would assume all the obligations arising from membership while their principal rights and instruments of influence would be restricted.

The central question, therefore, is not merely when we will be admitted to the European Union.

The central question is: what kind of European Union are we being invited to join, with what rights and with what degree of equality as a member? For membership that deprives a country of its sovereign rights without providing mechanisms for their protection is not integration, but the abolition of sovereignty.

And yet, it appears permissible for Jupiter even to capture Europe", - writes Shalva Papuashvili.