The European Union’s political project shows the growing need to conciliate its integrative push and the issue of sovereignty. The compatibility of these political priorities is to be assessed by virtue of the possible existence of a tension between them. The starting question thus arises as to what is the relationship between the European integration process and the concept of sovereignty. The political theory of sovereignty deriving from continental philosophy provides theoretical elements to discuss the “origin” of that tension between EU integration and sovereignty and to formulate a political theory of the relation between sovereignty and EU integration. Among these philosophical insights on the theory of sovereignty, Agamben’s and Derrida’s ones stand out in particular and are in this instance valued and compared. They provide useful theoretical and conceptual tools to understand and explain the limits and problems of the European integration process in the light of the relationship with sovereignty. Agamben provides a first theoretical argument on how the EU has proceeded as if the question of the relation between politics and sovereignty could be circumvented, as if EU politics could not-to-be associated with sovereignty. The second theoretical argument emphasises how this attempt has instead reproduced the same dynamics that the EU wanted to avoid, that is, the centrality of the theme of sovereignty. This can be theorised through a Derridean reading of the EU’s language. The rationale of this project suggests that the tension between European integration and sovereignty is rooted in a problem of political language. As such, it can be approached, analysed (and potentially resolved). The problematisation maintains that the EU’s attempts to avoid the problem of sovereignty by seeking an alternative path have not produced the hoped-for results. To relieve the integrative process, the EU must therefore address and clarify its relationship with sovereignty.
