The EU started as an economic union, with countries joining together to gain an economic advantage and bargaining power on the global stage, but also to facilitate trade between states themselves. The upside would be better economies for member countries. Poorer countries would be lifted up, and richer countries would continue to develop their unique characteristics, and together the whole would be greater than the individual parts.
When the EU could not guarantee economic recovery, and we had crisis after crisis, we realised that the economic project was failing. Instead, we got more bureaucracy, corrupt politicians, and more recently, threats of censorship and repressive legislation. The migration experiment hasn’t helped; the changing cityscape, cultural contradictions, and increased crime have led to great discontent among many citizens.
This discontent has long been dismissed as intolerance and racism, but people have had enough. The word game is getting really tiring, especially when it comes to ordinary citizens who want to raise issues of violence, bombings, substandard schools, healthcare, etc.
And the parties that represent these unpopular views are getting big. They are often called populists by their opponents, and when they cannot be stopped by words, they try to legislate against them, or prosecute them for criminal offences. We see this in France with the accusations against Le Pen, AfD in Germany and Georgescu in Romania.
Power does everything to preserve itself. And our corrupt politicians are becoming increasingly out of touch with the world, from spending billions on building carbon sinks to preparing for war with Russia.
Few Europeans believe in the exaggerated climate threat, no one wants to risk their lives in muddy trenches in the East, and on top of that, no one believes in the multicultural society anymore. Especially when it is no longer multicultural, but dominated by a specific religion.
The whole post-war philosophical tapestry is slowly unravelling. We built our societies around the equal value of all and humanism, which sounds good and reasonable, but the intoxication of goodness soon led to a ban on criticising other ethnic groups, cultures or defending one’s own people. This culture of niceness made us Europeans easy targets, to be exploited by other less unscrupulous groups.
Political hypocrisy has normalised to the point where people accept politicians’ stupidity, even though they are wrong about most things. Remember the ice caps that were supposed to melt, and the seas that were supposed to rise? And wages would go up, unemployment would go down, inflation would be fought, multiculturalism would contribute to a better economy, profits would come later? And we would dismantle our military, no one would fight any more wars, etc etc? We would never accept so much stupidity from any other profession.
We are looking at a broken Union, with several different factions. On the one hand we have a North-South faction, and on the other hand we have an East-West faction, with people of different cultures opposing the Union in different ways. Italian Prime Minister Meloni ignored the EU’s common agenda and met President Trump himself to negotiate tariffs. We have Orban and other central European politicians who have slowly distanced themselves from Brussels, waiting for a change of power in the Union. Then there’s rebellious France, where anything can happen. And the obedient Nordic countries, whose excessive obedience has fuelled the Union’s totalitarian ambitions, which of course also contributes to its future fall.
When will the EU disintegrate? It’s hard to answer, of course, but we remember the Eastern bloc dismantling itself suddenly and unexpectedly. When all the political charades become meaningless and even the liars get tired of spreading their lies, then the fruit is ready to fall. When politicians are just actors and everything they say is rubbish, when bureaucracy is perceived as meaningless, when elected representatives no longer serve the people, let alone listen to them, then it is time.
