Failure of the European Union

The European Union has not formed a stable political amalgam or federation out of the component European countries, states and peoples. It won’t be able to do that, at least peacefully, for a very good reason, which is that it cannot create one European people out of many peoples, each of which has its own cultural, economic and political aspirations.

Independent peoples have formed and disappeared in Europe for 3,000 years. Some idea of that shows up in the dynamic map of Europe (see here). It takes 5 minutes of your time to see the changing borders.

The intent of the EU is what its name suggests, a union of states, although its Treaty suggests otherwise. That had been attempted in the past by the Roman Empire and by the Third Reich, among others. It could not be done by force of arms. Could it be done by other means? That’s what the powers behind the EU had planned.

The recorded history of each country also depicts how powers attempted to extend realms and absorb peoples in places beyond their current reach. The EU’s attempt is as old as the hills, although its method was on a grand scale. Leaders with power almost always attempt to extend the territory under their control. They also always have a vital interest in further amalgamating the people under their control under the states they lead.

History also shows that within countries, within empires, and within aggregations of lands and peoples, there are always peoples who would like to separate and form their own states. Peoples form states under their leaders; leaders always arise who want to form them and who will make every effort to do so. A majority of interested people, often far less than an outright majority of the whole people, legitimizes a state or lines up behind leaders because one’s state is viewed as the instrument linked to one’s particular culture, economy and politics. The EU ignores or hopes to overcome both these inter-state and intra-state centrifugal forces.

The EU attempted to erase the differences in peoples and lead them into becoming Europeans, rather than Brits, French, Hungarians, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks, etc. The Treaty on European Union (unamended; Maastricht 1992) may be read here, in all its 250-page glory. Its eventual failure is as clear as its unrealistic or utopian goals. It simply ignores the political, economic and cultural striving of individual peoples that has marked Europe for thousands of years.

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3:32 pm on January 20, 2019