EU: Europe Undone
The picture is not pretty. It turns
out that all the foundational ideas of the European project, the voluntary
integration of sovereignty based on shared values (democracy, human rights,
rule of law) and shared aims (peace, prosperity, mobility, economic
cooperation), are being dismantled at astonishing speed. In their place is
emerging something bleak. Peace has turned into a galloping militarization and
into the conversion of the EU from an economic union into a military one.
Freedom of movement and human rights were already suspended during the covid
era and were finished off entirely once the Ukraine conflict began, along with
the last traces of financial freedom.
The rule of law has not fared better. For example, are you aware that the so-called Reichsbürger, elderly men in corduroy trousers armed with a crossbow and an antique pistol, have been imprisoned in Germany for three years without trial on charges of attempting a coup?
As for efforts to ban the most popular parliamentary party, the AfD, in
the same Germany, that barely needs comment. But the main mission of the EU was
economic cooperation, because the EU is, at its core, supposed to be an
economic union of sovereign states.
How this economic cooperation has worked in reality can be seen in any country, so let us take Portugal. While the EU still performed its basic functions, the clever Portuguese used the opportunity to upgrade infrastructure, invest in wine production and replant vineyards. Then things got hot. First came the forced distribution of migrants from Muslim countries. Billboards appeared across Portugal reading, We have been solving migration issues since 1565, a reference to the expulsion of Moors and Jews. Then Brussels banned the sale of Portugal’s own bananas from Madeira, some of the best bananas in the world. The reason? They are not pretty enough. The joke about the EU measuring the curvature of bananas is not a joke at all. This is the level of economic reasoning in the special departments of the European Commission.
Then it became worse. The EU began to destroy Portugal’s fishing industry by imposing absurd conditions, sending entire fishing cooperatives to the bottom. Meanwhile, Spanish vessels received the quotas. Why? On what grounds? The EU does not answer such questions. You were told to comply, so comply. The result: traditional Portuguese bacalao now comes from Norway. Why? Because Brussels said so.
Every European country can tell thousands of such stories. This random demolition of national economies requires a massive bureaucracy, which is why the European Commission apparatus grew out of control.
By the 2000s, with the admission of the former Eastern Bloc, it became clear that in the family of equal, proud nations, equals did not exist. There was a core group of three or four, a secondary group, and then a set of states that served as raw material for everyone else. Hungary’s entry in 2004 is a case in point. Shiny new malls appeared for consumers, while Western companies bought factories only to close them. Flagship plants were absorbed into the industrial systems of the first-tier countries. Third-tier countries were meant to consume and not compete with Germany, France or, then, Britain.
Hungary was lucky. Orban arrived and understood everything quickly. At this moment two trajectories of EU development collided in a structural conflict. Ursula von der Leyen, protégé of Merkel and Macron, fresh from discarding all four of her mobile phones containing inconvenient messages from her Ministry of Defense days, became head of the Commission and swiftly brought everything under her control.
Her first priority was political interference inside member states, which is explicitly at odds with the economic basis of the union. If Brussels disliked Poland’s judicial reform, von der Leyen simply cut Poland’s covid-recovery funds. Billions. Then she used the same tactic against Hungary when Orban decided that uncontrolled migration was harmful to his country and his people.
With unchecked control over vast sums of money (see also the Pfizer vaccine billions and her erased correspondence with Bourla), von der Leyen came to view herself as the empress of Europe. What first appeared in the 2000s now bloomed fully. Under her direction, Brussels is breaking EU members over its knee. Her main goal is crushing the resistance of states that refuse to obey. Hence the new rule: dissenting countries can be excluded from voting. Meanwhile new projects appear one after another: extralegal financing of the Ukraine war, despite Ukraine not being an EU member; the construction of a defense union; the conversion of the EU from an economic bloc into a military one; the creation of a censorship and intelligence structure under the pretext of fighting disinformation.
Every initiative serves to strengthen her personal power and, as a result, to deepen internal fractures. More and more countries resist Commission decisions. In return they face overwhelming pressure, including physical intimidation. The attempted assassination of Slovakia’s Prime Minister Fico is a vivid example.
The once unthinkable idea of a European war with Russia serves to frighten populations and intimidate national leaders into rallying around von der Leyen, who has effectively seized control of the European structure.
This unchecked power has corrupted the entire Commission with stunning speed. There was the scandal with the Greek MEP caught with suitcases of cash. Now another scandal erupts, involving Federica Mogherini, who manipulated tenders to secure a comfortable position in a new EU training institution. And she is far from alone.
Then there is the matter of the Russian assets supposedly held in Belgium, though nobody knows if they even still exist. Belgium resists confiscation because it does not want to be the fall guy when the financial system unravels. Any sane person understands that seizing the assets of a sovereign state for political reasons violates the fundamental principles of the modern European order. Even after World War II, the victorious Allies did not seize Germany’s frozen funds.
But now German Chancellor Merz travels to Brussels and pressures the Belgian prime minister to approve the theft. They do not care what this will do to the European financial architecture. They have become obsessed with the idea.
So here we are, in 2025, with the backdrop of Christmas markets, waiting for the next terrorist attack from yet another imported migrant. And we can carve in stone, as Medvedev likes to say, a simple truth.
The only genuinely successful creation of the European Union was the Schengen Agreement, which once made life easier for ordinary people. And even Schengen is now quietly collapsing, with border guards, patrols and dogs reappearing between supposedly united members of the European family.
It would not be surprising if one morning we woke up at six with a sense of relief: no waistband elastic and no European Union. Still ugly, but a clear improvement.