This text is treated as an ongoing project and will thus be updated periodically. Therefore, it does not have a conclusion yet and ends abruptly.

Ever since starting my third and final year of political science at the VUB, the EU has been an inescapable topic of discussion for me for many years now. When I first started my academic journey, I must admit I had very little clue about how the EU functioned. This, unfortunately however, is quite the norm. I experienced this norm first-hand recently. I was on my way to the European Parliament building in Brussels for a hearing on Syria. –For which you apparently need a badge to enter!? Bastards…– When I stopped to ask a metro worker the fastest way to the EP, he told me to take the number 5 and stop at Schuman. I followed his advice thinking rather uncritically due to time pressure. Readers who are familiar with the charmingly dystopian metropolis that is Brussels will know that Schuman doesn’t stop at the European Parliament, but under the European Commission. The worker must have confused the Parliament building with that of the Commission. European institutional complexity had thus caused me to be late to one of their own hearings.

This anecdote got me thinking about the EU’s strange existence and about how most people (including a scary amount of political science students) know very little about the way the EU works. Despite its attempts to seem accessible to its constituents, even inhabitants of Brussels who pass by the big glass and metal buildings of the Union daily remain estranged from it.

This essay is a loose draft of thoughts on the EU. I might update it from time to time as I have multiple courses that cover the EU from diverse angles this academic year, which hopefully will give me new insights and a more thorough perspective on it all. I remain critical of the EU (as I remain critical of any hierarchical institution). It is easy to criticize it as an Orwellian or Kafkaesque nightmare, the way many populists tend to do.  While the ease of making an argument doesn’t necessarily take away from its value, I do still believe the Union has been built upon a political idea that is, in its core, honourable and that it will play an important normative role in determining Europe’s future in the coming decades. I will thus start with a positive word before I explain what I see as its main shortcomings.

Praising the EU?

I used to be an ardent critic of the West and, as a result, also of the EU. In many ways I still am and probably always will be. However, it would be foolish to refuse to see any merit in the organisation.

The main hindrance when looking to praise it remains the discourse on post- and now neo-colonialism. As a lot of the discourse still sees a strong EU as a continuation of western imperial primacy, it becomes almost impossible to try to defend it. I do not refute that any neo-colonial conduct by the EU and her member states must cease immediately. Not only do these policies (like that of France and her colonial tax on numerous ex-colonies) completely delegitimise any claim to moral superiority, but they are also a direct contradiction of anything the EU says it stands for. Also her position on the Palestinian question ought to be discussed, however this merits another essay entirely.

However, it is not uncommon for polities to contradict their own founding principles. In fact, it is the norm more frequently than the exception. The Soviet Union is probably the most vulgar and recent example of this, but any Western state has similar blood on her hands. Just look at Winston Churchill, a man praised as a symbol of hope and the fight against fascism, while himself being nothing short of a genocide-praising white supremacist.

I claim that the EU, despite contradicting herself often, still stands upon ideas that I believe to be valuable. The merit of classically liberal -and Kantian- ideas of international cooperation, albeit not out of sense humanitarian solidarity as much for mutual benefit, democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law are hard to dispute. These ideas and their varyingly successful implementations in the different EU member states are often taken for granted. As a dual citizen of both Turkey and Belgium, I see every day how much the execution of these ideas positively impact the overall quality of life. And, perhaps more importantly, how the lack of these principles can express themselves in a very vulgar fashion.

This morality of its values only forms the basis for a utopia. Another layer is an ever-critical citizen body that is ruthless in her demands for better governance. Hence, my main critiques of the EU:

Dogma

I have already dedicated part of an essay on Sanda Dia to a phenomenon I like to call judicial dogma. In the essay I apply the idea to the Belgian national discourse, but I believe the EU suffers from similar symptoms.

I recently attended two free policy talks held by the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), the summaries of which are also available on The Analytic Hour. What struck me was a sense of self-importance and arrogance that left a bad taste in the mouth. The uncritical mind could leave these meetings and think all is going well and the EU has it all under control. Of course, it is to be expected that the EU’s very own think tank will praise it, yet I refute that this is necessary.

The clearest example of this was demonstrated during the talk on the EU’s financial support to Ukraine. My question to the speaker regarded whether it was a good idea to rush Ukrainian EU-membership and that this could aggravate our insecure and angry Russian neighbour. In my view a fair question, as one of the main reasons for Putin’s invasion was a sense of increased EU and NATO expansion into his perceived sphere of influence. The response I got was a very arrogant dismissal of the notion that the EU had ever shown signs of invading Russia’s sphere of influence, followed by the beautiful contradicting conclusion that EU policy will focus on completely integrating Ukraine and making her a “beacon of democracy, hope and freedom” in the hopes of influencing neighbouring countries. “We never disrespected Putin’s sphere of influence!” said the Eurocrat while praising further invasion of Putin’s -perceived- sphere of influence.

Another example was a talk on EU mental health policy. Yet again one could walk away with a feeling that all is well and the EU is taking care of it. All of this, while almost all the external factors causing the deterioration of mental health are due to the political leadership -or lack thereof- of the past 30 or so years. A political leadership the EU has played a large role in.

The cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine (yes, the EU has played a role in the aggravation of this conflict), an invasive workplace, a toxic social media space and, worst of all, a prevailing culture of empty consumerism and decadent neo-liberalism. These are problems that have been allowed to gain momentum due to a lack of political courage to act over a prolonged period. The EU seems to take no credit in partially creating these problems, yet is very enthusiastic about parading its plans to tackle them.