The European Union: From a Single Market to a Tragic Farce

by Drieu Godefridi, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  April 2, 2021

• Five hundred years from now, when historians look back on the COVID era, they will say that America’s “Operation Warp Speed,” under President Donald J. Trump, was a triumph of science and logistics.
• Many liberals have a short memory, but the EU has not always been the big, remote machine it has become.
• The principle of equality of states and the principle of equality of citizens cannot be reconciled in the current EU setting of institutions, says Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court.

• Of course, EU institutions are dressed up with flowery language — such as “making the EU more democratic” — aimed at making people believe that EU institutions… are increasingly democratic and only waiting to become fully democratic.
• This evolution consisted, first of all, in subverting European institutions to make them accomplish, in addition to their economic aims, missions that were foreign to them, such as a “common foreign policy” that was never anything than words. How could you have a foreign policy common to the UK, Austria and Portugal?
• EU elites are weak, cowardly and pusillanimous because they know they do not represent anyone, in the true democratic sense of the word – they are not democratically elected, they are not transparent and they are not accountable to anyone. They are ultimately the playthings of governments that never agree with each other – but that do have the legitimacy of being truly democratic: elected, transparent, and accountable. There is also no mechanism for citizens to unelect anyone, should they wish to do so.

Concerning the European Union, opinions are divided between those who consider it useless and costly, and those who believe it to be the future of Europe and a model for the human race.

What is the reality?

Before today’s EU emerged, the construction of a European union was, at first, a tremendous success.

Many liberals have a short memory, but the EU has not always been the big, remote machine it has become. In the era of the more modestly named “European Communities” – entailing, for example, cooperation amongst multiple countries’ economies; or within their coal, steel and nuclear industries – Europe achieved four freedoms of movement: those of people, capital, services and goods. Despite its flaws, shortcomings and innumerable imperfections (nothing human is perfect), this common – or single – market made a massive and substantial contribution to the freedom and prosperity of Europeans.

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