The EU has never looked worse. Last week alone, Denmark rejected the deepening of ties with the EU in a referendum, France’s anti-EU party received a leading number of votes in its regional election, and Sweden, Germany, and Austria have all reinstated border control—effectively ending Schengen for most of Europe. Despite these developments, the EU’s response never changes: It is always “more Europe.”
“A national approach is not enough. We need more Europe,” said Etienne Schneider, member of the Luxembourg Socialist Party in response to the Paris attacks. In Madrid two weeks ago, the European Peoples Party (EPP), the largest faction in the European Parliament, recently voted to affirm that, “integration is the foundational philosophy behind the EU.” These and other voices echo Angela Merkel who has taken the strongest stance on “more Europe.” As the EU grows less and less acceptable to the people of Europe, the “Eurocrats'” insistence on “more Europe” begins to sound irrational.
More of what, one might wonder. When EU bureaucrats say “Europe,” they usually mean the institutions of the European Union. In other words, they’re talking about their own offices. Their call for “more Europe” is a call for more power to the bureaucrats themselves: more centralized power in the hands of the EU bureaucracy, and less in the hands of sovereign states.
But who can really blame them for having this reaction? The notion of “more Europe” is enshrined in the very constitution that guides their work. The Treaty on European Union, signed in 1992, describes a “process of creating an ever closer union.” The call for more political power in the hands of Brussels is ingrained in the very structure of the EU. That is precisely the problem: The EU was founded on the vague and unpopular concept of centralization and shared (read limited) national sovereignty.
At the EU’s core is the idea that increased centralization promotes unity and minimizes national differences. The disparities of culture, language, and government between EU member states can be overcome if only a distant and impartial bureaucracy regulated life across the continent. Over time, the idea goes, Europeans would become increasingly similar, Brussels would govern the continent, and those pesky national governments would become relics of a bygone era. Even the EU’s “founding father,” Jean Monnet, revealed his hopes for increasing mutualized sovereignty. In 1953, he described the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community as the first step in “the creation of institutions and the promotion of material progress” toward the ultimate goal of a “common ideal.” “We can never sufficiently emphasize that the six Community countries are the forerunners of a broader, united Europe,” he later said.
The EU’s bureaucrats ardently cherish this idea. Simply put, they share a common belief that the nation states of Europe have a tendency toward war and destruction, and the EU is the antidote to it. They often credit the EU with having prevented war in Europe—Angela Merkel for example made this point in a speech to the British Parliament last year. This claim implies that were the EU not to exist as it does today, war would likely have occurred; an assumption based on no evidence at all and without regard to the many factors that have made war less likely since WWII, including the development of nuclear weapons and the powerful position the United States plays as an international security guarantor.
In 2010, “Charlemagne,” an Economist column on European affairs, points to a belief in all things supranational, not lust for power, as behind the drive for “more Europe.” The EU bureaucrats, Charlemagne contends, are a different breed from the French, Germans, or English. They define themselves as supranational—speaking many languages and perhaps married to a foreigner. They educate their children in special European schools designed for the families of EU civil servants. They do not disguise their dislike for national identity.
For these bureaucrats, the idea of the EU itself is virtually a matter of faith. They see their role as closer to employees in the Vatican than those in London or New York—motivated by faith in the European project rather than money or power.
The Eurocrats are both cosmopolitan and deterministic: they believe that “forces of history” are moving people away from traditional structures like nation states. They cling to a specific theory of history—that the future will bring an “ever closer union.” Yet their faith is belied by facts on the ground. Most significant legislation, from education policy, to gay marriage, to welfare reform, is taken by nation states. And the big decisions, such as intervening in foreign conflicts or bailing out Greece, are taken by France and Germany. Compare this to the European Parliament’s massive effort to regulate all seeds used for European agriculture.
Growing steadily, however, is the size of the EU’s bureaucracies. According to Open Europe, the EU had over 50,000 employees in 2007 and this number grew to over 60,000 in 2011. In 2013, the EU pared back spending for the first time in its history, yet raised its costs significantly. Very little data on employees and salaries is available because the EU refuses to make it public. Documents leaked last year reveal that more than one in five EU officials has a salary of more than 147,000 euros, which is approximately $239,500. So rather than an ever-closer union, it might be more honest to call it an ever-bigger union, or more cynically an ever-more-expensive union.
But, in the eyes of the Eurocrats, the means of money justifies the goal of “more Europe.” The ever-closer union has become an end in itself, rather than a benefit for the people of the continent. Like all powerful ideologies, it won’t disappear easily. It would help if the Eurocrats recognized that “less Europe” is a step in the right direction.
