Europe's "military coup"

Under the guise of the “Russian threat”, EU elites aim to intensify the crackdown on democracy — and transfer even more power to Brussels

I’ve written for Compact about the EU’s unprecedented rearmament programme, ReArm Europe, and how its true objectives are not economic but political. Under the guise of the “Russian threat”, EU elites aim to intensify the crackdown on democracy — and transfer even more power to Brussels:

Over the past 15 years, the European Union has evolved into an increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic edifice. Especially under von der Leyen, the European Commission has used crisis after crisis to increase its influence over areas of competence that had previously been considered the preserve of national governments—from financial budgets and health policy to foreign affairs and defence—at the expense of democratic control and accountability.

During the past three years, Europe has become increasingly militarized, as von der Leyen seized on the Ukraine crisis to place herself at the lead of the bloc’s response, effectively transforming the Commission, and the EU as a whole, into an extended arm of NATO. Now, under the guise of the “Russian threat,” von der Leyen intends to dramatically accelerate this process of centralization of the bloc’s politics. She has already proposed, for instance, purchasing weapons collectively on behalf of EU member states—following the same “I buy, you pay” model used for the Covid-19 vaccine procurement. This would effectively give the Commission control over the entire military-industrial complex of EU countries—the latest in a long list of institutional coups spearheaded by Brussels.

This is about more than just ramping up the production of weapons. Brussels is pursuing a comprehensive, society-wide militarization. This ambition is reflected in the increasingly strict enforcement of EU-NATO foreign policy—from the threats and pressure used to coerce unaligned leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Roberto Fico in Slovakia into compliance to the outright banning of political candidates who are critical of the EU and NATO, as witnessed in Romania.

In the years ahead, this militarized approach is set to become the dominant paradigm in Europe, as all spheres of life—political, economic, social, cultural and scientific—will be subordinated to the overarching goal of national, or rather supranational, security. This will be used to justify increasingly repressive and authoritarian policies, with the threat of “Russian interference” invoked as a catch-all pretext for everything from online censorship to the suspension of fundamental civil liberties—as well as, of course, the further centralization and verticalization of EU authority—especially given the inevitable backlash these policies are bound to generate.

Read the article here.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)