Recent news indicates that in the upcoming European elections, polls suggest a trend toward nationalist parties that are inherently eurosceptic, potentially winning in nine of the twenty-seven member states.
If this trend is confirmed in the election, how did we get here?
“My parents subscribed to an economic union, not a political union, nor flags, nor anthems, nor presidents,” argued Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit, in his historic farewell speech to the European Union. Moments later, he raised the flag of his country and was silenced with orders to put away the flag as it was breaking the rules.
The growing erasure of the individuality of member states, the lack of clarity and even transparency in the election process for their highest representatives, such as the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council who are not elected by direct suffrage, have been reasons for contestation by many member states.
The European Union should be a meeting point for countries that, despite having different cultures, languages, and all the dimensions that mark their differences, find an economic, financial, diplomatic alliance, a space of freedom. In much of what we can take positively from this project, there has increasingly been a centralized management, distanced from the elector of the member states with too many politicians, too many bodies, too many regulations, and for a liberal-libertarian, too much collectivism. The “one size fits all” approach. The denial of individuality has been catastrophic for the European project: There are no identical individuals or countries, from which we deduce that unanimity of positions is not a guarantee in democracy, and the silencing of those with different plans for their nations, as chosen by their people’s suffrage, cannot be ignored or canceled.
In recent years, the European Union has managed the migration issue inefficiently and, in the absence of solutions, imposed “mandatory solidarity” with fines of up to €20,000 for each refugee a country does not accept.
We are talking about coercion of one state over another and, ultimately, over the people, as they are the ones who foot the bill.
There is also dissatisfaction with fiscal issues: The European Union collects €325.8 billion in environmental taxes (Eurostat, 2021), the cost of green policies again pressures Europeans. Even online purchases are now monitored: Above 30 sales per year or €2,000 on online platforms, citizens are required to report to the tax authorities.
The sense of loss of freedom has been more acutely felt in Europeans’ lives than the advantages of being part of this Union in recent times, which is why the desire expressed in polls for a European reconfiguration is normal, before it moves rapidly towards its own disintegration.
The European Union will only be sustainable if it is popular, and it will only be popular if it is free, if each country can raise its own flag and culture and act, speak, and trade in freedom.
In the future European Union, intervention in its member states must be minimal, constructive, and authorized by the citizens of each of the 27.
Less intervention, more freedom.
27 United, are stronger than 1 Disunited.