In the Land of the Lawless
4th February 2016
Until now, the working consensus of the E.U. has been that member states yield part of their sovereignty, pool it in Brussels and through the manifold power of the states, gain back all the more sovereignty. It is now precisely this – committing to delegated power – that appears to the new Polish government to be an infringement of their national pride and Brussels as a world of backrooms in which a few unelected, instead of many elected, make the decisions. So far it has only been angry citizens who have talked like that when they saw themselves being robbed of their self-determination by being forced to adopt energy-saving lamps or through free trade agreements. Now governments are talking that way.
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What is right-wing and what is left-wing criticism of the E.U.? Hard to say when ultimately both are concerned about the same thing: raising the will of the people above an international architecture that has become irritating and inconvenient. The hatred of an E.U. cartel that imposes either economic or cultural rules is uniting the nationalists and socialists in Europe, occasionally even allowing them join together, as in Greece, where the left-radical Syriza formed a coalition with the national-chauvinistic ANEL party.
The transnational Crust hits a speedbump.