The European Union doesn’t always seek the welfare of its member states. Brexit may have just shaken them up
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To the glee and shock of divided opinons among the UK voters, Brexit was declared the winner. I wish to congratulate the Brits for their courage to take a hard, risky and historic decision. I looked forward to Brexit all along, because it will help to make or break the European Union in the long run, or perhaps even in the short run.
Probably UK will be better off outside the EU. The Brits may enjoy some proud moments of their past glories, and feel relieved from the growing meddling of the German ghost that they fought bravely during the two past world wars. However, it does not mean that EU will be better without UK. I wish to see Brexit hitting EU hard on the nose, so as to provoke a political shock, leading to a serious soul-searching exercise.
It should serve as an emergency call to the EU engineers to watch the gears and check if their juggernaut does not require a thorough revision aimed at ensuring if it is not driving us headlong, causing a whirlwind of anti-democratic chaos, only different by name from the former USSR that it was eager to destroy. Unfortunately it is replacing it. I believe that only the victory of Brexit can make such a revision possible.
The president of the European parliament, the socialist Martin Schulz, has already confessed the need: “Whatever the outcome of the referendum, we need a thorough reform of the EU project with a clarity of guiding rules. ” But this has been heard from various sides in the EU, but nothing has changed in the procedures of the juggernaut driven by a neo-liberal spirit. Promises were made after the Iraq war, after the financial crisis of 2008, after debt crises of the member states and the austerity imposed upon them, after the refugee crisis set in. The EU leaders seem to have lost their credibility.
The core of the problem is that EU is not made of equal partners, and it is not an organization that seeks the welfare of all its member states and their citizens, ensuring the employment and security of their workers, or in world peace, or in promotion of democracy. All these goals have been “proclaimed” since long back to generate fears and win the popular support to fight the enemies of the capitalist interests.
The EU has become an undercover agency of a small core group that can be identified by looking for the location of its important institutional headquarters. Like the UN headquarters in US, they ensure a national supervision and benefits of a lucrative political tourism, largely funded by compulsory contributions of the member states. As I said and wrote repeatedly on different occasions, EU is just a new avatar of colonialism, no longer using troops abroad to ensure its investments and exploring human and natural resources of the colonial world, but does it better now with digital means of controlling finances, and by checking and eliminating the protesters.
The EU needs to be denounced as an antidemocratic set-up, governed by bankers, technocrats and their political stooges, who are not elected neither removable by popular vote. Such are the administrators of the European Commission and the European Bank. The mechanism was put together with an ellaborate juridical apparatus of treaties and conventions which characterise Europe’s modus operandi over the past several centuries of European domination.
The foundational treaties were decided largely through inter-governmental commissions, without providing any clear picture of its implications to the national publics, or seeking the approval of the elected national parliaments. The net result of this process has reached a point where the people at the end of the line are feeling the squeeze, and have no mechanism to voice effectively their discontent or channels to demand a change. UK has provided a drastic way out: Brexit.
The EU and its institutions have become a kind of shock troops of the world financial power and its neo-liberal ideology, under democratic mask, but imposing undemocratically upon the citizens of the member states an asphixiating agenda which curtails and scuttles the political will of the national politics as expressed by their elected representatives.
The EU proclaims itself as a high quality club of democracies and human rights, but in reality its functioning can be best described in the words of the Orwell’s Animal Farm, which was conveniently used by the Western capitalist interests as a weapon of ridicule against the former Soviet regime.
In the political discourse of EU we find today better illustrations of the Orwellian double-speak. It has no problem in welcoming among its collaborators with the blink of an eye, the countries like Saudi Arabia, or others that show no respect for basic human rights. In its international relations the EU follows a Realpolitik that promotes the buyers of its lethal goodies, and close the eyes to the violent aggressors, unless they go counter to the core interests of the EU core members.
Obviously, even outside EU, UK has always been a pet puppy of USA and holds an arsenal of Trident cruise missiles. It will continue to play an important role through NATO as a veteran figther for the security of Europe, which is essential for its own island security. However, we may soon see a new configuration of Europe, while Putin grins happily, and the Portuguese Goans pray for and prey upon fresh and devout patrons.
Teotonio R de Souza is Founder-Director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research (1979-1994), Fellow of the Portuguese Academy of History (since 1983), retired professor of Universidade Lusófona, Lisboa (1996-2014), author of Medieval Goa (1979,1994,2009), Goa to Me (1994), Goa outgrowing Postcolonialism (2014) and a dozen of edited works and over 200 published articles
