by Emmanuel Lynch

Introduction

Referring to the degree of federal integration of nations in the European Union, it's common to hear people say that we need "more Europe" or "less Europe".

As we approach the so-called "European" elections, the ambition of this article is to show that Europe is a historical and cultural phenomenon, a Civilization, which differs radically from a European Union that is part of a political order consisting of a federal and supranational state, an Empire, whose characteristic is to be materialistic and atheistic on the one hand, and socialist and liberal on the other. Since Europe is a reality other than the European Union, rather than "more Europe" or "less Europe", it would be more accurate to refer to "more supranational state" or "less supranational state", or "more Empire" or "less Empire".

What is Europe?

Where does the term Europe come from? The origin of the term Europe is probably Semitic, ereb, and indicates a direction, the setting sun[1]. The term Europe first appeared in the Middle Ages. The people of Constantinople called the inhabitants of the Latin West "Europeans"[2]. Europe, a term that first appeared in the Middle Ages, therefore indicates a direction, that of the setting sun, a direction pointed from the East.

What are the limits of Europe? Once we've said that Europe is a direction, we need to define the boundaries of this European space. What is its eastern limit? Is it a cultural boundary with the Orthodox world? Is it a physical boundary with a mountain range? The Urals? Or is it something else? If it's difficult to determine Europe's borders, it's because Europe is not primarily a geographical concept. Europe is above all a question of history and culture[3]. In a word, as Fernand Braudel shows in his Grammaire des civilisations[4], Europe is a Civilization. And the cultural matrix of this Civilization is Rome, a Romanity that has absorbed the heritage of Athens and its philosophy, of Jerusalem and its faith. In his book Europe, la voie romaine, the philosopher Rémi Brague describes the relationship between this Romanity and its Greek source on the one hand, and between Christianity and its Hebraic source on the other, as a cultural "secondarity"[5] .

Europe is therefore first and foremost a direction. The difficulty of grasping its borders shows that Europe, before being geographical, is above all history and culture, a true Civilization. And the key to understanding Europe is Romanity, as embraced by the nations of the threefold Greek, Biblical and Roman heritage.

Confederation or federation: what path has "European construction" taken?

What is a confederation? A confederation is an international organization governed by public international law[6]. What is a federation? A federation is governed by constitutional law[7], and is based on a federal constitution. This is the case of the United States and Switzerland, improperly called a confederation[8] because the latter has a federal constitution[9]. A "federation" says nothing about whether it is national, as in the United States, or multi-national, as in the Russian Federation, which has several nationalities (Russians, Tatars, Chechens, etc.). It should be pointed out that while citizenship is the same as nationality in a national state, whether federal or not, citizenship differs from nationality in a supranational state. To take a concrete example, in a supranational federation, a Chechen belongs to the Chechen People and Nation, but has citizenship of the Russian Federation, the supranational state.

Did the "construction of Europe" follow a confederal or federal logic? Three main phases[10] can be identified in this "construction of Europe": a first federal phase, a second confederal phase and a third federal phase. The first federal phase began in 1951 with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), an embryonic federal state including a court of justice, and ended in 1958 with General de Gaulle's arrival in power in France, marking the end of federal construction. The second confederal phase runs from 1958 to 1974, with the "Gaullian parenthesis"[11] that saw the founder of the Fifth French Republic and his successor Georges Pompidou defend a confederal vision based on public international law. The third phase runs from 1974, when Valery Giscard d'Estaing came to power, to the present day. This is the continuation of the development of federal construction interrupted during the "Gaullist parenthesis"[12]. This period was marked by a major milestone in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty, which gave the European Union a truly federal constitution.

What is the European Union?

The European Union is a supranational state. It is a state in the sense that it has all the characteristics of a state: a population, a territory, organized power and sovereignty[13], which itself comprises four prerogatives: making laws, dispensing justice, minting money (in the euro zone at least) and deciding on peace and war, as we can see from the conflict in Ukraine. The fact that this federal state covers several nations makes it a supranational federal state.

The supranational federal state of the European Union is an empire, since it shares the major characteristics of one, starting with the fact that it is a state that rules over several Peoples and Nations. The European Union shares many other characteristics with Empires. Like an Empire, the European Union's logic is one of expansion, with successive enlargements, the latest of which will take the Empire from twenty-seven to thirty-five members. Like an Empire, the European Union needs to be idolized in the image of the "European construction" it is supposed to adore. Like an Empire, the European Union mixes temporal and spiritual dimensions with the promotion of a new anthropology such as that of gender theory and wokism, an ideology that gives a central place to this same gender theory. Like an Empire, the European Union established imperial citizenship with the Maastricht Treaty. There is scarcely one characteristic that the Empire of the European Union does not share with the Empires of the past: their downfall.[14].

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The Empire of the European Union is independent of civilizational logic, since non-European peoples such as Turkey are invited to join. The Empire of the European Union has little to do with Europe. To conclude the more in-depth demonstration contained in La Nation face à l’Empire[15], this Empire of the European Union is socialist and liberal in nature, materialistic and atheistic. As historian Éric Branca has magnificently demonstrated, the workings of the European Union resemble those of the Soviet Empire[16], a Soviet Union that shifted from East to West between late 1991 and early 1992. Yes, in many ways, the European Union is the new Soviet Union.

Conclusion

If Europe is a Civilization, the fruit of a shared history and culture, the European Union is a federal and supranational state, a materialistic and atheistic Empire of a socialist and liberal nature, an Empire that looks more and more like the Soviet Empire every day. The Empire of the European Union has no interest whatsoever in the European civilization inherited from Rome, Athens and Jerusalem. As demonstrated in 2005 by its refusal to mention Europe's Christian roots in the draft updating of the federal constitution inaugurated by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the Empire of the European Union is clearly opposed to European Civilization. The Empire of the European Union is opposed to a European Civilization that accords a central place to a Christian logos that historically absorbed the Greek logos before spreading out into the immense Romanized space. In short, the Empire of the European Union is at war with Europe.

Note

[1]BRAGUE, Rémi, Europe, la voie romaine, Folio-essais, Paris, NRF, 1999, p 11.

[2] BRAGUE, Rémi, Au moyen du Moyen-Age : Philosophies médiévales en chrétienté, judaïsme et islam, Paris, Flammarion, 2008, p 319.

[3]RATZINGER, Joseph, L’Europe, ses fondements, aujourd’hui et demain, Editions Saint-Augustin, 2005, p 70.

[4]BRAUDEL, Fernand, Grammaire des civilisations, Paris, Arthaud, 1987, rééd. Flammarion, Paris, 2013.

[5]BRAGUE, Rémi, Europe, la voie romaine, Folio-essais, Paris, NRF, 1999.

[6]GOHIN, Olivier, Droit constitutionnel, 3ème édition, Paris, LexisNexis, 2016, p 57.

[7]Ibid, p 78.

[8]Ibid., p. 58

[9]www.admin.ch

[10]To recall it, we can identify three main phases in the preparation of "European construction": The first phase is that of interwar pacifism with two major players-Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the prophet of the Pan-European Union, of the United States of Europe, re-proposing their vision in the Pan-European Manifesto published exactly one hundred years ago-this was the theme of a conference held in early October at the Parliament of the European Union. It was then Aristide Briand, foreign minister, who brought Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi's ambition politically before the League of Nations (SDN) with a Memorandum on the organization of a regime of a European Federal Union; (ii) the second phase is American control after World War II: Jean Monnet represents American interests and publishes in the mid-1950s. The United States of Europe has begun. The federal logic modeled on the United States is also very clear; and (iii) the third phase is the action of the Christian Democrats: Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi, nostalgic for the Holy Roman Empire who support the vision of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi and Jean Monnet even though there is nothing Christian about it. This is also a federal vision.

[11]LYNCH, Emmanuel, La Nation face à l’Empire, Paris, ML Éditions, 2021, rééd. Paris ML Éditions, 2022, p 218.

[12]Ibid.

[13]GOHIN, Olivier, Ibid.

[14]DUROSELLE, Jean-Baptiste, Tout Empire Périra, Théorie des relations internationales, Paris, Armand Colin, 1992.

[15]LYNCH, Emmanuel, La Nation face à l’Empire, Paris, ML Éditions, 2021, rééd. Paris ML Éditions, 2022.

[16]European Union Conference: an Empire versus Nations on December 9, 2022 at the Latin American House in Paris, text available on the France Libre Vraie Europe movement website.

Addendum

They are available on the website of the France Libre Vraie Europe movement at https://francelibrevraieeurope.fr

[1]LYNCH, Emmanuel, ibid.

[2]LYNCH, Emmanuel, Politique Théorique, Paris, ML Éditions, 2023.

emmanuel lynch

Engineer, economist and historian, auditor at the Institut des hautes études de Défense nationale in France, founder of the movement France Libre Vraie Europe. He wrote La Nation face à l’Empire.