« We cannot solve the problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”, said Albert Einstein[1]. Does this also apply to institutions?
If there’s one nuance our team holds dear, it’s this: the European Union and Europe are two different realities. The EU has grown so much in recent years that it is regularly confused and trivialised with Europe in the media. But Europe existed before the EU and will undoubtedly exist after it. The EU is merely an attempt to realise an idea, a centuries-old dream, that the nations of Europe should share a common political destiny.
The EU has a considerable record in this area. It has succeeded in guaranteeing peace between its nations for several decades, and in enabling the nations of Eastern Europe, which had suffered so much under the yoke of the USSR, to join an ideal of peace, prosperity and freedom. Its institutions have served this ideal with pride and loyalty for many years, but are they still capable of doing so?
We seem to have serious doubts about this, but we’re looking for a glimpse of the “after”. Because yes, and this is where the distinction is so important, there will be an “after”. The obsolescence of the EU is by no means synonymous with the death of Europe. Quite the contrary, in fact.
For too long, the EU has been too cumbersome, too slow, too complicated. It no longer appeals to the dreams of younger generations, as it once did to the dreams of its predecessors (and indeed, it is ready to cut one of the few successful programmes that produces Euro-citizens, Erasmus[2]). It has doubled in size, and tomorrow it would like to expand even further by integrating almost 100 million new citizens[3], (180 including Turkey), and it has become increasingly burdened with laws and constraints, time-consuming decision-making processes, oversized budgets and out-of-scope programmes, adding to the weight of national apparatuses, without ever having succeeded in establishing a genuine “trans-European” democratic model. Obviously, society is not happy about this, not only citizens, but also the state apparatus, businesses, farmers, etc.
So why persist? If it seems impossible to reform, why insist? All we need is the same boldness, the same imagination, the same ambition as our ancestors, let’s imagine a structure that enables European nations to work together effectively, peacefully, agilely and quickly. With all the new Artificial Intelligence tools now available and in the pipeline, can the European Political Community rise to the challenge?
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[1] The original quote in German: “Probleme kann man niemals mit derselben Denkweise lösen, durch die sie entstanden sind.”
[2] Source: Euronews, 13/09/2024
[3] Balkans: 53 million inhabitants, Ukraine: 38 million + Moldavia: 2.5 million
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