On the occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the EU, a journalist (whose name I did not get) on BBC World TV pointed out the following:
It was not, he said, the EEC then EU that brought peace to Europe, it was the overwhelming desire for peace in Europe after the barbaric blood letting of the war Europe had just experienced that led to the creation of the EU.
Now, however, the generations who experienced that European barbarity and the atrocities and all that went with that terrible war, are either dead or too old to influence politics and thinking, Europe seems to have reverted to its bad old ways.
Now, the European leaders are not moved in their policy choices by any desire for a peace they just take for granted, forgetting that you have to nurture peace, work to keep it and not just let it happen. Now the age old European lust for hegemony has returned, possibly with a vengeance.
That is why supposedly economic policies are no longer based on economic principles at all, but on a need to punish. Who do you punish? Those weaker than you, otherwise you wouldn’t dare. You punish the weaker ones and you subjugate them.
That is what is going on in the EU now. The need to impose, to subjugate. The need for hegemony. No longer the need for peace which has been forgotten. And unfortunately the EU is proving an excellent framework for exercising raw power and satisfying this lust.
The framework and the institutions of the EU appear to have easily adapted to their new, or rather old, role.