by Hugo Dionísio, Strategic Culture:

The European Union shows all the symptoms of a structure in deep crisis. Like other organizations in the past, the more it tries to convey an image of internal cohesion, the greater the fissures it creates, based on the increasingly rigid demand for compliance with the rules that this appearance of cohesion requires.

In order to assert its political power, Brussels is presented as a power that is as distant as it is unattainable, so superior that everything it has is unquestionable. Placing itself on such a pedestal, Brussels arrogates to itself a presumed wisdom and omniscience, relying on a very well-constructed communication process, based on the idea of a power above all others, above the elected powers, above the “people’s governments”: “The EU said that…”; “the EU says you can’t…”; “the government asked the EU to…”; “the EU warned that…”; “the government was forced by the EU to…”. One gets all this, without question, criticism or reflection. A sort of European extension of the “one indispensable nation” theory.