In 1988, in Bruges, Belgium, near Brussels, an unapologetic British nationalist denounced efforts to “suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the center of a European conglomerate.” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher continued: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level.”
When the dyspeptic poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), who loathed Belgium even more than most things, was asked to imagine an epitaph for that nation, he suggested: “At last!” Which is how many Europeans feel about the rapidly growing disgust with the European Union, which is headquartered in Brussels.
Opposition to the EU is a worthy cause that unfortunately has been embraced by, and might become the property of, political parties tainted by disreputable motives and members. That xenophobia, anti-Semitism and other acrid aromas of Europe’s past are today present in corners of the continent is an indictment of the EU’s — and of Europe’s major parties’ — disregard of the legitimate concerns of decent people dismayed by the damage the EU is doing to democracy and freedom.
In last month’s elections for the European Parliament — a misbegotten institution that presumes a common European political culture but has 24 official languages — parties frequently dismissed as “fringe” groups performed impressively in France, Britain, Austria, Denmark and Greece by stressing hostility to the EU. They express, among other things, resentment of the “pooling” of national sovereignties in EU institutions, and the “harmonization” of national policies by bureaucracies in Brussels, all of which diminish the rights of national parliaments, won over centuries.
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