Europe: the union that is often buried

The European Union is buried with enviable regularity: every crisis is declared the beginning of the end. Years pass — the union is still alive. It is worth understanding why the idea proved sturdier than the forecasts of its collapse.

To understand the EU, you have to recall what it grew from. After two world wars that ruined the continent, the idea was simple and radical: countries that trade too closely and are too tied together find it harder to decide to fight one another. Integration was not about economics for its own sake, but about peace through interdependence. And by that measure, for all its flaws, the project worked.

There is an honest flip side. The union is slow, over-bureaucratic, forever arguing; very different peoples live cheek by jowl within it, and the tension never disappears. But it is precisely the ability to negotiate endlessly rather than to command that is its strength — one easy to mistake for weakness. Unions where one party decides everything fall apart faster.

“Nothing is possible without men, but nothing is lasting without institutions.”
— Jean Monnet

My opinion: it is too early to bury Europe not because it is perfect, but because it chose a boring but durable path — to argue and negotiate instead of to command. That is a lesson wider than one continent: what is durable is not what rests on force but what rests on consent.