The EU Without a Captain: Technocracy and 'America Owns Europe'

The EU sails without a captain: technocracy, demography and dependence

The European Union is going nowhere because, in reality, it is already a place. A slaughterhouse, according to the most blunt formulation in circulation. The recurring diagnosis is not that the project has gone off course, but that it was never what it claimed to be: a union of peoples and cultures. Instead, it is described as a web of universities, monetary and financial interests, northern corporations and bureaucratic apparatus, stitched together by a shared hostility towards Russia coming from the Anglo-Saxon sphere. The question about the EU's future thus becomes an exercise in anatomy: dissecting what remains of the original project and who really calls the shots.

A project that was never of the peoples

The most repeated criticism is that the EU was built backwards. There was never a union of peoples and their culture, only a hotchpotch of interests. Against that reading, some defend the hotchpotch precisely as a virtue: Europe's historical greatness has been to be a mosaic of societies where one comes up with something the others lack and imposes it for a couple of centuries, until successes are copied and failures isolated. The contrast is drawn with historically centralised regions, such as China or Russia, where a wrong leader can cost centuries of regression. The conclusion drawn is uncomfortable: diversity worked, bureaucratic unification did not.

The democratic deficit: who votes for whom

The second axis of the analysis is technocracy. It is argued that decisions are made in bodies nobody elects: the Commission, the European Council, the European Central Bank, NATO and the World Health Organization. National governments, in this reading, act as transmission belts. Some go further and claim that the EU does not exist as such: it is four multinationals. And the passport, the digitalisation of the euro or the imposition of electric vehicles are read as pieces of the same control mechanism, not as separate policies.

Demography as an alibi and the Kalergi plan hoax

The third front is demographic. One participant claims that European women will reach 2030 without having had children and that the next generation will be born to foreign women. On that basis, a conspiracy theory is deployed, the so-called Kalergi plan, which lacks any documentary support and is dismissed as a hoax.

Washington, London and the multinationals

The fourth axis is external dependence. It is argued that European geopolitical decisions are made in Washington and London, and that the US owns the continent. The example given is that of a major gas company: at the end of the war, the Americans would have got rid of its original owners and installed their own power groups. The thesis is that any European capital with real influence in the continent's economy ends up bought by American interests or forced to leave, while regulation suffocates those who stay. The free movement of goods, in this framework, is seen as a lesser freedom compared to the loss of economic sovereignty.

Spain, the special case

In the Spanish case, the diagnosis becomes both more bitter and more optimistic. It is argued that Spain has more chances of resurgence than the EU as a whole, although it would have to start from scratch. Among the recipes put forward, some are outright illegalising: banning parties considered part of the problem. Others point to something deeper: recovering the quality of life and the pillars that have been lost. The underlying idea is that the nation-state remains the unit capable of reaction, while the European scale is perceived as a burden. The discussion drifted, at various points, towards peninsular medieval history and the role of Francoism as a forced moderniser, according to another participant.

The point where everything gets stuck

The analysis stops at a specific point: whether the decline is reversible or not. Some argue that the EU still has a better future than the US, the UK or Russia. Others, that the process is irreversible and that the only option is to isolate and wait.