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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/17/the-eurocentric-fallacy-the-myths-that-underpin-european-identity>
"Many “pro-Europeans” – that is, supporters of European integration or the
“European project” in its current form – imagine that the European Union is an
expression of cosmopolitanism. They think it stands for diversity, inclusion
and openness. It opposes nationalism and racism. It is about people “coming
together” and peacefully cooperating. It is a shining example of how enemies
can become partners and how diversity can be reconciled with unity.
As the European Commission president José Manuel Barroso put it when the EU was
awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2012 as it struggled to deal with the Eurozone
crisis, the European project has shown “that it is possible for peoples and
nations to come together across borders” and “that it is possible to overcome
the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’.”
However, there is something rather Eurocentric in thinking of the EU in this
way. In particular, by generalising about “peoples and nations” in the way
Barroso does, it mistakes Europe for the world. After all, insofar as the
European project – that is, the process of European integration since the end
of the second world war – has brought people and nations together, it is of
course only peoples and nations within Europe. It was a process that began with
six western European countries in the immediate postwar period, and
subsequently “widened” to include other northern, western and southern European
countries and, after the end of the cold war, central and eastern European
countries. It has never included the rest of the world – but, of course, the EU
has developed policies towards it.
Although internal barriers to the free movement of capital, goods and people
have been progressively removed in the last 75 years, external barriers have
persisted. In particular, while many barriers to flows of capital and goods
from outside the EU have been removed, barriers to the movement of people have
remained.
The European tendency to mistake Europe for the world – what might be called
“the Eurocentric fallacy” – has obscured our understanding of the EU and its
role in the world. It has led to an idealisation of European integration as a
kind of cosmopolitan project: what I call the myth of cosmopolitan Europe. A
better way to understand the EU is an expression of regionalism – which is
analogous to nationalism, rather than the opposite of it, as many
“pro-Europeans” imagine it to be. Thinking of the EU in terms of regionalism
rather than cosmopolitanism also allows us to understand more clearly the
tensions within the European project."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
