On social media, the upcoming generation is expressing more European solidarity than the continent has seen in decades.
A futuristic EU soldier stands guard, laser blaster at the ready. European fighter jets zoom through the sky over thumping Eurodance beats. An imaginary map shows a vastly enlarged EU, swallowing everything from Greenland to the Caucasus.
Welcome to the wild world of pro-Europe online propaganda, where the EU isn’t a fractious club of 27 countries but a juiced-up superpower on par with China or the United States, only wiser and more cultured.
This type of content, which re-imagines the EU as a pan-European empire, a European Federation or the United States of Europe — take your pick — has flooded social media platforms over the past two years, garnering billions of views collectively on X, TikTok and Instagram as the EU has reeled from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a U.S.-EU trade deal decried as “humiliation” for Brussels in many parts of Europe.
I think centralization has merit…IF there are deliberate regional blocs, with the national figurehead elected by popular vote or if the heads of the other blocs agreed on that representative. Of course, the regional heads themselves are voted by popular election. As with the US Constitution, the concept is to divide up power - but in this case, the branches are multiplied by the number of blocs.
A national judiciary and parliament refines and creates national laws for all regional blocs, but only after representatives of each bloc or their constitutes have agreed for those laws. This creates a backbone of common law and policy, but also prevents any one region from dictating what should be.
Examples of hypothetical EU Regional blocs: A Mediterranean region for all nations who share a coastline with that body, a Black Sea region of the same, a Balkans Bloc, A Baltic Sea bloc, and so forth. Those spots have commonalities in what places they deem to be important, thus they would be focused on creating frameworks that allow for effective trade and practices within their region.
Whether this sort of division would work is the big question. Unfortunately, we will be exposed to political upheavals of what does…and more importantly, DOESN’T, work.
I personally believe that the US will become an social experiment of great and terrible proportions, that all other powers will pay close attention to.