Most people who care about peace, cooperation, and human rights have a soft spot for the #EU. Free movement, workers’ protections, environmental standards, the general idea of European nations deciding not to bomb each other for a change – these are real and genuinely good things. This piece isn’t trying to take that away.
But if we only see the EU as a progressive project, we’re missing a big part of the story. And missing it makes it harder to understand why, despite all those good intentions, the EU so often seems to produce outcomes that hurt ordinary people.
Where it actually came from
After World War II, Europe was in ruins. The United States, which had emerged from the war wealthy and largely undamaged, needed allies. The Soviet Union was expanding its influence, and the US was determined to ensure Western Europe didn’t drift toward socialism or communism.
The Marshall Plan – over $15 billion push to rebuilding European economies – wasn’t purely generous. It was strategic. The goal was to rebuild capitalism in Western and Southern Europe, creating a stable, prosperous, anti-communist bloc on the Soviet border.
This matters because the institutions that followed were built on that foundation. The European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the European Economic Community in 1957, and eventually the EU itself in 1992 – all grew from a project whose original purpose was to make Western European capitalism strong, stable, and resistant to socialist alternatives.
What got built into the structure
The treaties that govern the EU – particularly from Maastricht onwards – contain rules that go well beyond keeping the peace. They prohibit state aid to industries, restrict public ownership, and make it difficult for any member state to pursue economic policies that don’t conform to free market dogmatism.
This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just what was built in from the beginning, the EU was designed to be a capitalist bloc, and its rules reflect that design. When a left-wing government like Greece’s Syriza in 2015 tried to push back against austerity, the EU’s institutions made clear how much room actually existed for alternatives, not much.
Why this matters for fluffy people especially
If you care about workers’ rights, public services, environmental protection, and human dignity – and these are exactly the things that draw many people to support the EU – then understanding this tension is essential.
The EU can pass progressive-sounding directives while its underlying economic rules undermine the very things those directives are trying to protect. Privatisation of public services, pressure on welfare systems, restrictions on government intervention in the economy – these aren’t accidents or failures of the EU project. They’re features of what the project was originally built to do.
This doesn’t mean simple answers
Leaving the EU doesn’t automatically fix any of this – as the UK’s experience has demonstrated fairly conclusively. The economic rules and power structures don’t disappear just because you walk away from the table. And the genuine goods of European cooperation – peace, movement, shared standards – are worth protecting.
But pretending the EU is simply a progressive internationalist project, rather than a capitalist bloc with some progressive features bolted on, makes it harder to organise effectively within it or push meaningfully for change.
The honest position
The EU is a mess, a real historical tangle of genuine sounding idealism and structural economic conservatism, of peace-building and market-building, of protection and enclosure. Holding both of those things at once is uncomfortable. But it’s more useful than picking only the version you prefer.
Understanding where something comes from helps you understand what you’re actually dealing with, and what kind of pressure might actually change it https://hamishcampbell.com/tag/eu/
Yes, it’s a mess, one thing is certain we can’t keep worshipping the same #deathcult we have been for the last 40 years – ideas please?
@info@hamishcampbell.com I think it is pretty clear the “Soviet threat” needs no quotes. Stalin made the Eastern half of Europe part of his sphere of influence and picked up quite a bit of land during WW2. He made it quite clear that the Soviet Union was not a good faith ally with what happened to Poland for example.
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Yep, it is a “spiky” view, for background on this https://hamishcampbell.com/understanding-left-wing-anti-communism/
Yep, just like Briton did with its empire and the USA has done for the whole 20th century in South America, imperialism is a shit project in general.