this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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[โ€“] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm glad Europe is finally getting it's act together on trying to defend itself.

But i'm not a fan of the EU itself being too involved - the EU is not democratically representative enough to be getting involved in military stuff. If the EU is going to militarise, then the commission and the president need to be directly elected by the people, and the parliament needs to be given proper power.

Instead we have the continued messy system of horse trading of power between governments based on national interests rather than the overall interests of EU citizens. And also we have Hungary which has slipped into an authoritarian regime, and Poland that has just skirted past descent into a right wing nightmare (it's not even clear yet if the current centre left government can undo the damage wrought by right wing, nor what will happen in the next election).

Personally I don't want to see the defence of our continent in the hands of the EU. Either it should stick to running the single market OR it should be a fully democratic superstate. This in-between quasi nation state is undemocratic and constitutionally weak. it has no way of dealing with Hungary, it had no way of dealing with Poland, it would have no way of dealing with France should Le Pen win power.

I'm in the UK; I'd support the EU becoming a full superstate and I'd want my country to rejoin. But I can't trust what the EU is currently is to achieve that. We've all seen in the last year how weak the US constitution really is - it's enabled an autocrat to take power. The EU is weak too - it can't be taken over directly by an autocrat which is good, but it's failed to deal with Putin up until now (Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again in 2022), it's unable to do anything about Viktor Orban in Hungary. Hungary has already held the EU's response to Ukraine back, and the Czech republic looks set to elect a pro-Putin populist party to power too.

European defence being dependent on an organisation that is unable to be decisive and is unable to be truly representative is weak. We need decisive and unified decisions in an emergency, not paralysis and not to be held back by outlier nations.

If you want to see why the EU is not the route to go to strengthen defence just look at the calls already to use the supposed defence spending boost to instead shore up healthcare spending. It's a laudable aim but when the wolf is as the door this is crazy way to divert defence spending.

For the EU to be a super power, it needs to first become an actual superstate. It needs to be the democracy it purports to fight for.